IMAGINE you wake up one morning to find your whole body, head to toe, covered in an itchy, painful rash. You go to the doctor and he says, “Oh I see you have a pimple on your nose! I’ll give you some ointment for it.” This is exactly the response of the western powers to the violent Islamic insurgency which threatens us all. Hollande, Cameron, Merkel and Obama have belatedly come to the conclusion that we must destroy Islamic State which they describe as a death cult, its members evil psychopaths. And they are right – even if they seem to have woken up to the fact rather belatedly.

But the terrorist atrocities and mass murders occurred long before Islamic State came into being. 9/11 was not their doing, nor the London tube bombs, nor the Madrid attacks, nor Bali, Moscow and Mumbai, to mention just a few of the thousands of attacks which have taken place in the first fifteen years of the 21st century. Other terrorist organisations include Al Q’aeda, Al Shabaab, the Al Nusra Front, Al Aqsa Martyrs, Ansar Al Shariah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban. And these are just the few that came to mind without my having to look at the UN list of terrorist organisations which runs into the hundreds,

Yes, there were the horrific massacres in Paris, but in the same week dozens were slaughtered by suicide bombers in Nigeria where one of the perpetrators was an eleven year old girl who blew herself up in the marketplace. In the same week there was the downed Russian jet in the Sinai and the fatal bombings in Beirut. This violent Islamic insurgency extends from Nigeria through Sudan and Mali, into Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, eastwards to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and south into Indonesia. It is not a case of a single pimple on the nose, but of a whole body rash – a rash which will prove fatal unless it is recognised for what it is and the antidote applied.

Western statesmen refuse to face the reality and extent of the insurgency and so, if they continue in denial, we shall be overwhelmed, defeated and Europe will come to resemble Syria. The insurgency has happened before – not once only but several times. In AD 732 a Muslim army of 200,000 men was defeated by the Christian Charles Martel at Tours. If that battle had been lost, all Europe would have fallen to militant Islam.

In 1565 the relief of the Siege of Malta, by a Christian alliance, ensured that the Mediterranean did not fall into Muslim hands and so give them a toehold in southern Europe. Then came the Battle of Lepanto on 7th October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire. There was that other 11th September in 1683 when Jan Sobieski arrived at the gates of Vienna and defeated the last substantial Muslim incursion: the last, that is, before the one which we face at present.

These are the facts and they reveal a pattern in which there is a recurrence of violent insurgencies and the attempt to conquer and destroy. Whenever this threat has emerged over the last 1400 years, the European nations first recognised and acknowledged the very grave danger and, by courage and force or arms, repelled it. Only this time our leaders have their heads in the sand. It may be politically correct to ignore the threat, but it is not clever.

It is cowardly and it is suicidal.