LONDON -- After months of careful planning, it has been the turn of London to suffer the carnage already familiar to the people of Madrid, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, New York (although not on the same scale) and many other world cities.

The war, it seems, is universal and it has been declared by the new generation of terrorists on every center of civilized society. Next time, according to one sinister Internet message, it will be Rome -- and then, who knows?

Londoners, of course, have had plenty of experience of being bombed. Pulverized by Adolf Hitler's bombers and rockets in World War II, the British capital, after a few years' respite, then found itself the target of persistent and bloody attacks by the Irish Republican Army.

The new wave of jihadists is made many times more dangerous by the suicide factor. Now any individual with a bulky waistline or a bulging back pack could be a walking bomb, anywhere in the bustling streets or markets of the City, or in London's crowded transport system.

Whether there was a suicide bomber involved in London, it is too early to say. But it is never too early to try to visit the inner mind of these individuals and to understand, if dimly, what motivated them. How could they be so ready to kill, in cold blood, so many complete strangers at random? How could they be ready even to kill themselves?

Probably their minds were not focused on people at all. They were a blur of anger and hatred against something much bigger -- society, organized life, "Western values," meaning any kind of advanced or industrialized society. And probably they were elated because they felt part of a mighty cause. They were the brothers and sisters of those who had performed the same "duties" in cities across the world.

Of course, there have always been half-crazed and isolated individuals, furious in their warped minds against the world and ready to do terrible things. But in the last three decades this has now spread into a frightening worldwide pattern. It has been nurtured and empowered by new technological tools combined with old beliefs.

The new tools are the microchip, the mobile telephone, the text message, e-mail and the Internet, allowing poisonous doctrines to be disseminated world-wide instantaneously and every "loner" to feel he or she is part of a great, coordinated network.

The old belief which has been ruthlessly exploited is Islam. The terrorists have latched on to Islam like parasites and twisted its doctrines to fire sick minds. It does not matter to today's bombers that many of their victims are themselves Islamic. Quite a few of the 50 or so who died in London, or the hundreds who were injured, were Muslims, since London today is a great Islamic city, as well as a city of many other faiths, with many mosques and big communities of hardworking, peaceful and moderate Muslim people.

The knowledge in the bombers' minds that some of these might die that day would have made them happier still. Moderate, gentle Islam is just as much the enemy of the violent jihadists as the west and the Christians.

In fact it is the greater enemy. In the new terrorist mind, it is the moderate leaders of Islam who have allowed poverty to persist amid oil riches, who have connived with the Zionists and American capitalists, who have let their land be stolen by the Israelis, who have allowed brutal American troops to be stationed on sacred Islamic land, who have presided over the persistent humiliation of the once proud Arab peoples.

In a sense this is now Islam's great civil war -- between those who want to uphold the timeless virtues of the Muslim faith and those who want to turn it into a raging crusade against the modern world.

It is easy now, looking back, to see how this grand tableau of hatred, resentment and bitterness has been built up over the years, intoxicating weaker minds and more gullible young people.

Foolish and shortsighted policies in Western countries have let it grow and fester, and have even encouraged it, by mishandling oil and energy issues disastrously, by allowing the Israel-Palestine quarrel to persist and worsen, by maintaining an insensitivity toward and ignorance of Islam and the Arabic culture, by believing that some simplistic model of democracy can be imposed on ancient societies from outside, by hopelessly mismanaging the cleanup and rescue of Iraq, by deserting the oppressed Muslims in Bosnia until they were slaughtered (as at Srebrenica 10 years ago) -- the list goes on and on.

There is a way forward out of this nightmare, a way that will bring prosperity and pride back to the Arab peoples and deep respect back to Islam, which through many centuries has coexisted peacefully and constructively with other faiths in many countries. But to find this way will require wisdom and understanding by world leaders on a scale that they still show little sign of possessing, to judge by their latest gathering -- the Group of Eight meeting in Scotland.

It has taken more than three decades of errors and blunders to let the present situation build up and to allow the twisted world of extremist violence, in the false name of Islam, to gain such support from a younger generation. It could take just as long to wean the next generation away from these nihilist trends.