ISIS Forum Members Debate Religious Justifications for Killing Women and Children
Executive Summary
A prolonged discussion on an ISIS aligned forum shows members openly debating whether the killing of women and children is religiously prohibited or permissible within their interpretation of jihad. The exchange was triggered by questions referencing recent and historical attacks involving child casualties and quickly evolved into a justification discourse that normalized civilian deaths, reframed them as collateral damage, or explicitly permitted them through selective religious citations. The discussion demonstrates continued ideological erosion of traditional prohibitions and alignment with Islamic State messaging that rejects civilian immunity.
Analysis
Forum participants addressed the issue by selectively invoking hadith, clerical opinions, and grievance based reasoning to legitimize the killing of women and children in jihadist violence.
A user directly asked whether killing children is haram, citing the Bondi Beach attack, the Beslan school siege in North Ossetia, and the September 11 attacks as examples involving child victims.
Multiple respondents cited a hadith attributed to the Prophet stating that women and children killed during night raids “are from them,” using it to justify unavoidable civilian deaths during attacks.
Participants repeatedly framed child deaths as collateral damage, explicitly equating them with civilian casualties caused by Western or Israeli military actions and arguing that reciprocal harm is religiously permissible.
Others went further, citing fatwas attributed to figures such as Ibn Uthaymeen to argue that killing women and children is allowed as retaliation or deterrence, while dismissing counterarguments that such acts are categorically forbidden.
As the discussion progressed, participants attempted to retroactively sanitize mass casualty attacks. The Beslan school siege was reframed as a negotiation effort allegedly gone wrong due to Russian intervention, while the death of a child in the Bondi Beach attack was described as unintentional and therefore acceptable. This rationalization occurred alongside the posting of explicit Islamic State speeches calling for indiscriminate killing and rejecting any distinction between civilians and combatants. The juxtaposition highlights a key contradiction: while some users claimed moral discomfort, dominant voices reinforced Islamic State doctrine that erases civilian status entirely. The thread illustrates how ideological debates function less as genuine moral inquiry and more as mechanisms to discipline doubt and realign members with violent absolutism.
Sources
TechHaven
