Another barbaric chapter of an epic conflict between the presence and promise of modernity, and the bitter, toxic romance of regression was written on January 7 in Paris.

This war, raging across the world, is a confrontation between the lethal adrenalin of faith supremacy and belief that faith equality is the basis of civilised political and social stability. The epicentre of this war is within the Muslim successor states of the Mughal and Ottoman empires; but its destructive reach extends far beyond its immediate habitat.

The warriors of this Islamic jihad are the masked vanguard of a movement that found its spurs in the 19th century, when the last two Muslim empires, the Mughal and the Ottoman, began to wither and then die. Behind the masks is a supply chain that, like all religious extremism, is magnetised by inspiration beyond the control of boundaries.

The rationale for contemporary Islamist violence was first provided by two doctrinaires, Shah Waliullah in Mughal Delhi and Muhammad ibn Abd-al Wahhab in Ottoman Arabia. They were born in the same year, 1703, and watched a historic comfort zone crumble. Their prescription (restricted for Sunni Muslims) was simple and stern: Allah had not abandoned Muslims; Muslims had forsaken Allah.

Muslims had slipped into decadence, compromising purity of practice in prayer and trust in the sharia; their behaviour and dress had been corrupted by other cultures, whether it was Hinduism in India or the growing influence of Europe among Ottoman elites.

Their rulers no longer believed in the supremacy of Islam, chosen by God as the final testament for this world. The umma no longer displayed the courage to grow a religious beard, proclaim the faith, or pick up the sword — or a gun in Paris, a bomb in Peshawar — in defence of Islam.

Ironically, this revisionism went against innumerable tenets of the Quran, which advocate acceptance of other faiths, particularly “people of the Book”, and explain why Christian communities like the Yazidis continued to live in Muslim Iraq for 1,400 years until the supremacists of ISIS began their rape, pillage and murder of the “infidel”.

But as a sense of loss, and fear of the future, intensified, the ideas of exclusivity, separation and dream of dominance began to gather momentum in the 20th century.

A decisive battle between modernity and regression was fought on the Indian subcontinent before 1947. The Muslim League used, often and provocatively, the rhetoric of superiority in its pursuit of separation.

Mahatma Gandhi offered the counter-narrative, that true strength lay in faith equality, not faith supremacy. For him, dharma represented the underlying truth common to every religion. The singular duty of the state was to enshrine freedom of faith as a basic right; the citizen was enjoined to treat every faith with equal respect.

In a marvellous message, Gandhi urged that the Gita should be read with the eye of a Hindu and the Quran with the eye of a Muslim: with sympathy, not invective. Swami Vivekananda, who sought India’s resurgence through India’s unique philosophy, was equally forth-right: if you were born a Hindu, he said, be a good Hindu; if born a Muslim, be a good Muslim, and that would make both good Indians.

It might seem anachronistic to those who confuse a loincloth with the primitive, but Gandhi’s great contribution was to construct a modern framework for the post-colonial Indian state — Gandhi wore the loincloth to identify with the impoverished and starving peasant, not to offer a model for the future.

What is modernity? It has four non-negotiable pillars: democracy, which is impossible without free speech; freedom of faith; gender equality; and economic equity, through which the poor are the principal beneficiaries of economic growth.

Nations that deviated from this model are paying an existential price. From Pakistan to the north of Africa, there is a gathering wasteland of countries which, for one reason or another, cherry-picked between the four essentials. Their governments are not in control. Militias and shadow armies have filled this vacuum, the most powerful of which operate in a loose alliance under the banner of terrorist theocracy.

Turkey, in contrast, became a success story because its 20th-century saviour Mustafa Kemal rejected the Caliphate, and wrenched his nation out of the looming trap of faith supremacy. Courageously, he defused the very symbol of Muslim conquest, Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, a great Byzantine church turned into a mosque in the 15th century. Ataturk converted it into a museum.

For two centuries, revivalism was in search of geography; with the creation of Pakistan, its progeny Taliban Afgha-nistan, and now the Islamic State in Iraq, there are sanctuaries for continuing generations of jihadists. Their targets, governments and people invested in peace, are trapped by questions they often fear to raise, worried by consequences. For how long can they prevent rage from becoming outrage? How do we manage the tipping point?

As Gandhi said, an eye for an eye will leave us all blind. Principles are vulnerable in pursuit of barbarians. But we must also defeat the enemy before it destroys us. That is the challenge.