| That is neither just, fair, right, ethical, or American. You should be ashamed of yourself if you are defending the treatment of detainees to this point. Because of attitudes like that, the Islamic world is ready and willing to kill us because of the treatment of detainees. |
If I understand you correctly you are saying that we should ignore international law?
Please read the proper treatment of prisoners by Islamic law.
Prisoners of War
The historical legal principles governing the treatment of prisoners of war, in shar'iah, Islamic law, (in the traditional madhabs schools of Islamic jurisprudence), closely mirror the pre-existing norms of society during Muhammad's time[citation needed]. Men, women, and children may all be taken as prisoners of war under traditional interpretations of Islamic law. Generally, a prisoner of war could be (at the discretion of the military leader): freed, enslaved for the purposes of labor, or sold on the slave market. Female prisoners may be enslaved as Ma malakat aymanukum. In earlier times, the ransom sometimes took an educational dimension, where a literate prisoner of war could secure his or her freedom by teaching ten Muslims to read and write.
Muslim scholars have traditionally held that women and children prisoners of war cannot be killed under any circumstances, but that they may be freed, ransomed, or enslaved. However, there has been disagreement whether adult male prisoners of war must be executed, must not be executed, or may be executed at the discretion of the appropriate authority:
One traditional opinion holds that executing prisoners of war is strictly forbidden; this is the most-widely accepted view, and one upheld by the Hanafi Maddhab. However, the opinion of the Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali and Jafari Maddhabs is that adult male prisoners of war may be executed at the discretion of the Islamic supreme leader, or those legally deputized by him.[citation needed] Conventionally, execution was conditional on the reasonable belief that male prisoners would pose a genuine and immediate threat to the Muslim community if allowed to live. This opinion was also upheld by the medieval Muslim judge, Sa'id bin Jubair (665-714 AD). Taken together, these two views account for virtually all reputable Islamic scholarship that has consider the issue.
The above facts are attested to by a number of scholarly sources coming from medieval and modern, Muslim and non-Muslim sources:
Imam Shafi, said the Imam (supreme leader of the Muslims) is given the choice of killing the prisoners, showing them mercy, ransoming them or keeping them in bondage. This issue has been confirmed and has been proven in our book 'Al Ahkam.' (Tafsir of the Qur'an by Ibn Kathir [4])
Slavery was not abolished by the Koran, but ... only children of slaves or non-Muslim prisoners of war can become slaves, never a freeborn Muslim. (Annemarie Schimmel. Islam: An Introduction. Albani: State University of New York Press, 1992, p. 67)
Male captives might be killed or enslaved, whatever their religious affiliation. (People of the Book were not protected by Islamic law until they had accepted dhimma.) Captives might also be given the choice between Islam and death, or they might pronounce the confession of faith of their own accord to avoid execution: jurists ruled that their change of status was to be accepted even though they had only converted out of fear. Women and children captured in the course of the campaigns were usually enslaved, again regardless of their faith. Nor should the importance of captives be underestimated. Muslim warriors routinely took large numbers of them. Leaving aside those who converted to avoid execution, some were ransomed and the rest enslaved, usually for domestic use. (Patricia Crone. God’s Rule: Government and Islam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. 371-72)
It was the custom to enslave prisoners of war and the Islamic state would have put itself at a grave disadvantage vis-a-vis its enemies had it not reciprocated to some extent. By guaranteeing them [male POWs] humane treatment, and various possibilities of subsequently releasing themselves, it ensured that a good number of combatants in the opposing armies preferred captivity at the hands of Muslims to death on the field of battle. (Roger DuPasquier. Unveiling Islam. Islamic Texts Society, 1992, p. 104)
According to the Qur'an a woman who has been captured by force falls in the category of a slave girl (kaniz). And because the Qur'an confines the use of force to the fighting (qital) in the way of God, thus according to the Qur'an a slave girl is that woman who falls in the hands of Muslims as a prisoner during the course of war waged in the way of God. (Maulana Maududi, Rasa'il wa Masa'il 3rd edition, Vol. III, p.102).
"There is no limit to their [slave-girls under custody of one person] numbers...This, however, does not mean that the Divine Law has provided the rich an opportunity to purchase as many slave-girls as they like for their carnal indulgence...the Shariah has allowed only that the women captured in war and whose people do not exchange them for Muslim prisoners or do not ransom them, may be kept as slave-girls...If these have been made a means of sexual enjoyment and luxury by the rich, it is they who are to blame and not the Shariah. (Tafsir of the Qur'an by Maulana Maududi, Vol. IV, exegesis of verse 33:52).
...that one can even...finish off the wounded, or kill prisoners who might prove dangerous to the Muslims...As for the prisoners who are led before the imam, the latter has the choice, as he pleases, of executing them, or making them pay a ransom, for the most advantageous choice for the Muslims and the wisest of Islam. The ransom imposed upon them is not to consist either of gold, silver, or wares, but is only in exchange for Muslim captives... As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. ('Abu Yusuf Ya'qub Le Livre de l'impot foncier,' translated from Arabic and annotated by Edmond Fagnan, Paris, Paul Geuthner, 1991, pages 301-302) Abu Yusuf (d. 798 CE) was a classical jurists from the Hanafi school of jurispudence).
The above discussion on the matter of prisoners of war in Islam concerns the traditional practices and opinions of Muslim warriors and Muslim scholars. Certain Muslims, such as those who reject the hadith literature in its entirely (e.g. Qur'an Aloners) or liberal Muslims may not necessarily agree with the traditional interpretations of Islamic law in general, and Islamic laws concerning prisoners of war in particular. It should furthermore be noted that some militant Islamist movements do in fact agree with the traditional interpretations. For such mujahideen movements, the execution of prisoners of war is a powerful political weapon (particularly in asymmetric warfare), while the ransoming and enslaving of prisoners of wars is a lucrative source of funding for their militant movements as well as a source of personal pleasure. Armed Islamic conflicts in Chechnya and the Sudan, in particular, have in recent times gained international condemnation for kidnapping and ransom schemes and for the international crime of human trafficking.
According to accounts written by Muhammad's followers, after the Battle of Badr, some prisoners were executed for their earlier crimes in Mecca, but the rest were given options: They could convert to Islam and thus win their freedom; they could pay ransom and win their freedom; they could teach 10 Muslims to read and write and thus win their freedom [5]. William Muir wrote of this period:
Should we follow their laws to be more fair?
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