People who would not countenance the Iraq war as an adequate pretext for domestic jihad seem strikingly open to the idea that a pure-minded revulsion from our filthy western ways might, in some cases, prompt extreme disaffection leading to social exclusion followed by the emergence of individuals such as the thwarted terrorist Jawad Akbar who fantasised thus about slaughter on the Ministry of Sound disco dance floor: “No one can turn around and say, ‘Oh, they were inn-ocent’, those slags dancing around. Do you understand what I mean?” Some people do. Ed Husain, author of a revealing and alarming account of his experiences inside radical Islam, said of the “slags” comment: “That was me, man. That’s classic Hizb-ut-Tahrir rhetoric.”

In his new book, The Islamist, Husain identifies a professed horror of western decadence as the next, infinitely promising excuse for Islamist murder. “When the political pretexts of Palestine and Iraq have been dealt with,” he writes, “Wahhabi-inspired militants will turn to other social grievances. Drinking alcohol, ‘impropriety’, gambling, cohabitation, inappropriate dress - these and a host of others will become excuses for jihad and for martyrdom.” Since, as Husain suggests, there can never be enough modesty, celibacy and sobriety to placate Islamist critics of our national slaggishness, you might consider their complaints on this score no more worthy of investigation than the precise adjustments that might make our free and easy voting system more acceptable to paternalist fundamentalists.

But where Islamist complaints about immorality and women’s sexual behaviour are concerned, there are calls for self-examination, for all the world as if we brought the stash of weed killer on ourselves. Patrick Mercer, formerly the Opposition Conservative homeland security spokesman, said on BBC: “We have got to understand why we look offensive to those who choose to suborn our society.” It’s like an innocent woman asking what she did to incite her rapist. Was it the short skirt? Norman Lebrecht wrote in the London Evening Standard newspaper, “It does not take much to see where things have gone wrong. Binge drinking is accepted as a teenage norm, promiscuity as preferable to chastity, and wealth as something to be flaunted in the face of the poor.”

Even if it does not want them to be killed, the London Daily Mail newspaper is very upset about women who enjoy ending their evenings with their knickers showing, being sick in the gutter. Even if they don’t want to wear one themselves, many liberal feminists are happy to make believe that the male-enforced hijab (Muslim dress code for women) is a modest, feminine response to a materialist, oversexualised society that judges women by their appearance. And of course, like lots of things in this decadent society, that is not very nice. Many of us share the terrorists’ dislike of the Blue water out of town shopping centre east of London. But that is not to say we have any interest in their plans to improve it. — The Guardian