IWISH the mass media would stop misusing the word “medieval.” The IS uprising in northern Iraq and Syria is murderous and barbaric beyond words, but it is not medieval.

Professor John Gray, formerly of the London School of Economics, has correctly described IS and other jihadist sects as “postmodern.”

And so they are.

Two Middle East experts came on the BBC Today Programme the other morning and told us the bizarre and surreal truth that jihadists tend to be young men who are thoroughly westernised. They wear Nike trainers while they twitter and tweet.

One wanted to know whether if he went to Syria to join the Sunni uprising he would still be able to buy his favourite jar of Nutella there.

It’s what you do, apparently. You behead a Christian or two, then you use your mobile phone to take a picture of yourself, the proud jihadist warrior, holding up the severed head. Next, you post the snapshot on the internet and it instantly goes global.

Terrorists these days are not medieval at all, but dedicated followers of fashion.

Another expert, from Somalia, informed us that the brutal outfit known as Al Shabaab conducts sophisticated media interviews with the terrorists’ leaders and - thanks to wi-fi - broadcasts these worldwide in several languages.

Blimey – they can get a good wi-fi connection in the African wilderness when there are huge parts of North Yorkshire where it’s not available.

Incredibly, many jihadist groups produce their own lifestyle magazines. Our counterterrorist organisations have dubbed one of these Jihadi GQ. I can only guess at the titles of some of the articles. What to wear for that crucifixion party, perhaps?

The hordes of terrorists which today plague half the world have nothing in common with the medieval mind. They use ultra- modern techniques, and it is only by the West’s determined and persistent waging of war by similar methods that we can hope to defeat and destroy them.

The Middle Ages have got a bad name in our modern media world. Whenever a reporter or presenter stumbles upon something particularly nasty, he will call it “medieval”.

It shows a lack of perspective and a terrifying ignorance of recent history.

Massacres, rapes, genocides? If you want to see examples of these horrors, look no further back than the 20th Century and to atrocities which occurred during the lifetimes of people still living today.

Hitler was no slouch when it came to barbarism: six million Jews slaughtered in Europe.

Anything Hitler could do, Stalin could improve upon. According to the historian and philosopher Alexander Boot, born and raised in Moscow in the 1950s, Stalin’s purges murdered 40m. The number of victims in the genocide wreaked by Mao probably exceeds that achieved by Hitler and Stalin put together.

Which brings me to Professor Gray’s other point. He says: “History is not progressive, but cyclical.” What goes around comes around.

Evil does not exist only in horror movies and video games. It’s all over the newspapers, television and the social networking sites every hour. We need to recognise that fact and stop blaming the 14th Century.