Modern Islamic religious figures and commentators often claim that certain weapons are “halal” while others are “un-Islamic.” This raises a question: If classical Islamic jurisprudence never labeled weapons as halal or haram, why do modern actors do so? Classical Islamic law does not support such categories. It regulates conduct, not technology. Early jurists focused on limits, intention, and protection of noncombatants. They did not classify weapons by religious labels. Jurists judged warfare through necessity, proportionality, and restraint.
States and terrorist movements frame their own weapons as defensive while condemning those of their rivals as un-Islamic.
The Qur’an commands Muslims to fight those who fight them but forbids transgression. Early legal texts stress restraint. Prophetic traditions prohibit mutilation, torture, and destruction without need. Jurists from all major schools repeat these limits. Early authorities such as the eighth-century jurist Muhammad al-Shaybani, eleventh-century scholar Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Habib al-Mawardi, and thirteenth-century Islamic legal scholar Ibn Taymiyyah grounded warfare in ethical restraint, rather than weapons classification. They forbade killing women, children, monks, and other noncombatants and they restrict the burning of crops, poisoning of wells, and destruction of livestock unless strict necessity existed.
These rules follow a clear logic. Islamic law regulates conduct, not tools. It judges methods by their effects on noncombatants and by the limits of necessity. Pre-modern jurists discussed siege engines, fire, and flooding. They allowed these methods as exceptions and not norms, and only under necessity and with caution. They never created a doctrine that sanctified a particular weapon. The law remained centered on outcomes, not instruments. This was a core feature of the legal tradition, not an accidental omission.
The modern discourse of “halal warfare” marks a sharp break. States and terrorist movements frame their own weapons as defensive while condemning those of their rivals as un-Islamic. This language advances strategy, not doctrine.
Iran offers a clear example. The memory of Iraqi chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq War shaped Iran’s public discourse on weapons of mass destruction. Iranian leaders later invoked this experience to present themselves as morally opposed to such weapons. Since the early 2000s, many Iranian leaders have declared nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons forbidden under Islam. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has described such weapons as immoral because they kill indiscriminately. He grounds this argument in the classical prohibition against indiscriminate harm, yet he deploys it within a modern deterrence environment. Iranian diplomats cite this position in negotiations over the nuclear program. This position also serves a strategic purpose. It allows Iran to claim moral restraint while maintaining leverage in nuclear negotiations and placing pressure on its adversaries.
Iranian-backed groups describe missile arsenals in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen as tools of resistance and deterrence.
Jihadist groups pushed this logic to its extreme. In 2003, the Saudi cleric Nasr al-Fahd issued a fatwa that permitted the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States. He claimed that necessity permitted Muslims to suspend classical limits on civilian immunity and cited early Muslim siege warfare to justify modern mass-casualty attacks. Mainstream scholars rejected this reasoning. They argued that his reading ignored core legal principles and treaty obligations. The episode shows how militants stretch religious doctrine when they confront strategic disadvantages.
The same pattern appears in contemporary conflicts. Iranian-backed groups describe missile arsenals in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen as tools of resistance and deterrence. Hezbollah, for example, presents its missile stockpile as a defensive response to Israeli military superiority, while Israeli officials describe the same arsenal as a threat to civilian populations. Palestinian factions frame rocket attacks as defensive responses to “occupation” instead of unlawful strikes on civilians. In each case, actors use moral language to defend weapons that serve their strategic aims.
In asymmetrical conflicts, weaker actors cannot compete in material terms, so they compete in moral terms. They transform theology into a strategic equalizer. When they declare a weapon halal, they shift the battlefield from technology to legitimacy. They attempt to win recognition where they cannot win dominance. Religious labeling does not change destructive capacity, but it changes perceived authority. Modern actors do not declare weapons halal because law demands it, they do so because their strategy seeks to claim moral legitimacy.
