An airstrike killing civilians is murder
- 9 yıl önce
The cruelty and methods of savagery employed by IS trouble Muslims before anyone else. It is obvious that an effort should be made to put an end to IS terror. However, the U.S. is repeating the same error of the last 100 years and imagining that results can be achieved through airstrikes.
Yet those airstrikes not only strengthen terror rather than finishing it off, but they are also a dangerous method that leads to considerable losses of civilian life. Murder can never be resolved by another murder: Killing even more people is not the way to stop deaths.
Aerial bombardments are a form of mass punishment and harm everyone, all too often making no distinctions between civilians, killers, innocent people, women, children, the elderly and the sick. An airstrike is an inhumane method. Under democratic systems, even the most crazed killers are caught first and then brought to face justice and tried; in airstrikes, finding them and determining their fault is considered unnecessary, let alone putting those murderers on trial. Airstrikes kill dozens of people in an area in a single moment, and all in the name of punishing a single culprit and a good deal of the time the ‘criminal’ concerned is not even among those killed.
The commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ in the Torah and the Gospels also appears in the Qur’an. God tells Muslims that killing one person is equivalent to killing all mankind. Someone who sincerely believes and abides by the Qur’an will make the maximum effort to protect a single person’s life. Therefore, advocating aerial bombardments and espousing the idea that ‘There is nothing wrong with the accidental killing of one or two people in such operations,’ is not an attitude that could be employed by a Muslim. The path a Muslim must follow is that of an intellectual struggle, and the language he uses must be that of love alone.
IS is a group with a polytheistic point of view that is incompatible with the Qur’an. They carry out persecution because of the incorrect beliefs they possess. Eliminating that wickedness can only be possible by correcting that false belief.
Only in that way can the savagery caused by IS be eliminated and the ideological foundation that attracts thousands of young people to radicalism be done away with.
Insisting on airstrikes, when a rational and legitimate means of resolving the problem is otherwise available, will merely increase material and psychological losses. Buildings destroyed in bombings, damaged infrastructure and uninhabitable towns all represent a matchless opportunity for terrorist groups. No logical person should advocate giving terrorists such a gift by spending seven or eight million dollars a day.
To date, the U.S and other coalition forces have carried out more than 200 aerial assaults, but these attacks - costing millions of dollars - have not caused IS to withdraw in any meaningful fashion. On the contrary, the organization is still attempting to advance in Iraq and Syria.
IS abandoned its bases shortly before the U.S. operations, and changed its habit of traveling in convoys. IS is thus protected from being hit. Targeting oil refineries and factories is not a deterrent to IS either, because these are not the only sources of revenue for IS. Consequently either the locations vacated by IS are bombed or factories, refineries, production zones are targeted in such a way as to paralyze the lives of the local people.
Bombing buildings that contain no IS elements and causing the deaths of civilians will clearly not put an end to IS. People who accept what they are indoctrinated with rather than thinking deeply for themselves must see this truth. Particularly for Muslims, it would be wrong to support such mass killing.
It must not be forgotten that our Prophet (saas) used methods of “discourse and explanation and calling to the truth” in his relations with the pagans of Mecca, who had made a tradition out of violence. He did not use weapons against them when he captured Mecca. He never thought along the lines of “Since these people are pagans, since these people are prone to violence, they must be destroyed en masse.” IS today acts on a pagan mindset; this pagan mindset can be changed by setting out the truth. Trying to deter people from using violence, making no distinction between those who are criminals and those who are not, those who are involved in terrorist activities and those who are not, when the aforementioned option is available, will merely provoke further terror and nothing else.
Those who imagine that IS’s terrorism and extremism can be brought to heel by guns and bombs need to take a careful look back at what has happened to date during the Afghanistan operation. Far from putting an end to terror, military operations caused it to grow and ultimately gave rise to IS, who
Yet those airstrikes not only strengthen terror rather than finishing it off, but they are also a dangerous method that leads to considerable losses of civilian life. Murder can never be resolved by another murder: Killing even more people is not the way to stop deaths.
Aerial bombardments are a form of mass punishment and harm everyone, all too often making no distinctions between civilians, killers, innocent people, women, children, the elderly and the sick. An airstrike is an inhumane method. Under democratic systems, even the most crazed killers are caught first and then brought to face justice and tried; in airstrikes, finding them and determining their fault is considered unnecessary, let alone putting those murderers on trial. Airstrikes kill dozens of people in an area in a single moment, and all in the name of punishing a single culprit and a good deal of the time the ‘criminal’ concerned is not even among those killed.
The commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ in the Torah and the Gospels also appears in the Qur’an. God tells Muslims that killing one person is equivalent to killing all mankind. Someone who sincerely believes and abides by the Qur’an will make the maximum effort to protect a single person’s life. Therefore, advocating aerial bombardments and espousing the idea that ‘There is nothing wrong with the accidental killing of one or two people in such operations,’ is not an attitude that could be employed by a Muslim. The path a Muslim must follow is that of an intellectual struggle, and the language he uses must be that of love alone.
IS is a group with a polytheistic point of view that is incompatible with the Qur’an. They carry out persecution because of the incorrect beliefs they possess. Eliminating that wickedness can only be possible by correcting that false belief.
Only in that way can the savagery caused by IS be eliminated and the ideological foundation that attracts thousands of young people to radicalism be done away with.
Insisting on airstrikes, when a rational and legitimate means of resolving the problem is otherwise available, will merely increase material and psychological losses. Buildings destroyed in bombings, damaged infrastructure and uninhabitable towns all represent a matchless opportunity for terrorist groups. No logical person should advocate giving terrorists such a gift by spending seven or eight million dollars a day.
To date, the U.S and other coalition forces have carried out more than 200 aerial assaults, but these attacks - costing millions of dollars - have not caused IS to withdraw in any meaningful fashion. On the contrary, the organization is still attempting to advance in Iraq and Syria.
IS abandoned its bases shortly before the U.S. operations, and changed its habit of traveling in convoys. IS is thus protected from being hit. Targeting oil refineries and factories is not a deterrent to IS either, because these are not the only sources of revenue for IS. Consequently either the locations vacated by IS are bombed or factories, refineries, production zones are targeted in such a way as to paralyze the lives of the local people.
Bombing buildings that contain no IS elements and causing the deaths of civilians will clearly not put an end to IS. People who accept what they are indoctrinated with rather than thinking deeply for themselves must see this truth. Particularly for Muslims, it would be wrong to support such mass killing.
It must not be forgotten that our Prophet (saas) used methods of “discourse and explanation and calling to the truth” in his relations with the pagans of Mecca, who had made a tradition out of violence. He did not use weapons against them when he captured Mecca. He never thought along the lines of “Since these people are pagans, since these people are prone to violence, they must be destroyed en masse.” IS today acts on a pagan mindset; this pagan mindset can be changed by setting out the truth. Trying to deter people from using violence, making no distinction between those who are criminals and those who are not, those who are involved in terrorist activities and those who are not, when the aforementioned option is available, will merely provoke further terror and nothing else.
Those who imagine that IS’s terrorism and extremism can be brought to heel by guns and bombs need to take a careful look back at what has happened to date during the Afghanistan operation. Far from putting an end to terror, military operations caused it to grow and ultimately gave rise to IS, who