"Even so, before modern times it was never imagined that the use of violence could initiate a perfect society, or rid the world of immemorial evils.

This is a nonsense that emerged only with the Jacobins"

History is full of examples of violence being used for social engineering, the Crusades & the Spanish Inquisition to name just two. The Jacobins didn't even use it for these purposes, their aim was far more practical, they wanted to win a war.

Mark, Newcastle, England,

Israel is not a terrorist nation. It has not sponsored Hamas or Hezbollah unlike Iran or Syria. The fledgeling nation was attacked by every neighbouring nation and somehow won. Yes, it has had to use a strong army to defend itself. Phillip is right, it is faith and ideology that can be taken to extremism.

Ben, York,

Huyen, aren't you forgetting Islam's massacres of Hindus, Jews and other minority groups across the centuries, in their hundreds of thousands in India and in smaller numbers in every city across the middle east and around the Mediterranean to Constantine in the west (in 1934)? As well as ideological fervour and a belief in the sub-human nature of the victims, the perpetrators had another motivation in common with the Nazis but ignored by John Grey - greed. As regards his assertion that "before modern times it was never imagined that the use of violence could initiate a perfect society, or rid the world of immemorial evils", the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam in Arabia and the Inquisition are all examples.

MD, Liverpool, England

Terrorism in the name of Islam is not new. In the context of the UK, terrorism is home-grown. Young muslims, particularly from Pakistan are brain-washed into hating western societies and values. The brain-washing takes place in mosques up and down the country. The Pakistani madrassas(religious schools) export their graduates to the UK exploiting the lax immigration rules that permit relatives and relatives of the relatives of the original immigrant to keep coming. So you have here a bottomless pit of would be terrorists.
The UK needs to get its act together, by imposing tough restrictions on people arriving from places like Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan. The mosques and the preachers need to be carefully monitored.
True Islam does not permit violence against innocent civilians but modern day fundamentalists have no such qualms and they have tarnished Islam and muslims.

nehad ismail, London, uk

Extremist naitonalists in Europe, many of whom were catholic used terror between (and during) the second world war (including Germany, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Slovakia, and Poland). As today, most of it was directed against Jews and, like today, many Britons considered that the Jews had "asked for it".

jonathan lowenstein, Tel-Aviv, Israel

Most of the Bolsheviks were Jews - it's too simplistic to say the mass murders were done by secular thugs - it was also a tribal thing.

john fitzgerald, bristol, england

Islamism, like it's parent Islam, is both a religion and a political ideology. It encompasses what we call the 'secular' and the 'non-secular' because within Islam these distinctions don't exist. These are western categories. Westerners keep seeing Islam through a western perspective and making errors accordingly. Islam is a total religio-political system, possibly the most totalitarian ideology ever devised. We continue to treat it like any other 'god-fearing' religion and something that can ultimately be reasoned with. I think this is foolish.

Mike Wood, Bradford, UK

Fascinating and informative article. It clarifies an issue that had always confused me regarding the Tamil Tigers, and makes a great case for buying the book. I shall order it now.

Sharkey, Miami Beach,

Just as 'Jihad' is an Islamic concept, 'Holy War' is a Christian concept that was first used by the Popes during the Crusades in the 12th century. Muslim extremists under the Ottomans Empire then picked up the Christians idea of a Holy war as means of aggresive warfar. They began conquet of Eastern Europe invading Bulgaria, Serbia and even coming as far as Vienna. Whereas the truth is that Holy Koran does not preach this type of war. Islam is a peaceful religion that is hijacked by fanatics just as fanatic is any religion hijack teachings of their faith. We need to be take care in distinguishing what the faith actually teaches from what its so called believers understand. Science never teaches violence. It is men who drop bombs on Hiroshima. Lets not blame science for what people do.

Z Hussain, Rochdale, UK

Gray talks about the suicide bombers without mentioning the conditions in which they have appeared - Hitchens does this too. They seem to believe that Jihad would exist in its present form regardless of any dubious actions carried out by Western countries, and that this absolves them from any responsibility for attacks on their own populations.

john motor, london, london

Terrorism in its usual form involves physical violence perpetrated by all manner of "true" believers. There are those who choose to disrupt the status quo of western, so called, democratic values; those whose secular belief system begs the conversion of all others whether it be into Islamic or Christian fundamentalism, or some other "ism"; and, of course, economic terrorism. The last is a modern western phenomenon where whole countries are held to ransom and raped as in Iraq on the strength of some "ism". Time has changed but humanity is still imperilled by the glamour of greed. It is this greed which seduces political thinkers into formulating economic policies that crucify poor nations, steal their resources, and leave nothing for future generations. The modern world still does not know "freedom" or "democracy" except where it equals "largesse"!

PJP, Brisbane, Australia

Your article inevitably has an element of naiveté because it hasn’t considered the most obvious and, doubtless, prevalent form of terror, state ‘inoculation’. The existing power, faced with movements that have strong mass appeal, can easily discredit or detract from these movements by the use of terror. This can be attributed to any convenient sect of the moment. It is, after all, one of the oldest tricks in the book. With a reliable secret service and control of the media, governments through the ages have been able to set up all sorts of acts or periods of terror, in order to justify a reaction to and persecution of interests which threaten to undermine it’s authority - not necessarily the one expressly addressed. This feature of government shows no sign of changing, given the huge intelligence services possessed by modern states, and the available technology.

Henry Percy, London, UK

Excellent article. I will definitely by purchasing your book. In the current assault on religion by Dawkins et al, it is worth remembering that secular (or atheist) states have been responsible for some of history’s most heinous crimes. Nonetheless, in the contemporary period it does seem to me that the more outrageous terrorist activities are being carried out in the name of religion – this is something I resent, being held thrall to what ultimately is a lazy person’s medieval philosophy.

Barry, London,

Haven't you forgotten the most insidious and gratuitous acts of terrorism that humankind has seen - state terrorism by the west and israel in the last 50 years. only, it takes fancy names like shock and awe...

huyen, bangkok, thailand

Gray is right: the Islamic terrorists use religion like an ideology, they are children of modern revolutionary terrorism.
It's not a religious clash, but a political and military clash. Terrorizing London is a way to terrorizing all we westerns. It's a way to say us: "we are stronger than us". Great London we are with you.

alberto, pisa, italy

Perhaps you have it the wrong way round- I have always considered Marxism to be a secular religion anyway, so maybe all terrorists are religious, in their own way (the marxist belief in the equality of all humans despite obvious genetic/scientific evidence to the contrary being an essentialy religious belief)

Philip Marshall, Lincoln, England

Only the mad & uneducated would think that violence can change society on a permanent basis.
People may cowed by fear temporarily , but it creates anger & eventually they rise & hit back, hence the pattern of wars & vilification through the ages.
Islamist would be wise to remember this, in the long term they cannot get the world to bend = submit to their will.
This is the good thing about improved education & even globalisation, a thriving economy has to help people see their is another life & they do not have to depend on religion or the state to provide for their needs. It gives them their independence & a freedom they would not have otherwise.

Maggie Millington, Brittany, France

And your point is ?

riv, Newcastle,

Really? I would have said that this was a pretty good one-sentence summary of the Inquisition.
Jon Livesey, I htink that your comment illustrates the problem with one sentence summaries. Assuming you are talking of practices such as autos da fe, their purpose was to "purify" the heretical and sound a warning on this earth of the hell in the next world. They were a means of terror used to impose the orthodoxy of the church on the faithful - but the church never expected to eliminate sin. JG is talking of the use of terror to as an catalyst or engine of social change to a perfect model. This is not, in my view, what hte inquisition was about/

Andrew H, London

Andre Hobson, London, UK

These people are beginners.
Without sitting in judgment, the RAF, through Bomber Command deliberately targeted, (and it was certainly against international law), and killed, 600,000 men, woman and children over a period of five years, culminating in the piece de resistance, Dresden.
And of course that was with the aid of changing a society, NAZI to democratic.
When it come to honing an efficient killing machine the Europeans are hard to match.

Dave Morris, Sunderland, UK

"fanaticism comes in many guises"

Take a belief system or theory (Islam, communism, nationalism, or otherwise) which may be sound, safe, and sane in its fundamental principles of advancing humanity, stretch it into an extreme fanatical militant interpretation and you will reach a tragic maelstrom.

In my childhood, I would never have imagined noble and virtuous terms such as Islamist and Jihad be used (by progatonists and commentators) as labels for the miasma of senseless violence today.

MJ, London,

Does this mean that you regard the customary rape and pillage that historically accompanied the advance of victorious armies as a mere "letting off steam" by soldiers needing some well-earned R&R after combat? Or does your refusal to recognise such acts as terrorism mean that you condone the mistreatment of prisoners and civilians alike in Iraq?

Limiting your definition of social engineering by violence to the death camps, gulags and religious extremism ignores the accompanying suffering of every war of conquest in human history. The stamp of imperial authority has ever been a 2-sided coin. Social memory in this country is limited to the victor's point of view and totally ignores that of the conquered who were regularly terrorised by dominant officials backed up by armed henchmen.

KR, Stockport,

Not just the Inquisition.

That was precisely the attitude of Frernch Jacobins and later Bolsheviks and Mao's Red Guards.

A lot of people on the right had analogous notions, believing that war somehow "improved" those whom took part in it.

Michael W Stone BA FBIS, Peterborough, UK

"Even so, before modern times it was never imagined that the use of violence could initiate a perfect society, or rid the world of immemorial evils."

Really - that is a pretty good summary of the 1300 year old, ongoing, practice of Islamic Jihad.

Geoff M iller, Bromsgrove, England

Very interesting analysis. I'll be buying your book on July 5th. Thanks!

Dexter, London, UK

"Even so, before modern times it was never imagined that the use of violence could initiate a perfect society, or rid the world of immemorial evils."

Really? I would have said that this was a pretty good one-sentence summary of the Inquisition.

jon livesey, Sunnyvale, CA/US