John Gray is an acknowledged master of the calculated overstatement. He likes to make us think. And he does it by throwing the equivalent of intellectual hand grenades.

Consider the following claim – and it is not atypical of his paradoxical style. 'It is the fact that radical Islam rejects reason that shows it is a modern movement.' Gray is here trying to bolster his argument that Al Qaeda is a quintessentially twenty-first-century phenomenon, rather than a barbaric throwback