The murder in Iraq of the Irish born aid worker Margaret Hassan represents another, ever more grisly marker on the descent of the Islamic fanatics. Here was a woman whose fate could not be qualified or explained away by apologists because of any imperialism, Zionism, or Western racism. She had made the fate of the Iraqi people her fate, marrying a local man and opposing United Nations sanctions and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Yet she now joins the ranks of the Middle East’s martyred Westerners. It is no doubt the sort of company in which she never dreamed she would find herself.

It is a measure of the shocking nature of this ritual killing that, thus far, there has been little rush by the British and Irish left to blame President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, or Premier Sharon for the fate that befell her. Perhaps it has something to do with the family’s dignified response. But the audience in this atrocity was never really the Allied powers. Their target was not even Iraq, either, which for the Islamists is just one battle among many. Hassan’s kidnapping prompted much protest within Iraq, and, anyhow, there are many more direct methods by which to intimidate those Iraqis who wish to build a new society, such as wholesale killings of indigenous police recruits.

No, the real goal of this hideous aestheticisation of violence is to impress a radicalized, global Islamist audience of the vulnerability of the West. There are few signs that the killing of Hassan has triggered much soul-searching within Middle Eastern and Muslim societies concerning the bitter fruits of malign ideology. Particularly depressing is Al Jazeera’s decision to screen pictures of combat worn U.S.Marines shooting a wounded insurgent in the heat of battle in Fallujah, but not the footage of Hassan’s execution. How much easier it is to relapse into the comfortable groove of evading responsibility and passing the blame on to the West.