Critical Analysis of the Jurists’ Arguments for “Killing”, “Slavery”, Mann (release without exchange) and Fedaa (release with exchange) of the Prisoner of War

Although the Holy Quran has limited the sentence of the prisoner of war to the two options of Mann and Fedaa (release without exchange and release with exchange), many of the jurists have added to them the sentence of killing and slavery. Some jurists have claimed that the sentence is confined to the two latter options and considered muslimization as the only way to release the prisoner. Such opinions have become the pretext of Takfiri groups and the basis of anti-Islamic propaganda. This paper which has been organized through a descriptive-analytical method and library tools has criticized and analyzed the arguments of jurists in this regard by studying the Shiite and Sunni jurisprudential, hadithi and interpretation texts and historical sources. The purpose of this research is to explain accurately and wisely the sentence of the prisoner of war in Islam based on jurisprudential sources and jurisprudential reasoning method in order to respond scientifically the baseless perceptions and the Islamophobia attack from this aspect. The results of this research show that the sentence of the prisoner of war is limited to its two Quranic options of Mann and Fedaa; the sentence of killing is specific to those who have committed a specific crime and slavery, if proven, has been a temporary sentence in the early Islam due to the special circumstances of that time.