Do Not Kill Your Children: How the Quran Forbids Infanticide

Long before the Quran appeared, the life of a child could hang on the choices of adults. Some parents, crushed by poverty or ashamed of having a daughter, did the unthinkable: they killed their own newborns. The Quran speaks directly to this practice, names it, mourns it, and forbids it in some of the most tender and urgent language in the whole book. This study walks through those passages, the words that carry their weight, and the vision of childhood they defend.

A Voice From the Grave: The Burying of Baby Girls

One of the shortest and most haunting passages in the Quran concerns infant girls. In the early verses of Surah 81, God swears an oath that, on the Day of Judgment, the girl who was buried alive will be asked a question: for what sin was she killed? [81:8-9]. The key word here is maw'ūdah, an Arabic passive form meaning "the one buried alive" — literally the infant girl on whom the burial was done. The word dhanb (sin, fault) turns the whole logic of the practice upside down: the child had done nothing wrong; the fault belongs entirely to her killers. In a few words, the Quran gives a voice and a name to victims whom society treated as disposable.

The Clear Commandment: "Do Not Kill Your Children"

The ban is stated twice as a direct commandment, in lists of what are often called the "ten commandments" of the Quran. In Surah 6, believers are told not to kill their children because of poverty [6:151], and in Surah 17 the same command appears with an added promise: God provides for them and for you [17:31]. The verb used is lā taqtulū, from the root q-t-l, meaning "do not kill" — an emphatic prohibition. What is striking is the reasoning the Quran gives. Poverty is not an acceptable motive. God, who gave the child life, is also the guarantor of its sustenance, a point echoed in the assurance of provision [17:31] and in the reminder that every creature on earth depends on God for its food [11:6].

A Hidden and Terrible Custom: Fabricated Killing

Surah 6 describes what the practice actually looked like among some Arab tribes before Islam. Verse 6:137 tells how the idols — described as shurakā'u-hum, "their partners," the associate-gods of the polytheists — persuaded many of the idolaters to kill their children in order to ruin them and confuse them about their religion. The verb again comes from the root q-t-l, and the phrase li-yakūna fitnatan 'alayhim speaks of a fitnah, a test or confounding trial. A few verses later, the picture is sharpened: they say, "These cattle and crops are reserved; none may eat them except as we wish," and there are animals whose backs are forbidden and others over which God's name is not pronounced — inventing lies against Him — and He will repay them for what they fabricated [6:138]. Then comes the verse that names the crime plainly: they kill their children, foolishly and without knowledge, and forbid what God has provided for them, inventing lies against God; they have gone astray and were not guided [6:140]. The key word is safahan, "foolishly" — the Quran does not present the killing as reasoned sacrifice but as ignorant folly. And the guilt is personal: each soul will be questioned for what it did [6:164].

The Shame of the Daughter

Why were girls the special victims? Surah 16 offers a psychological portrait. When one of them is given the news of a daughter, his face darkens and he suppresses his anger [16:58]; he hides from the people because of the bad news he has received — shall he keep her in humiliation or bury her in the dust? How evil is what they decide! [16:59]. The Quran exposes the contradiction: the child is alive and innocent, and the shame lies entirely with the father's thinking, not with the baby. The same tragic logic appears in Surah 43: when one of them is given the news of what he calls a mercy — a boy — his face darkens with grief and anger [43:17]. Read together, these verses show that the Quran attacks not just the act of killing but the entire worldview that made sons precious and daughters a burden.

Withholding Life Is Also a Crime

The Quran's protection of children begins before birth. In the covenant passage of Surah 6, the commandment includes "that you do not kill your children, fearing poverty" [6:151], and its parallel in Surah 17 forbids killing children "out of want" [17:31]. But other verses extend the same logic. In Surah 60, when believing women pledge allegiance to the Prophet, one of the conditions is that they will not kill their children — the word used, lā yaqtulna, is the same verb of killing [60:12]. And in the covenant of Surah 7, God asks the descendants of Adam whether He did not take a pledge from them, and in that context the Quran reminds them of the commandment "do not approach this tree" [7:19] — while elsewhere it insists that killing one soul unjustly is like killing all humanity [5:32]. The principle is one: life is God's trust, and the one who withholds it from a child answers for it.

Moses in a Box: God Guards the Child You Cannot Keep

Some of the most moving child-protection stories in the Quran concern Moses. Pharaoh's people were killing their newborn sons and sparing their daughters [7:127]; the oppression was systematic infanticide by a state. God inspired the mother of Moses to nurse him, and when she feared for him, to cast him into the river, with the promise: "Do not fear and do not grieve; We will return him to you and make him one of the messengers" [28:7]. The family of Pharaoh then picked him up so that he would become an enemy and a grief to them [28:8]. And when she set him down by the river, God returned him to her so that he might be a comfort to her eyes and she would not grieve — although they did not know what he would become [28:9-11]. Years later, the same child, whom she had released into the water out of fear of the killers, passed by his mother again, and God restored him to her so that her eyes might be refreshed and she would not grieve — He had kept a promise [20:39-40]. The story carries the theme in narrative form: the mother was not asked to kill her child but to entrust him to God, and God preserved his life against an entire economy of child-killing.

No Excuse: Wealth Is Not the Measure

The poverty excuse receives a direct answer in the Quran's teaching on wealth. Believers are commanded not to approach the property of the orphan, except in the best way, until he reaches maturity, and to give full measure and weight with justice [6:152]. The same surah that forbids killing children for poverty commands generosity toward them: "Whoever kills a soul unjustly or for murder, and whoever kills a believer deliberately, his repayment is Hell" [4:93] shows how seriously the Quran takes any unjust killing. And in Surah 17, the answer to want is not infanticide but trust: "Do not kill your children out of poverty; We provide for you and for them" [17:31]. The child is never a rival for scarce food; God's provision precedes both of you.

A Contract Before God: The Pledge That Names the Children

It is telling that when the Quran draws up a covenant with believing women — a formal social contract — one of its named conditions is that they will not kill their children [60:12]. This verse shows that the practice was not an abstraction: it was a known danger of the time, serious enough to be written into a public pledge. Alongside it stand the pledge not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to slander — the killing of a child is placed in the same class as the gravest social crimes. The same moral weight appears in Surah 4, where the Quran commands care for orphans and threatens those who consume the property of orphans unjustly with fire [4:10], and instructs that guardians return the property of the orphans they manage when they come of age [4:6]. A society's character is measured by how it treats the weakest members.

Suckling and the Economics of Love

Surah 2 addresses a different but related scenario: divorce, nursing, and the temptation to end a child's support. Mothers nurse their children two full years, for the one who wishes to complete the nursing; and on the father is the duty of providing and clothing them fairly; no soul is charged beyond its capacity [2:233]. Crucially, the verse adds: "no mother is harmed because of her child, nor a father because of his child," and it forbids a nursing family from weaning the child against the parents' will and from destroying the nursing arrangement out of resentment. The same protective spirit appears in the command to test orphans before handing over their property and not to consume it wastefully before they grow up [4:6]. Even the market price of a weaning must be paid justly: whoever weans a child by agreement must pay what was promised [2:236]. Every detail of these verses assumes one truth: the child's life and nourishment are rights, not favors.

The Bigger Picture: Children as Blessing and Trial

The Quran's final word on children is not fear but love. Wealth and children are the adornment of this world's life [18:46], and God is the one who creates you, then provides for you, then causes you to die, then gives you life [30:40]. Children are a fitnah — a test — but also a zīnah, an ornament [8:28]; a believing son is a "cooling of the eye" in the prayer of the righteous [25:74]. To kill a child is therefore to despise a gift. Conversely, the same root of killing, q-t-l, appears in the command to fight in God's path against those who fight you, but not to transgress, for God does not love transgressors [2:190] — the permission to defend life is bounded by the same sanctity that forbids taking it at home. And in the portrait of the servants of the Merciful, one of the marks of righteousness is that they call upon God alone and do not kill the soul that God has forbidden, except with justice [25:68]. The child on the doorstep, the daughter buried for shame, the infant starved for poverty: for all of them, the Quran speaks the same sentence — their lives were never yours to take.

What emerges from these passages is remarkably consistent. The Quran forbids the killing of children by name, attacks the motives that led to it — poverty, shame, false religion — and replaces them with trust in God's provision, justice toward the weak, and honor for every daughter and son. The buried girl of [81:8-9] receives her hearing; the poor father of [17:31] receives his promise; and the child of every generation after them inherits the simple truth that a child's life belongs to God before it ever belonged to anyone else.