I watched Channel 4’s “two part thriller” last week and although it was flawed – for example, the savage beating of a loved one would surely have caused anyone to rethink their commitment to a political cause – I thought it was a good piece and more importantly a brave attempt to make us think about terrorism in the only way which will make a difference. It is easy to demonize people who kill others and therefore just look at the issue as one of prevention, as if the terrorists were robots. But unless we can understand why killing themselves in this way can come to be attractive to young, intelligent people we have very little chance of bringing such activity to an end. This play ranks with Ed Husain’s (factual) “Islamist” as an important step towards such understanding.

Once people forget or gloss away mercy and compassion as the heart of religion extremism quickly follows. Truth is traditionally said to be the first casualty of war but in this case, ironically both for “jihadism” and the “war on terror”, consistency went first. The extremists advocate violence in the name of a compassionate religion while the West dismantles ancient freedoms in the defence of a free society.

The other well-treated theme was just how easy we make the task for terrorist recruiters by our political actions. Injustice justified by hypocrisy and backed by force is too often all we offer, from invading other countries to condoning disproportionate violence by our friends. This is hardly a new point, of course, it was even reported as having been made in advice to the government before the Iraq invasion. The West is left looking as though we have no values at all to contend with the easy certainties of scripture, however conveniently misinterpreted. It would be better from this perspective for our politicians to admit, say, that Iraq was just about oil than to pretend that it was about something else which no one can believe. But then of course Western public opinion would have been even more opposed to the invasion.

The question I am left with is this: what are the true values of our society now, if they are not religious - and how can they be if we are multicultural? Are they then political – Freedom, Social Justice, Democracy etc? But are these more than just slogans? For example, I know what freedoms are, but I’m not sure about Freedom. I think I know injustice when I see it, but what would Social Justice look like, really? And isn’t Democracy a way of taking decisions rather than a value in itself, and a highly stylised way at that? But if these are indeed our values, why do they seem to stop at national boundaries? If we don't want to live under religious extremism or in a state of war with it don't we have to think hard about these questions?