The article I just quoted from in the thread about whether ISIS Jihadis are motivated by their beliefs (as opposed to mainly being bad people who use religion as cover for their bad behaviour) has an interesting discussion about whether it would be worth offering ISIS what they believe in:
a "final battle" at Dabiq, in which they believe Allah would come to rescue their (Muslim) army from a far superior army (but in reality, the battle would be over within hours or at most a couple of days, with total annihilation of ISIS's armies and almost no collateral damage because Dabiq is an unpopulated area).
Summary: Sam Harris thinks it's not a bad idea (and I think winD on this forum would probably agree, on the grounds that ISIS is managing to recruit quite well because it is perceived as a winning team), but Graeme Wood thinks it would be counterproductive over the long term because it would reinforce the idea that the West is at war against Islam.
(from http://ift.tt/1GkScj1, which is too long to paste in full here, but here are some key extracts)
a "final battle" at Dabiq, in which they believe Allah would come to rescue their (Muslim) army from a far superior army (but in reality, the battle would be over within hours or at most a couple of days, with total annihilation of ISIS's armies and almost no collateral damage because Dabiq is an unpopulated area).
Summary: Sam Harris thinks it's not a bad idea (and I think winD on this forum would probably agree, on the grounds that ISIS is managing to recruit quite well because it is perceived as a winning team), but Graeme Wood thinks it would be counterproductive over the long term because it would reinforce the idea that the West is at war against Islam.
(from http://ift.tt/1GkScj1, which is too long to paste in full here, but here are some key extracts)
Quote:
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Harris: But consider their infatuation with apocalyptic prophecy, which you described in your article. Wouldn’t you be tempted to just align with it and draw them into the field at Dabiq? Why not score a decisive victory against the most energized jihadis on earth? Wood: The prophecy you’re talking about, related to the city of Dabiq, is mentioned in what are essentially the footnotes to Muslim apocalyptic scripture. It’s not a major tradition, but the Islamic State dredged it up because Dabiq is in its backyard, and it’s been foretold that it would be the site of a battle that would be one of the steps leading to the apocalypse. Members of the Islamic State have taken so much interest in this place, and they constantly refer to it in their propaganda. I think that if we massed an army there and met them in battle, they would be routed. Harris: It seems that they wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to engage us there, especially if we told them that we intended to build a gay-porn palace on the site, or some other sacrilege. It seems that these guys are telling us with every breath how to wage psychological warfare against them. Wood: That’s roughly what they would like us to do: show up at Dabiq and fight them. But the way to wage psychological warfare against them would be not to show up there and fight them. This is what they expect and want. And they think they’ll win. Harris: But isn’t that totally delusional? Our intelligence services have estimated that they have 30,000 fighters. The Kurds put the number at 200,000. Whatever the true figure, we have the most dangerous and incorrigible religious maniacs alive telling us that if we only make the right noises, they’ll show up in the middle of an open field at daybreak and just turn their credulous faces skyward, expecting to see Jesus swoop down from the clouds and declare that he’s been a secret Muslim all this time. Wood: Jesus actually comes to the party later, in Jerusalem. But your point about their weakness is correct. The Islamic State does not have, for instance, an air force. So that alone would make it awfully difficult for them to vanquish the Crusader armies at Dabiq. They would not last long against U.S. Marines. Harris: So why not act on this information? It seems to me that the psychological and propaganda value of our resulting victory is not something to wave away lightly. Imagine the effect this would have on true believers everywhere: They’ve created a new caliphate, and the new caliph is just swell. All the prophecies are coming to fruition, so an army of the purest jihadis to exist in a thousand years rides into this final battle and gets smashed by infidels. And God just sits on his hands. Just as important, this would be a situation in which we could avoid creating a lot of collateral damage. This battle could actually take place in an unpopulated area. Wood: It’s tempting, isn’t it? I think it’s a bad idea, for reasons I’ll get into. But it’s amazing that the suggestion hasn’t been more widely mooted already. I think one reason for that is that we don’t take them seriously when they talk about Dabiq. We think that it can’t possibly be the case that they would actually do that. And of course I don’t know what they would do. But they are constantly talking about what they would do, both among themselves and to us. It could be that they’re lying to themselves, too, or they’ll conveniently find loopholes in the prophecies when it becomes clear they’ll be routed. But I think there’s a basic incredulity on our side that they could possibly do something as suicidal as face off against NATO using the tanks that they captured from the Iraqi Army and haven’t yet read the manuals for. But here is my main reason for thinking that our appearing to conform to prophecy would be a bad idea: The point of all propaganda is to create narratives about the world. Their view—and the view of jihadis everywhere, really—is that Muslims are under attack by a Crusader West. So if we say, “All right, we’ll take you up on that” and crush them in battle, that would confirm their narrative for other Muslims who are already inclined to believe that the West is at war with Islam. That’s not a view I would like to encourage. Harris: That’s interesting, for a variety of reasons. First, it would seem to preclude our fighting the Islamic State at all, but we are already doing so. Or is it your view that we can fight them, but actually winning would be too provocative? Second, I think if you examine the underlying concern about inflaming the Muslim world against us, it rests on a remarkably pessimistic view about how close otherwise peaceful Muslims are to turning into jihadis. I’m not saying I know this fear to be unfounded, but I think we should acknowledge how grim a picture of the Muslim world that is. |
How to defeat ISIS completely within weeks: offer them a battle at Dabiq?