War Crimes in General

Main Part · Full-text chapter from the book Islam's Strict Prohibitions Against Killing Women, Children and Other Defenceless People · Read as PDF

It should be noted that war crimes and atrocities, contrary to the Islamic guidelines of the old, are not solely found in people who attribute themselves to Islam.

War crimes targeting civilians, among them women and children, have frequently been reported in the last decades. The perpetrator often being the United States³⁶.

The massacre of My Lai on March 16, 1968, which was carried out during the Vietnam War, remains a collective memory. It became public that US soldiers raped women and murdered 504 people, virtually all civilians of the village; including women, children and elderly people. All animals were also killed.

In recent American wars, wiping out entire villages comprising of only women, children and other civilians, was a repetitive practice. These atrocities are a common theme in the media and film industry of the US itself.

As a rule, the US Army initially tries to cover up such incidents, as was first attempted with the incident of My Lai. It is safe to assume a much higher number of unreported cases, i.e. multiple incidents that will never find their way into reporting or the film industry.

The case of US Special Forces in Afghanistan, which were given a free hand in executing orders to eliminate numerous individuals, is worth mentioning. In these operations, countless civilians, women and children were killed during raids on houses, and this without condemnation over a long time. Such malpractice too contradicts the above-mentioned guidelines of Islam.

I consider these things worth mentioning for the following reason: I believe that such incidents could only occur this often because the leadership, but more so the lower management and the soldiers of the army, as well as in the United States Special Forces, have a certain contempt for moral values and lack a certain sense of conscientiousness.

A statement which is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, puts the aforementioned problems in a nutshell. She is supposed to have described the US Marines with following words:

This statement sums up many of the problems in the conduct and the values of the US troops. Yet some members of the troops, if not all of them, pride themselves with such descriptions. Under these questionable circumstances, derailments and gross misconduct come as no surprise.

Another reason to mention this is to illustrate that malpractices, as they are presently being carried out in warfare around the world, are indeed prohibited by Islam's teachings. No matter who the perpetrator is.

For whenever monstrosity and bloodlust spread in an army, something has massively spun out of hand, regardless whether it is the so-called “IS”, the US Army or any other army.

Islam's commandments will not be able to restrain a person, even if they attribute themselves to Islam, as long as they:

1. do not know the commandments, or
2. follow their own inclinations and deliberately distort Islamic texts.