Should America target and kill terrorists?

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced that U.S. and Nigerian military forces had successfully killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, a senior ISIS leader, in what he described as a “meticulously planned and very complex mission.” Trump called al-Minuki the Islamic State’s second-in-command globally and “the most active terrorist in the world,” declaring that he “will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.” The Nigerian president’s office confirmed the successful operation. Several of al-Minuki’s lieutenants were also killed in the strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin. Nigeria’s defense ministry echoed Trump’s description—a “meticulously planned and highly coordinated counterterrorism operation.”

Al-Minuki was not merely a name on a list. A native Nigerian, he was designated by the U.S. State Department in 2023 as a senior ISIS leader overseeing operations across the Sahel—the vast African region spanning Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria—providing “operational guidance and funding” for ISIS attacks worldwide. The U.S. Treasury placed him on its specially designated global terrorist list for good reason. Under his watch, ISIS West Africa intensified massacres of civilians, attacked military bases, enslaved women, and drove millions from their homes.

This was a man with rivers of blood on his hands.

The broader context matters. ISIS, though militarily degraded since losing its territorial caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2017, has continued to metastasize across Africa. Its West African branches operate with particular savagery in Nigeria and the Sahel. This is the same ideological movement that declared non-Muslims subhuman, institutionalized sex slavery, burned villages, and beheaded captives on video. Al-Minuki was a key architect and enabler of that horror in West Africa.

That context means this was a praiseworthy operation. And yet the question inevitably arises: Should governments target and kill terrorists? Aren’t they human beings too? Isn’t every human life sacred?

Some progressive voices in the West argue that such operations are hypocritical for nations claiming to value human lives and rights—that they amount to extrajudicial killing and undermine the rule of law. The question deserves a serious answer, not dismissal.

Yes, human life is sacred. Every person, including terrorists, bears the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Christians do not hate terrorists as persons, nor do we rejoice in their eternal damnation. God Himself declares, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live” (Ezekiel 33:11). Christ died for sinners—including the worst of them (Romans 5:8)—and we are commanded to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:44). These convictions are non-negotiable for the Bible-believing Christian.

But—and this is decisive—the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), prohibits murder: the unlawful, personal, vigilante taking of innocent life. It does not abolish the lawful authority of the state to administer justice. The same God who gave this commandment also ordained capital punishment for murderers (Genesis 9:5–6). Scripture makes a clear, principled distinction between murder and just, government-administered force. In this regard, Romans 13:1–4 is foundational: “For he [i.e., the governing authority] is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

Terrorists who systematically murder, rape, enslave, and terrorize civilians—especially the weak, women, children, and Christians—are wrongdoers on a catastrophic scale. A government that refuses to employ force to stop them has abandoned its God-ordained calling. Protecting the innocent is not merely a political policy; it is love in action.

Nigeria’s Christians know this with terrible intimacy.

For years, Boko Haram and ISIS affiliates have conducted systematic massacres of Christian communities across the region. Churches burned. Pastors beheaded. Women and girls kidnapped and enslaved. Entire villages emptied at gunpoint. The Nigerian government—chronically weak, under-resourced, and often indifferent—has failed to protect its own people. That this operation required American partnership is both a tribute to U.S. capabilities and an indictment of Nigeria’s capacity. We must hope—and insist—that Nigeria continues to receive intelligence support, military assistance, and international accountability, specifically for the protection of persecuted Christians and other vulnerable minorities.

ISIS and its affiliates have slaughtered thousands of Christians, burned churches, taken sex slaves, and pursued global domination through terror and blood. To refuse decisive force against them is to abandon what Scripture commands. Many faithful Christians across the region are thanking God today. America is celebrated where she has acted with courage—while Western progressives, tragically, frown.

We do not rejoice in death. We rejoice that evil has been restrained and innocent lives may be spared. Christians support justice without bloodthirstiness, and we pray for the conversion of the lost even as we affirm the state’s duty to restrain evil. May such operations always be conducted with moral seriousness and sobriety—not as sport, never as spectacle.

May God bless America and may this nation always be the enemy of those who murder the innocent.