Justifying the murder of children

Exactly one hundred years ago, Russian opponents of the Tsarist regime aborted their assassination attempt on the life of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich because of the presence of his wife and children... [S]uch acts of restraint in the world's modern trouble-spots seem hard to imagine.

Dr Rory Miller and Dr Martin Navias, both of King's College London, consider some of the reasons for the change, not in the sense of 'root causes', but in the sense of justifying beliefs:

[T]actics and strategy aside, such brutal acts are justified by the perpetrators on ideological grounds because they are part of what is perceived to be a moral struggle. As Antar Soubari, a senior member of Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA), put it: "I am innocent of those killed because they are associated with those who had to be fought."

In recent times, this sort of argument has found explicit backing among a growing number of Islamist thinkers.

They have argued that the prophet Mohammed's prohibition on killing children does not apply if the children being targeted "knowingly" participated in combat, or aided the enemy war effort, or even if they only acted to "encourage" the enemy.

Likewise, extremist clerics have increasingly argued that it is not prohibited to kill children in suicide bombings if the attacker has no premeditated intention to kill them.

When taken together, these two impossibly vague formulations have legitimised all foul deeds against children caught up in the struggles against Israel and the secular and pro-western Muslim governments of the Middle East.

But there is a third ideological argument that flows from an extreme interpretation of the Islamic principle of retaliation, and which also provides the basis for targeting children in the non-Muslim world.

The classic expression of this worldview is to be found in the pronouncements of Suleiman Abu Ghait, an al-Qaeda spokesman and close associate of Osama bin Laden.

He has argued that the evils perpetrated by the West, in particular the US, against Muslims of all ages throughout the Islamic world - in Iraq, Palestine, Somalia and elsewhere - not only justified the 9/11 attacks but provided Muslims with both the right and duty to kill a further four million Americans, including one million American children.

'I am innocent... because they are associated with...' - that pretty much sums it up. (Thanks: DC.)