Ethics of War

As the title suggests, in this paper we mount a defense for the presence of US Army Chaplains on combat patrols.  We argue that the chaplain's twin roles as both Religious Leader and Advisor to the Commander provide a framework within which a meaningful "ministry of presence" may be embodied on an asymmetric battlefield.

War is harmful to animals, but few have considered how such harm should affect assessments of the justice of military actions. In this paper, we propose a way in which concern for animals can be included within the just-war framework, with a focus on necessity and proportionality. We argue that counting animals in war will not make just-war theory excessively demanding, but it will make just-war theory more humane. By showing how animals can be included in our proportionality and necessity assessments, we provide a crucial first step towards developing an animal-inclusive account of just-war theory.

Publikacja ta jest wynikiem zainteresowania fundacji Inicjatywa ICLHR pojazdami bezzałogowymi oraz wyzwaniami, jakie ich rozwój i użycie może spowodować oraz jakie będą konsekwencje w odniesieniu do ochrony praw człowieka, międzynarodowego prawa humanitarnego konfliktów zbrojnych i prawa karnego, a zatem także „pożądanych postaw moralnych” członków Sił Zbrojnych.
Jednym ze zidentyfikowanych przez fundację środków pomocnych w zagwarantowaniu właściwego rozwoju i użycia tych pojazdów jest zwiększanie wiedzy społeczeństwa obywatelskiego oraz decydentów wojskowych i politycznych w Polsce o różnych (dotyczących rozmaitych dziedzin życia i nauki) potencjalnych i potwierdzonych zagrożeniach czy problemach, a także próba ich zbadania oraz zaproponowania rozwiązań. Część z tak ogólnie tu przedstawionych założeń udało się fundacji wkomponować w projekt zatytułowany „Społeczeństwo obywatelskie wobec rozwoju polskich bojowych bezzałogowców”.

A rebuttal of ISIL's Jurisprudence of Blood (Fiqh al-Dima'). This book is a comprehensive, principled rejection of one of the main jurisprudential texts that is used by takfiri (salafi-jihadist) terrorist groups in general, and ISIL/ISIS and its associates in particular, including Boko Haram (ISWAP). The text that we comprehensively refute is the 579-page Mas’ail min Fiqh al-Jihad (“Issues from the Jurisprudence of Jihad”) by Abu ‘Abdullah al-Muhajir, a key ISIS ideologue. The text is also known amongst jihadists by another name: Fiqh al-Dima’, or The Jurisprudence of Blood. This is a “bible for jihadists,” containing alleged theoretical and legal grounding that has manifested itself on the ground with atrocities committed by like-minded terrorists around the globe, at the hands of groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Unlike many texts from the takfiri (salafi-jihadist) literary canon that are usually brief and simple, this text offers intricate details on the use of jihad in its traditional Sunni discussion, and misuses these features to provide Islamic legal cover to terrorist operations.

The "Jurisprudence of Blood" is composed of twenty chapters, each dedicated to the discussion of one issue (mas’alah) of the jihadists’ interpretation of jihad. In order to try to impress the reader and show his command of Islamic jurisprudence, the author sometimes adds a new chapter – under a new title – to discuss the very same issues mentioned in previous chapters.

The development of the takfiri ideology starts with the principle of excommunicating (pronouncing takfir upon) all existing political regimes, as they are not implementing the true teachings of Islam and have fallen into a “trap of pre-Islamic ignorance” (jahiliyya), and distinguishing, as the author does, between the “lands of Islam” and the “lands of unbelief (kufr).” The takfiri jihadists are therefore entitled to fight the unbelievers and attack all infidel (non-Muslim) countries of the world that do not have a treaty with them. This jihad has to continue until infidelity (non-Islam) disappears and Islam becomes the only dominant faith. Moreover, this dichotomisation of the world into factions of belief and unbelief is used by ISIS to legitimise the following:

i. assassinations,
ii. kidnapping and taking hostages,
iii. conducting suicide operations,
iv. mutilating corpses,
v. beheading people,
vi. killing of children and non-combatants,
vii. the taking of sex-slaves
viii. trading in human organs,
ix. employing weapons of mass destruction, and
x. committing genocide.

The ISIS author, known only through his by-name Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir that indicates his religious emigration from his homeland, is an Egyptian who joined the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan (1979-89) and mixed with the likes of Usama bin Ladin and, possibly, Ayman al-Zawahiri. As a takfiri theologian, orator and writer, his influence upon Al-Qaeda and ISIS is immense, although he has generally slipped under the radar outside those circles. As a younger man, he regarded the Taliban and even Bin Ladin as too soft. He is thought to be alive and at large after over three decades of jihadism, although a fellow takfiri theologian with the same by-name (Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir) was killed by an American airstrike in Syria in November 2016.

Our work comprehensively debunks and rejects ISIS’ proto-Islamic arguments, demonstrating their ignorance and disregard for traditional Islamic scholarship as well as for the basic humane and Islamic values of mercy and compassion.

We give a detailed response to ISIS’ ideological jurisprudence based on a wide and holistic reading of Islamic jurisprudence and theology.
In the course of our work, we strongly emphasise the convergence between traditional Islamic and modern warfare ethics, as illustrated by the works of leading contemporary Islamic jurists whom we quote in our work. We especially draw upon the work of Muhammad Abu Zahra, Wahba Zuhayli and other Al-Azhar jurists, as well as critiquing some of Qaradawi's views on warfare ethics.

We include a summary of what we term "Modern Islamic Warfare Ethics," consisting of 13 conclusions summarised from our response to the "Jurisprudence of Blood" (Fiqh al-Dima').

In a nutshell, it is only fringe groups like ISIS that have a bloodthirsty approach to the world. In contrast, contemporary, mainstream Islamic jurisprudence endorses international agreements and treaties related to nation-states and warfare ethics, thus continuing the centuries of Islamic contributions to shared, global civilisations.

This theme issue has the founding ambition of landscaping Data Ethics as a new branch of ethics that studies and evaluates moral problems related to data (including generation, recording, curation, processing, dissemination, sharing, and use), algorithms (including AI, artificial agents, machine learning, and robots), and corresponding practices (including responsible innovation, programming, hacking, and professional codes), in order to formulate and support morally good solutions (e.g. right conducts or right values). Data Ethics builds on the foundation provided by Computer and Information Ethics but, at the same time, it refines the approach endorsed so far in this research field, by shifting the Level of Abstraction of ethical enquiries, from being information-centric to being data-centric. This shift brings into focus the different moral dimensions of all kinds of data, even the data that never translate directly into information but can be used to support actions or generate behaviours, for example. It highlights the need for ethical analyses to concentrate on the content and nature of computational operations—the interactions among hardware, software, and data—rather than on the variety of digital technologies that enables them. And it emphasises the complexity of the ethical challenges posed by Data Science. Because of such complexity, Data Ethics should be developed from the start as a macroethics, that is, as an overall framework that avoids narrow, ad hoc approaches and addresses the ethical impact and implications of Data Science and its applications within a consistent, holistic, and inclusive framework. Only as a macroethics Data Ethics will provide the solutions that can maximise the value of Data Science for our societies, for all of us, and for our environments.

Military weapons and equipment benefit a great deal from advances in technology. These advances have allowed combatants to engage targets more accurately and from further away, which has meant increased safety for military forces and civilians and an improved capability to accomplish assigned tasks. The latest technology to improve the capability of military systems is autonomy. Military systems are gaining an increased capability to perform assigned tasks autonomously, and this capability will only improve over time. Autonomy in military systems allows human operators to remain out of harm’s way and to complete tasks that manned systems cannot (or to complete these tasks more efficiently. If autonomous capability achieves the potential that many of its supporters believe it can, this will radically change how military operations are conducted. Because these changes may be so significant, and because they allow systems to perform tasks without being constrained or guided by constant human oversight, autonomous technology needs to be examined from an ethical perspective. This is especially necessary because autonomous capability can have both negative and positive effects on human life. While many articles and chapters focus exclusively on either the negative or positive implication of autonomous systems, this chapter considers both and offers recommendations for advancing policy in a manner that takes into account ethical considerations for the development and use of autonomous systems.