To commit murder is calamitous, regardless of the reason. I assume it would kill a part of you simultaneously. Your heart probably. Maybe your conscience. It begins to darken your soul. When you get used to it, God forbid, the stabs at your heart punctures with less force each time. The dying of your conscience happens at such a fast pace that you don’t feel it any longer, like the earth’s rotations. Your soul blackens to a point of almost no return.

Had the first one been a chance murder or one in self defense, the consequences would be different. It will still require years of emotional and mental work to come to terms with the fact that a soul has departed this earth at your hands. And you may still have nightmares from it years later. But this is a sign that your heart and soul are still alive. That the furqan, the distinction between right and wrong, still matter to you.

But had that first murder been committed out of malice or was unjustified, the consequences will never leave your side. The difficulty with which you commit murder will subside with each gunshot. You will no longer see scared eyes calling out for help in your nightmares. You will no longer see everyone as equal human. Those who deserved to die at your hands were somehow less human, not someone’s child, parent, sibling or spouse. They were someone whose absence will better your existence.

And when you reach higher levels within this twisted circle of murderous beings, you begin to delegate. You kill other peoples’ souls while asking them to forgo their akhira for your bloodthirsty aims. You no longer worry about getting your hands dirty. But you know who must die for your existence to remain unthreatened. And it makes no difference to you who is made to take away someone else’s life on your behalf.

Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as saying: “By Him in Whose Hand is my life, a time would come when the murderer would not know why he has committed the murder, and the victim would not know why he has been killed.” (Sahih Muslim) For the wrongdoer, it will be an illusion of lack of choice against fate. The murderer needs to run a family thru this blood-stained money. And the murdered had obviously offended someone who found his/her life less meaningful.

Allah says in Surah Maida, verse 32 “…whoever takes a life—unless as a punishment for murder or mischief in the land—it will be as if they killed all of humanity; and whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity…” Because it is that first gunshot out of your hands that clouds your foresight to the point where some humans become sub humans. The second one allows you to lessen the pinch your conscience felt the first time. And the cycle continues until only the people you want to see alive matter.

This is how wars begin. Be they between races, religions, nationalities or the worst of all, civil wars. When you are willing to spill the blood of your own people to justify the space you take up, the positions you hold and the grave injustice you see as appropriate. And even more despicable is when the civil war takes place in a country whose constitution begins with the assertion that sovereignty belongs to Allah.

Who are these people daring to challenge Allah’s sovereignty, who allow two factions to raise their swords both claiming the kalima? Be it a political difference, the lust for natural resources, or a malicious land grab, none of it can justify standing in the face of the Being that brought you to this place, that is constantly giving you time to repent and to turn back from your evil ways.

And to those who simply say “we are following orders”. Allah created us the best of creation, with the faculty to think, to distinguish right from wrong. In the end, the only one being wronged is your own soul and in turn your afterlife.

I pray that these individuals can recover their moral compass, reform their ways and find meaning in the ayaat they claim to have preserved in their hearts. But sometimes, the injustice becomes so pervasive, that myself and so many others pray against them. And Allah has clearly said that the prayers of the oppressed reach the heavens directly and do not go unheard. And Allah does not break His promise (3:9)