Qabil (Cain)

Qabil (Cain) was a son of Prophet Adam AS and is known as the first murderer in human history. The Quran narrates his story alongside that of his brother Habil (Abel) in Surah al-Maidah (5:27-31) as a moral warning to all of humanity. When Qabil's offering to Allah was not accepted while Habil's was, Qabil became consumed with jealousy and rage. His brother tried to reason with him and offered to accept death rather than fight back, but Qabil was unmoved. He killed Habil, becoming responsible for the first act of murder in the human story. After the killing, he did not know what to do with the body. Allah sent a crow that scratched the earth to show him how to bury the dead. Qabil felt remorse — not the remorse of sincere repentance but the regret of a man overwhelmed by the reality of what he had done: 'Woe to me! Was I unable to be like this crow and hide the body of my brother?' The Prophet ﷺ said that every person killed unjustly, a portion of that sin is placed upon Qabil, because he was the first to make murder a practice among humans. His story is a warning against the deadly combination of envy (hasad) and arrogance — two diseases of the heart that distort a person's perception until they can justify even the worst of acts. Islam's treatment of his story is focused on the moral lesson, not on burdening his descendants, as Islam rejects the concept of inherited sin.