Killing Women and Children in Night Raids Permitted
These two hadith, in close textual proximity, capture the canonical Sunni ruling on collateral casualties in nighttime raids on enemy settlements. Muhammad's general principle (Bukhari 3012) is disapproval of killing women and children. But the specific question put to him in Bukhari 3015-3016 — whether it is permissible to attack pagan warriors at night, knowing that women and children will be killed in the process — receives the answer: 'They are from them' (hum minhum). That is, women and children of pagan tribes are part of the pagan population, and killing them in such raids is permissible.
The hadith is sahih in Bukhari and Muslim, with multiple chains. The Arabic phrasing (hum minhum) is unambiguous.
The context the hadith addresses is night raiding — bayāt, the standard 7th-century tactic of striking sleeping enemy settlements before dawn. Such raids necessarily kill non-combatants alongside combatants because they target settlements indiscriminately. The question to Muhammad was effectively: are we permitted to use a tactic that we know will kill women and children? His answer was yes, on the grounds that women and children of pagan tribes share their tribe's status.
This ruling has shaped the Islamic just-war tradition. Classical fiqh (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali) generally distinguished between intentional targeting of women and children (forbidden) and incidental killing in raids (permitted). The Bukhari 3015-3016 ruling provides the textual basis for the latter.
The modern application has been severe. The doctrine of permissible collateral damage in jihad has been cited by: — Classical Islamic conquests, where civilian casualties were widespread. — Al-Qaeda's 1998 fatwa permitting attacks on American civilians (Bin Laden cited Muhammad's permission for night raids 'where women and children may be killed'). — ISIS's targeting of civilian populations, with explicit citation of the Bukhari ruling.
The ethical analysis is direct:
1. Indiscriminate targeting. Night raids cannot distinguish combatant from non-combatant. Knowingly conducting them is morally equivalent to deliberate targeting because the outcome (civilian deaths) is foreseen and accepted.
2. Collective responsibility. The 'they are from them' framing makes children and women responsible for the actions of their tribe's warriors. This is collective punishment, with the inversion that the punished are entirely innocent (children) or only nominally complicit (women whose role in tribal politics was usually limited).
3. Quranic context. Q 8:39 ('fight them until there is no fitna and the religion is wholly for Allah') and the broader Surah 8 frame justify warfare against polytheist tribes generally. Combined with Bukhari 3015-3016, the result is a permission structure for indiscriminate religious warfare.
4. Modern contradiction. Modern Muslim scholars rightly condemn the targeting of women and children. But the textual basis they would have to override to fully repudiate this is the Bukhari hadith — which they generally do not do, instead offering 'modern application' or 'specific context' arguments that do not refute the ruling itself.
- P1. Bukhari 3015-3016 (and Muslim 1745) record Muhammad permitting night raids on pagan settlements knowing that women and children will be killed in the process.
- P2. Muhammad's reasoning is hum minhum — 'they are from them,' meaning women and children share their tribe's status and may be killed alongside warriors.
- P3. The hadith is sahih in the highest-rated collections, with multiple chains.
- P4. The ruling formed the textual basis for classical fiqh's permission of collateral civilian deaths in jihad.
- P5. Modern jihadist groups (al-Qaeda, ISIS) cite the hadith as warrant for attacks that kill civilians.
- P6. By any modern just-war ethic — and by the older universal moral intuition that children should not be killed in adult conflicts — knowingly conducting raids that kill women and children is a violation of non-combatant immunity.
- P7. A morally serious revelation would not permit a tactic whose foreseen consequence is the deaths of women and children.
Bukhari 3015-3016 is a sahih ruling permitting indiscriminate killing in night raids. The 'they are from them' rationale establishes a doctrine of collective tribal liability that is incompatible with non-combatant immunity. Modern jihadist groups read the hadith correctly; mainstream apologetic responses soften the application but cannot refute the textual basis. The hadith is what we would expect of 7th-century Arabian war ethics — and exactly what we would not expect of a divinely revealed moral framework intended to bind humanity universally.
The hadith permits incidental killing during legitimate military operations, not deliberate targeting. This is the classical doctrine of double effect — common to all just-war traditions.
The double-effect principle requires that the harm be unintended and not the means by which the good is achieved. Night raids on settlements with sleeping families do not meet this test: the harm to non-combatants is foreseen, accepted, and integral to the chosen tactic. If the goal were 'attack only combatants,' the tactic would not be night raiding. The hadith permits the tactic precisely because the killing of women and children is acceptable, not because it is regrettable. The 'double effect' framing cannot be superimposed on a 'they are from them' rationale.
The hadith was issued in the specific context of total tribal warfare, where the alternative was extinction of the Muslim community. It does not generalise to other contexts.
Muhammad gave the ruling as a general permission for night raiding, not as a one-time exception. Classical fiqh generalised it. Modern Islamists generalise it. The 'specific context' defence has no textual basis — the hadith presents the ruling without context-dependent qualification. And even granting the context, the premise that 'extinction was the alternative' is itself a defensive narrative; many of Muhammad's military operations were offensive expansion, not survival warfare.
Muhammad explicitly forbade killing women and children in other hadith (Bukhari 3014, 3015 referencing the prior disapproval). The 'they are from them' ruling must be read alongside the prohibition.
The two hadith create a tension that Muhammad himself resolved in favour of the night-raid permission. Bukhari 3012 says he 'disapproved' of women's killing — past tense, in response to a found body. Bukhari 3015 then permits it in the night-raid context. The later, more specific ruling overrides the general disapproval. This is the same naskh logic Sunni jurists apply; reading the prohibition alongside the permission does not nullify the permission.
Modern Muslim scholars unanimously condemn terrorism and the targeting of civilians — the al-Qaeda/ISIS reading is rejected by mainstream Islam.
The unanimity is recent and consequentialist. The textual basis for the al-Qaeda/ISIS reading is in fact correct exegesis of Bukhari 3015. Mainstream rejection cites political consequences, treaty obligations, and PR concerns — not textual refutation. If the texts permitted what jihadists do, and jihadists are wrong, then the texts are the problem. 'Mainstream rejection' does not address the textual issue; it concedes that the texts are inadequate as a moral guide and require external override.
Pre-modern warfare across all civilisations was indiscriminate; condemning Muhammad alone is anachronistic.
Muhammad is uniquely positioned as a uswa hasana (Q 33:21) — universal moral exemplar — which raises the moral bar above 'typical 7th-century commander.' The objection is not that 7th-century warfare was generally brutal (it was), but that a divinely guided exemplar's behaviour should not match the brutality of his contemporaries. Pointing out that other 7th-century actors did similar things confirms that Muhammad was a typical 7th-century actor — which contradicts his theological status.