The shaheeds and jihadis already believe that they are better than us. They are in Allah’s good graces, while we are consigned, in the very words of Allah in the Qur’an, itself considered a divine dictation, to hellfire. So, no amount of attempting to win them over with our – as they perceive it – obeisance will change how they think.
They come from a culture that does not even know of or understand The Golden Rule. In fact, they look down on it. Kindness is an obligation reserved only for one’s co-religionists or tribe. And that’s it.
You cannot win a war when you refuse to get inside the head of your enemy and understand how he thinks. Maj. Stephen Coughlin was phased out of his job at the Pentagon for attempting to remind the government and defense establishment of the centrality of jihad within Islam. That it has ramifications for their doctrine and it should force us to re-evaluate our doctrine. If you cannot name your enemy accurately, how can you put together a strategy to defeat him?
