Ancient Israel provided the model for thinkers who shaped both kingship in the UK and governance in the US. Biblical Israel, notes David Nirenberg, had always provided a model for Christian politics. Melanie Phillips

The Torah was the world’s first blueprint for social and religious order that sought to reduce the concept of hierarchy. It placed unprecedented emphasis instead on well-being and the dignity of the common person. Melanie Phillips

The Mosaic laws were not enforced by despotic authority but were voluntarily adopted through individual self-discipline. This gave the world the concept of individual accountability. Melanie Phillips

By contrast, the Hebrew Bible produced the revolutionary idea that every individual was worthy of equal respect. This derived from its perception that humanity had been fashioned in the image of God. Melanie Phillips

The Greeks had little respect for human life. In such ancient cultures, mankind was the hapless instrument of a higher cosmic order that determined the fate of human beings. Individuals were merely the playthings of the gods. People weren’t equal. Melanie Phillips

The West’s abandonment of its biblically-based structures created a vacuum into which the Islamists have marched. They understood something that the West had forgotten—that religion was essential to a culture’s understanding of itself, and that without a religious underpinning, no culture would survive. They understood that the West was evacuating its culture of religion, meaning, and purpose, and so would no longer be prepared to defend it. Melanie Phillips

At the heart of all of this was the doctrine that there was no such thing as objective truth. Everything was relative; everything was a matter of opinion. Because there was no truth, feelings became more important than facts. Melanie Phillips

What kind of pathological mental disorder, one might ask, lies behind the frenzied tearing down of pictures of innocent people, including children and babies, who have been kidnapped by murderers and torturers? Melanie Phillips

This is at root a spiritual problem, a crisis over meaning and purpose. That takes us headfirst into the issue of religious belief. Melanie Phillips

This cultural crisis is being exploited and manipulated by Islamists, who recognise in the weakness of the West their chance to conquer it and subjugate it to Islamic rule. Melanie Phillips