Bill Gertz reports that the Pentagon has fired Stephen Coughlin, its most knowledgeable specialist on Islamic law and jihad terrorism. Gertz decries this end to the career of the Pentagon’s most effective expert for preparing the military to wage ideological war against jihadism. In an important post on the matter, Andrew Bostom observes further that last fall he

lectured with Mr. Coughlin, a US Army Reserves Major, at The Naval War College, and witnessed his brilliant, tour de force presentation which elucidated the reliance of contemporary jihadism on Islamic Law. Coughlin demonstrated meticulously that “Jihad fi Sabil Allah”—“Jihad in the cause of Allah,” is the animating principle which underlies the threat of global jihad terrorism, and how this understanding should form the basis for rational, effective threat development assessment, and war planning.

That Coughlin’s analyses would even be considered “controversial,” or worse still lead eventually to his firing — perhaps, as Gertz strongly suggests, at the behest of a Muslim aide, Hesham Islam, within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England — is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global jihadism.

Bostom goes on to describe Coughlin’s plight as “eerily similar” to that of another brave American patriot, William Eaton, two hundred years ago, when the U.S. faced its first encounter with jihad terrorism.