Does the Code of Conduct prohibit content justifying war crimes?

Question

In war it is generally not acceptable to intentionally target civilians. This is usually addressed by either customary international law or by actual international treaty law. Intentionally killing non-combatants is considered a war crime in most cases.

If an answer on an SE site argues that killing civilians is acceptable under some religious argument, would this answer violate the Code of Conduct? The closest rule I can find in the Code of Conduct is

We do not allow advocating for violence or encouraging harm to others.

But simply arguing about whether killing civilians is allowed isn't necessarily advocating for violence. It is certainly justifying and legitimizing potential violence, but is it violating the code of conduct?

This is not a hypothetical question, but I don't think it is useful to link to the actual post in this case.

Answer 1

There are a number of sites where discussion about the legal or ethical concerns around conduct in conflict and war are on-topic. Law and Philosophy come to mind. It could also come up in the context of History and Politics, as well. And, due to their cultural and philosophical nature, the religious sites such as Biblical Hermeneutics, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism (Mi Yodeya) could also contain these discussions.

Assuming that a question is asking something about the legal, philosophical, ethical, historical, political, or religious background for the treatment of civilians and it's being asked on a site where the underpinnings are on-topic, then I don't see how it can inherently violate the Code of Conduct.

And the key components of the Code of Conduct are advocating or encouraging violence. Explaining what the law says, what a specific philosophy or ethical system would say, a particular political entity's viewpoint, or what a specific religion's text or religious leaders say don't inherently advocate or encourage violence. Likewise, stating (ideally with appropriate citations) that a particular entity's laws, philosophy or ethical system, political entity, or religion say about other groups of people doesn't inherently demonize or denigrate them. Objectively, it's important to understand how others see people.

I fail to see how an answer that simply states that a particular religion doesn't find killing civilians unacceptable would be a violation of the Code of Conduct. However, context matters. If the poster added additional commentary that promotes, encourages, or glorifies harm, it could fall under the Sensitive Content and Imagery policy. If it celebrates violent actors, it could fall under the Harmful Political Content policy. If it spreads false and misleading information that could cause harm, then it could fall under the Misleading Information policy.

If you want to stay in the realm of generalities, then I can think of places where there very well could be discussions about the killing of civilians and those discussions would not be inherently against the Code of Conduct. I would even go so far as to say that prohibiting such discussions, in those contexts, would do more harm than good as it would not allow people to have high-quality, cited, peer-reviewed answers that present objective information about the views and perspective of others.

Answer 2

I thought about this for a while. I agree with the conclusions of Thomas Owens and curiousdannii, but came up with a practical rationale.

There is little point to having religion-scoped sites on the network if users are not able to freely and honestly discuss the teachings of these religions. If we are not able to freely acknowledge religious teachings and practices, then it is likely that the content that we post will be inaccurate or incomplete, giving readers the wrong perspective on what these religions actually teach, which helps no one. Better to make the religion in question, or even all religions, off-topic network-wide than to portray an inaccurate or distorted presentation of what those religions actually believe.

Unlike the experience of religion (which we do not do here), the study of religion that is done on our religious sites is a factual, scientific endeavor. A teaching either exists, or it doesn't. A teaching covers certain content, or it doesn't. Some religious leaders might consider certain teachings spurious or interpret them differently than other leaders. These observations (e.g. Sect X considers this teaching to have always been metaphorical, and Sects Y and Z consider this teaching to not apply to the present day for Reasons A and B) are likewise facts about the religion that may be discussed on our sites.

A hypothetical - question disposition

Suppose we were to take the opposite perspective, and say that any mention of religious teachings that justify what we understand to be war crimes or otherwise "unjust" or "uncivilized" beliefs or actions is inherently a Code of Conduct violation. What should be done with questions whose answers would reference such teachings?

• Should these questions be answered with a "This question has an answer, but I cannot post it here for Code of Conduct reasons. Sorry." non-answer?
• Should these questions be closed with a "Questions must be answerable without venturing into content forbidden by the Code of Conduct" close reason?
• Should these questions be considered red-flaggable as Rude or Abusive?

An analogy - LGBTQ topics

There was an incident (or a few related incidents) a few years ago regarding the intersections of religion, LGBTQ rights, and the Code of Conduct (or its predecessor policy). Since then, it has become fairly settled that discussion of religious teachings that do not support LGBTQ rights (e.g. "Bishop So-and-So of the Faith of X claimed in his 2013 Ruling on Gender and the Family (cite) that same-gender marriage was 'antithetical to the Word of God' and that followers who attempted such marriage would be excommunicated as apostates.") is not a violation of the Code of Conduct as long as the tone of the post is kept factual and not inciteful or inflammatory.

I believe the same principle applies to the instant case. Posts which accurately and neutrally describe religious teachings do not automatically violate the Code of Conduct solely because the teachings discussed are not "politically correct", but posts that inflame, incite, and/or persuade users to take part in war crimes or related acts may well violate it.

Answer 3

One of the foundations of the Stack Exchange network has always been, to build a repository of knowledge by asking questions and writing answers, but what happens when those questions are (to put it mildly) uncomfortable, and the answers provided seem to justify acts of harm? We understand your concerns about certain questions and answers on the Stack Exchange network. It's indeed a delicate balance to strike, especially when the topics are sensitive in nature.

We've taken some time to reflect on and discuss this matter, particularly in relation to a post you've highlighted. Let me walk you through our thought process and how we arrived at our decision for this particular case. Our North Star in situations like these is always the Code of Conduct. It strictly forbids any content that promotes, encourages, or threatens acts of violence. However, to fully understand the post, we want to make sure we're seeing it in the context of the faith culture and the specific Stack Exchange community that it's part of.

During our review, we noticed that the words 'permissibility' and 'allowed' are mentioned quite a lot on the site, with 2,557 and 3,711 instances respectively. It became clear that these words aren't being used in a casual way, but instead, they have deep religious meanings and refer to actions or questions within the framework of religious law or historical tradition.

Given that, we concluded that the answer given isn't a personal endorsement, but is a response based strictly within the context of religious jurisprudence. Therefore, we couldn't interpret the post as personal advocacy and instead see it as limited in scope within the explanation of religious principles. We’ve considered that there are potential negative impacts of allowing content such as this to be present on the platform, but also have to consider our goal of increasing the body of knowledge available to humanity. With all of these things in mind, we have decided that we will not take any action on the content, as it doesn't promote, encourage, or threaten violence, and it is, therefore not in violation of our Code of Conduct.

I want to take a moment to say that while this specific situation has been decided I do not want this post to be used as a litmus test (“stare decisis”) in which to judge any future incidents. In nuanced matters like these, it is important for each one to be reviewed individually so that the best decision can be made. Thanks again for flagging this for us, and as always if you have any other concerns feel free to reach out and we will be happy to help.