Fazal Masood Malik & Farhan Khokhar, Canada
Ruriko Araoka was four when she heard her three-year-old brother’s final words. “Mummy, Mummy,” he cried as atomic bomb burns claimed his life. Later, she would describe the hill where survivors fled: “almost covered with people whose clothes had been burned off … some were all black and had already died.” Her account represents thousands of similar testimonies that will soon vanish forever.
Eighty years after Hiroshima, Americans remain split on whether the atomic bombings were justified – 35% say yes, 31% say no, and 33% are unsure. Yet this framing misses the point entirely. As the last hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) prepare to take their stories to the grave, their testimony reveals an extraordinary moral consensus spanning religious and secular authorities: nuclear weapons violate fundamental principles of human dignity. The question is not whether the bombings were strategically necessary, but whether deliberately targeting civilians can ever be morally justified.
This consensus crosses surprising boundaries. One day after Nagasaki, Hazrat Musleh-e-Maudra, leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, condemned the bombings as “religiously and morally unlawful” – launching what would become one of the most sustained religious campaigns against nuclear weapons. Their opposition was theological, not political, rooted in Islamic principles that strictly limit warfare to defensive purposes.
The Holy Quran states: “Whosoever killed a person – unless it be for [killing] a person or for creating disorder in the land – it shall be as if he had killed all mankind.” (Surah al-Maidah, Ch.5: V.33) This principle, forbidding the taking of innocent life, cannot accommodate weapons that inherently fail to distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Yet this Islamic position finds an unlikely ally in America’s military establishment. General Dwight Eisenhower opposed the bombings, arguing “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Admiral William Leahy, President Truman’s chief military adviser, called the bombs “barbarous” and insisted Japan “was already defeated and ready to surrender.”
The historical record increasingly supports these assessments. In July 1945, Japan contacted the Soviet Union seeking to negotiate surrender. They accepted most Allied terms but sought only to preserve Emperor Hirohito’s ceremonial role – roughly equivalent to protecting the Pope’s position. The United States rejected any negotiations, demanding unconditional surrender despite intercepting communications showing Japan’s willingness to end the war.
This evidence contradicts the standard justification that bombing was necessary to prevent a costly invasion. As Timothy Carney notes, when facing such uncertainty about consequences, “we turn to moral principles, including the principle that it is immoral to kill innocent women and children.” Strategic calculations cannot override fundamental ethical boundaries.
The hibakusha themselves provide the most compelling testimony about nuclear weapons’ unique horror. Unlike conventional weapons, atomic bombs created suffering that persists across generations. Survivors still receive daily treatment at Hiroshima’s Red Cross hospital – “180 survivors of the blasts each day” nearly eight decades later. One patient told doctors: “The atomic bomb entered me and survived until now,” describing radiation not as an abstract concept but as a living presence within her body.
These accounts reveal something conventional warfare statistics cannot capture. The atomic bombs killed an estimated 200,000 people initially, but their true impact extends far beyond immediate casualties. Survivors faced lifelong health problems, social discrimination, and genetic fears that affected their children and grandchildren. As one hibakusha explained, when his first child was born, he didn’t ask “Is it a boy or girl?” but “Does my baby have 10 fingers and 10 toes?”
This is not merely historical reflection. Nuclear expert Ira Helfand warns that “five of the nine nations that possess nuclear weapons have been engaged in active military operations that could have, and might still, escalate to the use of those weapons.”
The moral questions raised by Hiroshima remain urgently contemporary. Yet the moral violations of nuclear weapons extend far beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Between 1946 and 1996, the United States, United Kingdom, and France detonated 318 nuclear devices across the Pacific, transforming Indigenous homelands into testing grounds. In the Marshall Islands alone, 67 nuclear tests – including the 1954 Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb that was 1,000 times more powerful than Hiroshima – contaminated entire atolls and displaced communities from their ancestral lands.
Today, Marshall Islanders, like the hibakusha, speak of radiation as a living presence passed through generations: “Cancers continue from generation to generation,” explains community elder Alson Kelen. The Islamic principle that killing one innocent person “shall be as if he had killed all mankind” applies equally whether the weapon falls on Hiroshima or irradiates an entire archipelago for decades to come.
Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Khalifatul Masih Vaa, has spent twenty years warning world leaders that modern nuclear weapons far exceed the destructive capacity of those used against Japan and could produce generation after generation of children being born with severe genetic or physical defects. These warnings echo hibakusha experiences of radiation effects spanning multiple generations.
Meanwhile, Americans themselves recognise nuclear weapons’ dangers. A 2025 survey found 69% believe that nuclear weapons development has made the world less safe. Yet policy remains trapped in Cold War thinking that prioritises deterrence over elimination.
The Holy Prophet Muhammadsa established warfare principles 1,400 years ago that anticipated modern dilemmas: “Do not kill women, children, the aged and infirm.” These constraints, designed for conventional conflict, become impossible to maintain with weapons that destroy entire cities. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community advocates that true jihad, in bygone eras or the modern era, must be “the jihad of the pen”, an intellectual and spiritual struggle rather than military action.
This theological insight aligns with secular strategic thinking. Eisenhower and Leahy understood that some military tools contradict the values they purport to defend. Their opposition wasn’t based on pacifism but on recognising that certain weapons cross fundamental moral boundaries regardless of tactical advantage.
The hibakusha carry irreplaceable moral witness. With an average age of 85, they are “dying by the hundreds each month” as the world enters what experts call “a new nuclear age.” Their deaths represent not just lost testimony but silenced moral voices that speak across cultural boundaries.
One survivor, capturing this urgency, reflected, “What shall I do? On this planet, there are still many nuclear weapons, and then I’ll meet my daughter I couldn’t save. I’ll be asked: Mom, what did you do to abolish nuclear weapons? There is no answer I can tell them.”
Those opposing nuclear weapons, consisting of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat, Japanese survivors, and innocents everywhere, reveals something profound about human moral intuition. When confronted with weapons that can obliterate millions and leave survivors believing that atomic forces “live inside” their bodies, people across all backgrounds recognise a fundamental violation of human dignity.
The Holy Quran asks: “Will you not fight a people who have broken their oaths […] Do you fear them? Nay, Allah is most worthy that you should fear Him, if you are believers.” (Surah at-Taubah, Ch.9: V.13). True security comes not from the capacity to annihilate others, but from moral courage to reject such capacity entirely.
As the 1946 US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded, Japan “would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.” The bombings were not strategic necessities but moral choices – choices that continue shaping global nuclear policy today.
Today’s nuclear decisions will likely be made by leaders sheltered in fortified bunkers, insulated from the immediate consequences of their choices. Yet no amount of concrete and steel can protect humanity from the moral and physical devastation that follows. As Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmadaa warned world leaders directly: the next nuclear exchange will spare no one, making no distinction between the powerful and powerless.
The hibakusha offer a final lesson: some questions matter more than strategic calculations. Will we heed the moral consensus spanning from Islamic theology to American military leadership to Hiroshima’s hospitals? Or will we continue debating whether mass civilian slaughter was “necessary” while building more sophisticated means to repeat it?
Humanity stands at a precipice that requires more than diplomatic solutions or strategic recalculations. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s eight decades of advocacy, grounded in both reason and prayer, suggests that moral transformation may be our only path back from the brink. The testimony is clear. The moral consensus is unprecedented. The choice – and the responsibility – remains ours, while witnesses remain to guide us toward our better judgment.
Bibliography
Carney, Timothy P. “’Japan Was Already Defeated’: The Case Against the Nuclear Bomb and for Basic Morality.” Washington Examiner, July 26, 2023. https://www.aei.org/op-eds/japan-was-already-defeated-the-case-against-the-nuclear-bomb-and-for-basic-morality/
Carney, Timothy P. “Hiroshima at 70: In Fog of War, Let Principle Be the Compass.” Washington Examiner, August 6, 2015. https://www.aei.org/articles/hiroshima-at-70-in-fog-of-war-let-principle-be-the-compass/
Compton, Karl T. “If the Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used.” The Atlantic, December 1946. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-the-atomic-bomb-had-not-been-used/376238/
Helfand, Ira. “After Eighty Years, Nuclear Threat Remains Grave.” Progressive.org, August 1, 2025. https://progressive.org/op-eds/after-eighty-years-nuclear-threat-remains-grave-helfand-20250801/
Kikuchi, Emma. “80 years later, Americans have mixed views on whether use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki was justified.” Pew Research Center, July 28, 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/28/80-years-later-americans-have-mixed-views-on-whether-use-of-atomic-bombs-on-hiroshima-nag…
Kingsbury, Kathleen, W. J. Hennigan, and Spencer Cohen. “The Last Survivors Speak. It’s Time to Listen.” The New York Times, August 6, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/06/opinion/hiroshima-nagasaki-atomic-bombing.html
Roshe, Tara Zoë. “Was the Bombing of Hiroshima Justified?” Medium (Activated Thinker), August 2025. https://medium.com/p/9aa653086efe
Burr, William, ed. “Castle BRAVO at 70: The Worst Nuclear Test in U.S. History.” National Security Archive. February 29, 2024. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2024-02-29/castle-bravo-70-worst-nuclear-test-us-history.
International Disarmament Institute. “Pacific Nuclear Test Archive.” International Disarmament Institute News. Accessed August 4, 2025. https://disarmament.blogs.pace.edu/nuclear-test-archive/.
Sherriff, Lucy. “Endless fallout: the Pacific idyll still facing nuclear blight 77 years on.” The Guardian, August 25, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/25/endless-fallout-marshall-islands-pacific-idyll-still-facing-nuclear-blight-77-years-on.
Hanson, John H. “Jihad and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community: Nonviolent Efforts to Promote Islam in the Contemporary World Available to Purchase.” Nova Religio 11, no. 2 (2007): 77–93. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2007.11.2.77.