“Now I don’t know what the exact functional relationship is between al-Qaeda’s ideology and feedback. We have been told that the relationship between brutality and resistance is positive: the more you fight the Jihad, the more you encourage it. This was almost became an article of faith among self-described “sophisticates”. But what if the relationship was inverse, flipped over certain ranges or was an aggregate function where each behaved differently?”

I think there is yet another aspect to the type of brutality that Al Qaeda has practiced since the beginning of the Iraq war. It can be seen in the increasing sadism of their practices. Beheading while very intimidating to the group of folk Al Qaeda wishes to intimidate, is after a short time, not enough to contain them. So the blood lust decision to increase the violence against enemy combatants, includes torture and vile measures– flaying, skinning alive etc.

Because this lust acts like a mental illness, the non-combatant then becomes the means to satisfy the need for blood letting. And on and on in a cycle of violence that makes excuses to justify its need for easy victims. The Taliban’s rule followed the same route of decline as to a large degree did the Shah of Iran in needing to hold on to power.

There seems to be a human reaction to the breaking of a taboo, in this case the taboo against torture, that once broken cannot easily be halted. In a culture that promotes successful violence as a badge of honor or even a passage to leadership, the slippery slope is the easy path.

Western civilization has built into its culture greater obstacles and greater punishments for breaking the taboo, it is not celebrated as the elimination of a weak link or as an acceptable action.

It is for Islam a cart and horse question or perhaps a chicken and egg. Which come first the sadist or the Islamist?