Managing terror

Probably the biggest international event at the moment is the rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS), which has taken over large chunks of Iraq and Syria and is enacting widespread horror including the filmed beheading of American and British hostages, as well as brutal, wholesale massacres of the local population accompanied by torture, crucifixion and rape. It has become commonplace to talk of such Islamist terrorists as being a throwback to the Middle Ages, and in fact the British Prime