Limits of legitimacy during war in İslamic Law

Jihad is an Islamic religious term that literally means striving or struggling both actual and verbally to achieve a certain goal. In terms of its idiomatic meaning, it refers to the exertion of all efforts to uphold the religion of Allah during the fight against the stubborn and combatant infidels. Jihad as an Islamic order has gradually passed through three phases. Jihad is basically a struggle for achieving praiseworthy aims and noble causes, not simply shedding blood or achieving financial gains or establishing sovereignty over the others. The study deals with the treatments which are permissible, forbidden, or disputed to be conducted against the enemy in times of war. The consensus reached by the Islamic scholars is that the killing of combatants in battle is permissible, but it is not permissible to kill the women and the children who have not attended the war. However, Islamic sects have dissidence over the legality of such matters as the killing of the clergy, the elderly and the prisoners, the destruction of the possessions that belong to the enemy, the slaughtering and then burning of the enemies' animals, levying a ransom, or the use of weapons of mass destruction. Islamic law which signifies the rules to be obeyed during a war states the necessity of avoiding oppression and injustice even in times of war. Islamic law has also taught the humanity, which has been fighting throughout history without any rules, that the war has to have the law and the ethic.