Horrors perpetrated by Isis must be condemned

The introduction to a recent edition of Panorama said that we would be shocked at some of the scenes. Some of the worst ones were censored, of course, but the brutality was something I never thought I would see in the 21st century.

Prisoners were shown bound hand and foot in the local town square, some were beaten until they dropped, and some were about to be beheaded with all the town watching.

What civilised nation behaves like this, defending a deity in a world which harbours denominations of all descriptions but whose followers get on with their lives and worship their own gods without violence? I am talking, of course, about Isis, the Islamic religious sect which preaches “jihadism” and whose ultimate target is a world dominated by Islam.

What I can’t understand is why the Muslim leaders in this country and elsewhere do not condemn such savagery. We have now reached the stage where some of our young men are going abroad to join such conflicts. Where is the outcry from the mosques?

I always thought it was against the law for a British citizen to go abroad and fight in other people’s wars. When I was young in the 1940s that would have been classed as treason.