In the place of democracy, Fascism offered a militarised hierarchy, and the abolition of any distinction between the political and the private, the e… - Michael Burleigh

Although Christianity was an integral aspect of many early socialist movements – and in Britain remains so to this day – in general the Churches arranged themselves on the side of conservatism, partly as a result of their traumatic experience at the hands of democratic mobs in revolutionary France and elsewhere. This alliance of throne and altar duly broke down as the temporal power of the Churches was challenged by the nation states which vied for ultimate human loyalties.

Some of the most eminent Catholic theologians, such as Engelbert Krebs, Wilhelm Neuss, Karl Rahner and Romano Guardini, lost their university teaching posts under the Nazis. Krebs not only published articles reflecting his positive view of Judaism, but was denounced in August 1934 for saying at a private gathering in his brother’s house, “We are being governed by robbers, murderers and criminals’ a remark that resulted in several years of harassment, the loss of his job, a trial and imprisonment.

It's no coincidence that most terrorists are males aged between 18 and 30. One terrorist from the 1960s recently said, 'we half-read a whole lot of theories that we fully understood' - and the same probably applies to Islamic terrorists today. Few have any background in religion, and most are ignorant of Islam. They've just ingested it as slogans, either from the internet or radical clerics, and attached it to some grievance about the persecution of Muslims in other parts of the world.