Executing 7-year-old kids for cursing is justice? Apparently so for ISIS.

A little boy named Muaz Hassan was enjoying a soccer game in Raqqa, Syria with some buddies until ISIS members apprehended him for allegedly “cursing divinity.” Sources say the boy’s act “was considered an insult to the Caliphate, regardless of the age of the boy.” What he was guilty of, of course, was Islamic laws on slander. The ISIS thugs executed the boy via a firing squad in a public square in front of hundreds of onlookers, including his grief-stricken parents.

As horrid of an event as this was, this is nothing new considering ISIS’ previous actions. The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child released a report last year detailing the abdominal acts ISIS inflicts on “children who are Kurdish, Yazidi, Christian and even Muslim. Children – even those who are mentally challenged – are being tortured, crucified, buried alive, used as suicide bombers and sold as sex slaves.” Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst, gives some insight into the reasoning behind these grisly attacks by stating,

ISIS is hoping to spur current supporters around the world who are dormant, of which there are millions, into joining their caliphate by advertising acts like these, of which there are millions.

They know that they can greatly increase their numbers by appealing to current radicals rather than the broader masses

Despite being victims of ISIS, children themselves play a major role within ISIS’ strategy. Georgia State University researchers highlight ISIS’ strategic use of children not only as militants but also as envoys for the cause of Allah. For example, “…children are featured in multiple contexts, from highly-publicized executions and training camps to Qur’an memorization fairs and dawa [proselytizing] caravans.”

ISIS has been so effective in desensitizing and indoctrinating these children that of the 89 martyred children the Georgia State University research team observed, almost half had smiles on their faces after dying. This is pretty disturbing to say the least, but similarly to other totalitarian regimes, ISIS knows in order to survive it must indoctrinate the next generation of jihadists. And how they determine which babies born into the Islamic State are of value, they ruthlessly administer eugenic philosophy.

Just like the Nazis, ISIS discriminately murders newborn babies who are viewed as a “burden on the state” (“babies with Down’s Syndrome and congenital deformities and disabled children”). This mindset of placing a value on life based upon a person’s physical and mental abilities is disgusting but not unique to totalitarian regimes like ISIS. One can find this way of thinking among some prominent liberal progressives in the West such as Richard Dawkins (he thinks it’s immoral to deliver a baby with Down Syndrome).

So, as you can see, children are one of the biggest victims of the Islamic State. It is time for our leaders to not only counter ISIS’ ideological cancer, but also to annihilate them before they reach the next generation of innocent children. There is no limit for these jihadists; therefore, the U.S. and its coalition partners must be extremely aggressive against ISIS.