The First World War began with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Second with the invasion of Poland and the Cold War with the Soviet blockade of Berlin. The War which the West now faces, the conflict which has become known as the War on Terror, began, in the eyes of many on September 11th 2001 with Al Qaeda's assault on America. But, like the Pearl Harbour attack with which it has been compared, 9/11did not mark the beginning of this global conflict, but rather its most audacious escalation.

Well before Al Qaeda succeeded in its efforts to bring its war so spectacularly onto American soil the Islamist assault had been advancing. In the decade before 9/11 Islamist fighters had taken possession of Afghanistan, as a base for their global operations, launched a campaign to take control of Algeria, used Sudan as a launchpad for jihad, attacked American embassies in east Africa and detonated an explosive which killed seventeen on the American destroyer, the USS Cole, while it lay at anchor off the coast of Yemen.

Prior to that assault, Islamists had planned attacks on other American targets including an attempt to sink the USS Sullivans in January 2000 and detonate a bomb in Los Angeles airport in December 1999.

Islamist operations against America date back as far as 1993, when the first assault against the World Trade Centre was launched. A bomb planted in the car park below the North Tower killed six and injured more than 1000 others but the bombers failed in their intention to collapse the tower.

America was very far from being the only nation to be targeted by Islamist terror. In Jordan, Al Qaeda members laid plans to bomb four targets at the time of the Millennium. They had identified the Radisson hotel in the capital, Amman, the border between Jordan and Israel; Mount Nebo, a Christian holy site; and a location on the Jordan River where John the Baptist is said to have baptized Jesus. These targets were selected in the hope of maximising casualties among visiting Western tourists.

Western tourists were also the victims of a series of attacks in Egypt.

Sixteen Greek citizens were killed in 1996, nine Germans and their Egyptian driver were killed in September 1997 and in November of that year 58 tourists and four Egyptians were massacred near Luxor.

Since the beginning of the 90s Islamist fighters have also targeted, among other nations, Indonesia, Pakistan, Israel, Qatar, Spain, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, Australia and Kenya. Tourists, businessmen and travellers of almost every nationality have been victims of Islamist atrocities. Attacks have been planned, and terrorist cells established, in Germany, Italy and France as well as the United Kingdom and most of the Arab world. Nations with colonial traditions, and those which have never played the imperial game, countries which are Christian, Muslim or multi-confessional, nations which supported the Iraq war and those which opposed it, all have been visited by the shadow if Islamist violence.

The roots of the current jihadi assault are various. But, wherever Islamists strike, whomever they target, and whatever the interpretation placed upon their actions by commentators in the society which has been attacked, they are united in a single campaign by a common ideology.

Mohammad Siddique Khan's posthumously broadcast vindication explicitly linked his actions with the campaign prosecuted by Al Qaeda's leaders, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His enlistment as a soldier was driven, he explained, by his religion "Islam - obedience to the one true God, Allah, and following the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Muhammad". The terrorists responsible for the Madrid train bombing were, according to Bosnian police, trained in Al Qaeda camps in that country. They were also, according to British intelligence sources, working in co-operation with a Syrian Al Qaeda fighter who, after leading operations in Europe, is now believed to be in Iraq.

Even where no explicit linkage between terrorist cells and known Al Qaeda operatives is established, the operational style, political rhetoric and ideological justification deployed by different Islamist fighters underlines their shared approach. From the Hamas killers in Gaza to Hizbollah terrorists in Lebanon and Islamist fighters across South-East Asia, from Indonesia to the Phillipines, there is a ruthlessness in the selection of civilian targets re-inforced by a willingness to embrace suicide bombing, a belief that Western influence needs to be cleansed from Muslim lands and a desire to see a narrow and highly politicised form of Islam imposed across the Muslim world.

The global, and inter-connected, nature of the Islamist terror campaign can only be understood by grappling with the totalitarian ideology which drives jihadist warriors. While they proclaim themselves soldiers for Islam they are not representative of majority Muslim opinion. Far from it. Islamists are a self-conscious vanguard who look down on other Muslims and consider the majority of their co-religionists as sunk in barbarity or error.

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