The Mumbai atrocity is a wake-up call for a frighteningly unprepared Britain

Around the world, people have reacted with horror to the vile atrocities in Mumbai.

For three days, our TV screens transmitted images of carnage and chaos as the toll of murder victims climbed to upwards of 190 people, with many hundreds more injured.

Despite the fact that British citizens were caught up in the attacks, there is nevertheless a sense in Britain that this was nothing to do with us - a horrible event happening in a faraway place.

The Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai: 'We don't understand what we are up against... if it were to happen here, we would be unable to cope'

Among commentators, moreover, there has been no small amount of confusion.

Were these terrorists motivated by the grievance between Muslims and Hindus over Kashmir, or was this a broader attack by Al Qaeda?

If British and American tourists were singled out over Iraq - which many assume is the motive for such attacks - why were Indians targeted in the Victoria railway station?

And why was an obscure Jewish outreach centre marked for slaughter?

Such perceptions and questions suggest that, even now, Western commentators still don't grasp what the free world is facing. This was not merely a distant horror.

We should pay the closest possible attention to what happened in Mumbai because something on this scale could well happen here.

Fanatics

But because we don't understand what we are actually up against, we are not doing nearly enough to prevent this - or something even worse - occurring on British soil; and if it were to happen here, we would be unable to cope.

The Mumbai atrocities show very clearly what too many in Britain obdurately deny - that a war is being waged against civilisation.

It is both global and local. It is not 'our' fault; it has nothing to do with Muslim poverty, oppression or discrimination.

The Islamic fundamentalist fanatics use specific grievances - Kashmir, Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya - merely as recruiting sergeants for their worldwide holy war against all 'unbelievers'.

The only militant to survive the attack, who says he is from Kashmir

The Mumbai attackers targeted British, American and Indian citizens simply because they wanted to kill as many British, American and Indian 'unbelievers' as possible.

Where they found Muslims, they spared them.

They also singled out for slaughter the occupants of the Chabad House, a pious Jewish outreach organisation with no Israeli or political agenda - underscoring the point that at the core of the Islamists' hatred of Israel festers their hatred of the Jews.

This was not, as is so often described, 'mindless violence'.

On the contrary, the terrorists precisely calibrated both their choice of targets and the way in which they attacked them. This tells us many things.

India was chosen in order to further two aims. First was to foment greater tension between India and Pakistan.

No less important was the wish to destroy the ever more vital strategic alliance between India and the West in common defence against the Islamist onslaught.

That was why British and American visitors in those two grand hotels were singled out.

And that was why Mumbai itself was chosen - as the symbol of India's burgeoning commerce and prosperity and its links with the West.

The manner of these attacks also carried a message.

Many hostages were taken, but no attempt was made to use them to demand redress of any grievances. They were simply killed.

That made a statement that the terrorists' agenda is non-negotiable.

The attacks demonstrated, above all, the reach of the perpetrators and the impotence of their designated victims.

Those who believe that Islamist terror can be halted by addressing grievances around the world are profoundly mistaken.

With these atrocities, moreover, Islamist attacks have moved much closer to war than conventional terrorism.

The Iranian-born foreign affairs specialist Amir Taheri has pointed out that the Mumbai attacks embody the plan outlined by a senior Al Qaeda strategist after the U.S. decided to fight back following 9/11 - a decision that the Islamists had not expected.

This new strategy entails targeting countries with a substantial Muslim presence for 'low-intensity warfare' comprising bombings, kidnappings, the taking of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, beheadings and other attacks that make normal life impossible.

Onslaught

Such a simultaneous, multi-faceted onslaught quickly reduces a city and a country to chaos. It can be repeated anywhere - and British cities must be among the most vulnerable.

This is because - astoundingly - Britain now harbours the most developed infrastructure of Islamist terrorism and extremism in the Western world.

The security service has warned that it is monitoring at least 2,000 known terrorists, and has said repeatedly that although many outrages have been averted a major attack may not be preventable.

Indeed, British security officials have sleepless nights about the various ways in which the Islamists are trying to cause mass casualties in Britain - and the fact that even now this threat is not taken seriously.

This point was made yesterday by the former head of Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command, Peter Clarke.

As an example, he noted that Kazi Nurur Rahman, a convicted terrorist who was arrested shortly after 7/7 with a machine-gun and 3,000 rounds of ammunition, had been trying to buy machine-guns, rocket-propelled grenades and missiles - undoubtedly for use against British targets.

Far from the popular caricatures of bumbling, impressionable and socially alienated misfits, he said, there was a capable and motivated enemy spanning the globe which would try to replicate the Mumbai atrocities in Britain.

Even more chilling was the warning by a former head of the SAS that Britain has made no adequate preparations to deal with such an onslaught upon a British city - even though that is precisely the ' Doomsday scenario' that the security world fears.

Such synchronised attacks, he said, required a 'military-type response', either by squads of soldiers or armed police. But we have neither in place.

This country is simply not trained, equipped or prepared in any way to deal with something on this scale.

Misguided

Yesterday, Gordon Brown said that the Mumbai attacks had raised 'huge questions' about how the world should address violent extremism.

But the first question he must answer is how the British approach will now change.

For the fact is that not only is Britain hopelessly unprepared for attacks of this kind, but the Government's approach to the problem of home-grown radicalisation is misguided.

Wrongly believing that it can use religious fundamentalists to counter terrorist recruitment and that it must at all costs avoid causing offence, it is failing to stop extremists spreading their propaganda, handling their demands with kid gloves and undermining genuine moderates among Britain's Muslims who have been left exposed, vulnerable and abandoned.

The reason for such flawed policies is the false analysis on which they are based.

The Government and security establishment refuse to acknowledge that what we are facing is a religious war.

Instead, they think that Islamist terrorism is driven by grievances which are basically the fault of the West.

But you have only to look around the world or at the history of the past four decades and more to see the absurdity and ignorance of this view.

Look at Thailand, for example, currently convulsed by Islamist terrorism in the south with bombings, beheadings and the murder of Buddhists.

Look at the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. Look at the Islamist terrorism in the Philippines.

Look, as Peter Clarke noted, at the attacks variously upon New York, Bali, Istanbul, Jakarta, Sharm el Sheikh, Casablanca, Madrid, London and India.

If we don't understand what we are fighting, we cannot defeat it. Mumbai is yet another wake-up call - to a Britain that is still in a trance of denial.