Simon Jenkins writes in the Times:

'This is not a war between states. It is not, whatever headline writers imply, between faiths. Largely because of the West’s intervention in Middle Eastern politics, it is between the West and a small network of lethal gangsters. Their claim to religious justification is as tenuous as was the terror instigated by Pope Innocent III.'

Doesn't this man read anything? The briefest acquaintance with the ravings of the jihadists reveals that their fundamental grievance is not the west's intervention in the Middle East but the need to wage holy war against all unbelievers, including Muslim apostates. But then, what use are facts against someone who can write, with a straight face, that he wants to 'mobilise peace against terror'?

We blew it, apparently, by our responses after 9/11. And so, he concludes: 'Today, support for anti-Western fanaticism has never been greater, extending even to the playgrounds of suburban Britain.'

Hang on -- our police and security services have been aware of threats to Britain from the Islamic jihad since the late 1990s. But then, to those whose world view does not permit any deviation from the certainty that terrorism is a response to the perfidy of the west, such evidence is merely an inconvenience to be swatted aside.