No soul bears the burden of another. The Qur’an states it not once but five times, as if foreseeing how often it would be denied. The Muslim Peace Fellowship states it again today, against the doctrine — never announced, always practiced — of collective punishment.
Whatever the crime and whoever its author, the neighbors of the guilty are not the guilty. The family is not the fighter. The city is not the cell that hides in it. When water, power, food, and passage are cut to a population because of what some among them have done, a moral line older than international law — though international law also draws it — has been crossed.
We reject the arithmetic that debits a child’s life against an enemy’s ledger. We call on all parties, in every present conflict, to distinguish — as both our scripture and the laws of war demand — between combatant and civilian, and we call on those who supply and shield the parties to make their support conditional on that distinction being honored.
The sanctity of civilian life is not a partisan position. It is very nearly the last position that is not — and we intend to hold it.