Weapons of Mass Destruction, a Blessing or an Inevitable Curse?

They say, “Everything is fair in love and war”, they say “We should keep our horses ready and in the current era, the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are those horses and hence a blessing”. They say “we are proud to be a nuclear power” (and here, being a nuclear power is primarily about carrying WMD). My serious questions and reservations on such beliefs offend them, so I would humbly apologize in advance.

I question them that how can something be a source of pride when it is inherently bad? how can it be considered a blessing, when it will ultimately break every moral law, kill innocents, ruin the generations to come and destroy the nature?

They say, “Well, we have to keep WMD for our defense, if we don’t, then our enemy will invade and kill us”, they say that “instead of killing innocents, we are actually saving our innocents by keeping these weapons, so we should be proud of them and consider them a blessing”.

I tell them that, without going into the debate of whether a nation’s survival depends on keeping WMDs or world class academic institutions and to cut the dialogue short, I can consider the guided missiles and weapons a blessing, but the most I can say about WMD is that they might be ‘an inevitable curse’ but not a blessing.

They say that, “in older times, wars were fought using weapons which could only kill the combatants i.e. swords. But in the current era, how is it possible that in a war you won’t kill a single innocent soul”.

I tell them that there is a difference between unknowingly killing an innocent, while you were directly attacking the combatants or bombing their bases with guided missiles, and knowingly killing thousands of innocents with weapons of mass destruction. The name explains itself, dear, Weapons of MASS DESTRUCTION.

I say all this because my moral sense and religion tells me that whether it is Love or War, there are moral limits to observe. I wonder whether WMDs will observe any limit. I say all this because my moral sense and especially my religion tells me that killing one innocent soul is like killing the whole humanity and that the sanctity of an innocent soul is greater than the sanctity of the holiest place. I wonder whether WMDs hold such sanctity towards the life of an innocent soul. I cannot be proud of these ruthless weapons, because my religion tells me that even during a war I cannot kill women, young infants, children, infirm or old aged people, people in cloisters, covenant and mutilate the dead bodies. Let alone humans, during the war, my religion does not even allow me to slaughter an animal except for eating purposes. Would you believe that, during a war, Islam does not even allow obliterating a stream, cutting off fruit bearing trees or destroying an inhabited place.

Such are the moral limits preached to me by my religion, Islam. I wonder whether a WMD will observe all the aforementioned limits by differentiating between a combatant and an innocent before killing, surely not. If the inherent nature of WMD is to kill the masses, then with all due respect to your nationalism and patriotic sentiments, I can only call it an inevitable curse, neither a blessing nor a pride. For me, Muslims, even if they carry WMD, should be the first and the loudest ones to urge the humanity and the nuclear powers to demolish all the nuclear weapons from the world. If we won’t do this, then God will not have to bring the doomsday; we will do it ourselves.