RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS ARE almost always actually about something other than dogma: usually territory, grazing or water rights, trade, or power. So the pretext for the crusades might have been the recapture of Jerusalem, but medieval Europe's enthusiasm for war in the Holy Land was motivated less by Christian fervour than by the prospect of plunder in the wealthy Muslim world.

The motives of greed, resentment and inequality also drive the modern jihad, writes Loretta Napoleoni, who is an economist as well as an expert on terrorism, and a foreign correspondent for Italian financial newspapers. 'As in the crusades, religion is simply a recruitment tool; the real driving force is economics.'

Napoleoni