One of the repeated mantras of the anti-war crowd is that the war in Iraq has unleashed the furies of Islamist terror. If only Britain and the US had not invaded and thus enraged the Muslim world, they would not be in the front line for attack. If only they had acted like France.

Well, now the kidnapping of the French hostages provides the clearest repudiation of that idiotic and ignorant opinion. The French hostages have been taken purely in order to force France to abandon its new law banning the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in schools. It is an act which makes it as clear as it can possibly be that the aim of the jihad is to oppose with murderous violence any act which thwarts the progress of Islam in the spheres it designates. As Lawrence Auster correctly points out, France is being targeted not for what it does but for what it is -- a secularised western country which does not tolerate religious symbols in public places. As Auster observes:

'This event shows how ineluctably dangerous is the growing Muslim presence in the West. As we see in the French situation, the more Muslims enter and live in a Western society, the more they seek to practice Shari'ah customs and try to make the host society endorse them. Any refusal by the host society to yield to these demands is seen by many Muslims as an "attack on Islam," a conviction which not only sparks civil protests, as in French Muslims' plans to have their daughters disobey the headscarf ban, but, given the existence of the global jihadist movement, leads to terrorism, kidnappings, murders, and the sawing-off-of-heads of innocent people for being citizens of an "anti-Islamic" country. The kidnapping of French journalists over the anti-headscarf rule refutes the belief that jihad is only a defensive reaction against Western interference in the Islamic world. It proves that the presence of large Muslim communities in Western countries, in and of itself, spells unending jihad to force those countries to submit to Islam.'

For that reason, it would be a rare error by the jihadis if the French hostages were murdered. For until now, the jihadis have shown a rare genius in understanding, anticipating and manipulating the weakness, gullibility and astounding ignorance of the west. Thus the west has deluded itself that the jihad is merely a response to US aggression, rather than acknowledge what it really is -- a terrorist programme to reimpose the medieval Caliphate upon the world. The French hostage crisis lets the cat out of the bag -- which is why various Muslim voices have been urging restraint upon the hostage-takers. The illusion is in danger of being punctured. Whatever happens, it will be fascinating to see whether the French line on the defence against terror remains unaltered after this.

Of course, there is no sign that the anti-war crowd here or in the US have even now grasped what is playing out before their uncomprehending and hate-filled eyes. The true nature of the global jihad has never been more apparent. Even if one puts the latest act of mass murder in Israel and the murder of the 12 Nepalese workers in Iraq to one side, the appalling hostage crisis in Chechnya can no more be laid at the door of the Iraq war than can the French hostage crisis. And yet one reads in the Guardian that

'while the Chechen conflict may not have started as a struggle involving Islamist fighters, it is one now'

even though, as a fact box accompanying this article itself makes clear, there has been an attempt to turn Chechnya into an Islamic state since 1858.

If there is any one thing that more than anything else acts as a spur to more terror across the globe, it is the attitude of those in the west whose self-immolating credulousness means that they interpret every act of mass murder as further proof of the west's own wickedness. Every such act is therefore a double victory for the axis of terror, for which the willingness of the west to be so manipulated must surely have exceeded its wildest expectations.