So the West asked for it?

This is because, even if it were true that behaving in a certain way, or dressing in a certain manner, had a direct impact on someone’s likelihood of being sexual assaulted, any reasonable-thinking person would wish it were otherwise. We all want to live in a society where people are free from sexual violence regardless of the circumstances.

So when we are confronted by such violence, we are painstakingly careful not to mention anything that may be used as mitigation - because we recognise that no mitigation could ever diminish the crime. The perpetrator is wholly responsible - neither circumstance, nor provocation, hold any weight in the moral calculation.

Yet, when it comes to the radicalisation of terrorists, this standard is not just abandoned, but inexplicably replaced by a blanket acceptance of any, and all, claimed provocations, grievances, or incitements to their violence.

We accept that it is we who are to blame for the violence of others – we embrace masochism, all the while convincing ourselves that we are in fact being nuanced, clever, and even caring:

‘The rise of the Islamic State is our fault for liberating Iraq’. ‘The 2002 Bali Bombings were our fault for participating in the peacekeeping mission in East Timor’. ‘The September 11th attacks were the fault of American foreign policy’. ‘The July 7th terror attacks in London were the fault of our failure to intervene in Bosnia’. ‘The attack last month on a Danish free speech conference was the fault of Danish society for failing to integrate its immigrant communities’.

Sure, there might be some truth in all these statements, but it is so palpably incomplete, that no honest causal link could ever be accepted.

For example: if a husband routinely beats his wife every time she upsets him, he might be correct in saying to her, ‘if you did not upset me, I would not beat you’. Yet this is also a false causation, for despite one action impacting the other, it is likely also to be true that the man’s anger is entirely unreasonable and unjustified; and even if this were not the case, it is certainly true that no amount of anger could ever legitimise spousal abuse.

Yet with radicalisation we don’t like to dig so deep, we accept the presence of any claimed grievance, no matter how tangential, as both causative and justified.

Perhaps this is well meaning. Perhaps most people simply struggle to process the type of extreme derangement that would lead someone to join an organisation such as Islamic State. And if one thing is certain, it is that we all like easy solutions to problems we face. So, confused and seeking a quick fix, we blame ourselves. After all, what could be an easier solution to terrorism, than for us simply to make a conscious effort to be kinder to terrorists?

In an environment such as this, is it any wonder that someone like Asim Qureshi, or an organisation such as CAGE, would feel comfortable in saying that perhaps Mohammed Emwazi ‘Jihadi John’ would not have decided that it was good idea to cut the heads off innocent people, if only the security services weren’t so mean to him.

In this sense, Qureshi and CAGE have been a touch unlucky. They, after all, had every reason to believe that their public defence of Emwazi, and their blaming of his violence on British society, would be accepted. They have been working within a social environment that has happily accepted this type of moral masochism on countless previous occasions; just as they have been allowed to get away with campaigning for the release of convicted terrorists, such as Aafia Siddiqui (jailed for 86 years for trying to murder American officials in Afghanistan), and Djamel Beghal (who plotted to blow up the American embassy in Paris).

The fact that such depraved language has not been accepted this time, and that it seems to have set off a tripwire in people’s minds, is an entirely new, and welcome development.