Why can't we just nuke the Muslims?

Answer 1

There are several reasons why this solution would be morally wrong, pragmatically impossible, and ineffective to solve the problem that the question seems to be attempting to solve.

The question usually has the logic the follows in this way: "Muslims cause events of terror such as 9-11 or attacks on Israel or riots against freedom of speech. If there were no Muslims these problems would evaporate. Therefore let's kill them all and a nuclear weapon is the most effective way to do so."

If we examine this, it quickly falls apart.

Firstly, it is a minority of Muslims who cause these problems. The vast majority of Muslims just wish to go to work, make a decent income, and come home to their families at the end of the day. The desire to murder people who do that type of activity is a criminal act of the highest degree.

Secondly, Muslim Extremists are not the only people who have sanctioned violence to achieve their objectives. The United States and Soviet Union jointly replaced the governments of or occupied over 70 countries, creating disastrous conditions the world over. Most people would agree that nuking the United States or Russia is not necessary, not just because its criminal, but because that would not prevent the American or Russian governments from retaliating and causing far more death and destruction. There are 1.7 billion Muslims in the World, making retaliation quite possible and undesirable.

Thirdly, the Muslims are not "just in one place". There are nearly 57 Muslim-Majority countries from Morocco and Mauritania in West Africa to Malaysia and Indonesia in Southeast Asia. It would take an incredibly large amount of nuclear weapons to destroy all of these communities and it would be sufficient to cause a nuclear winter, making life on Earth impossible. This fails to mention the Muslim communities living in non-Muslim-majority countries such as those in Western Europe, Russia, Anglo-America, Central Africa, and the urban centers of Latin America who would not be able to be targeted by these weapons without wiping out most of the non-Muslim population in these cities.

Finally, if you talk to anyone who survived the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki (or if you see the museums in those cities), they will make the horror and immorality of nuclear weapons painfully clear. Its effects are catastrophic even on the survivors. Nuclear weapons are a cruel method of killing large groups of people.

If the objective is long-term peace and stability, then, what we need to do is start talking and negotiating. Warfare, and certainly nuclear warfare, will not solve the cultural, political, economic, and social issues that plague our world.