I wish I could find it - I posted on plastic.com a while back in a discussion about this sort of behavior a comment that people found incisive.
Basically, they think they're playing a negative-sum game. (Work with me for a moment.) They can reduce the number of players on the other side until such time as the other side simply forfeits. They assume that their terror activities will cause their opponents to simply collapse into surrender rather than fight back. Most of these belliefs are based on highly radical, verging on apostate, interpretations of their scripture, but to them, it's the holy gospel.
The Quran states that a man who kills a woman or a child cannot pass into Heaven, yet they continue to put bombs in places where women and children, not just men/soldiers, are killed. Moderate Quran scholars discuss 'jihad' as an inner struggle against the baser nature, a holy war against your darker urges; the radicals imply that the base nature and dark urges should be turned outwards for the true Jihad.
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Basically, they think they're playing a negative-sum game. (Work with me for a moment.) They can reduce the number of players on the other side until such time as the other side simply forfeits. They assume that their terror activities will cause their opponents to simply collapse into surrender rather than fight back. Most of these belliefs are based on highly radical, verging on apostate, interpretations of their scripture, but to them, it's the holy gospel.
The Quran states that a man who kills a woman or a child cannot pass into Heaven, yet they continue to put bombs in places where women and children, not just men/soldiers, are killed. Moderate Quran scholars discuss 'jihad' as an inner struggle against the baser nature, a holy war against your darker urges; the radicals imply that the base nature and dark urges should be turned outwards for the true Jihad.