JIHADIST Jake Bilardi is a symptom of the ­spiritual anorexia of the West. He was a lost boy looking for ­meaning in life and finding it in the worst possible place.

The youngest of six children in suburban Melbourne, Bilardi lost his father to divorce when he was nine, and his mother to cancer when he was 15. Brought up an atheist, ­highly intelligent, he had no anchors in his life at a time when he was seeking spiritual nourishment.

He converted to Islam shortly after his mother died, before dropping out of school in August to run off to Syria and join Islamic State.

Last week he blew himself up, aged 18, in a suicide bombing in Iraq.

After his death, IS propagandists ­proclaimed he “originated from an atheist family & ended up selling his soul to Allah for a cheap price.”

Bilardi was taught to believe in nothing and ended up a fanatical believer in something very bad.

That is evident. But when I wrote about this last week and pointed out that Bilardi’s life is a warning of the “inevitable trajectory of the West’s cultural nihilism”, the torrent of abuse on Twitter was insane, even by the standards of that sewer of human discourse.

The extreme reaction proved one thing, that militant atheism is synonymous with an unhinged hatred of religion. It also suggests that bien pensants have internalised the horrors of totalitarian Islamist ideology, not with ­Islamophobia, but with ­“Christophobia” and anti-Semitism, a paradox, if ever there was one.

Some examples:

“Belief in #God is an ­admission of mental ­incompetence.”

“What has mainstream ­religion given us — peadophiles [sic], Spanish Inquisition, ­ethnic cleansing, destruction of indigenous cultures‬.”

“Most Christians suffer from neurosis and that’s a mental disorder.”

“The time has come to put the boot into evil vicious journalists who use their power to bully others about ‪#god.”

“Your moral slime is as ­turpid as the brainless act of ­violence committed by that idiot Jake.”

“Parents divorced when I was 12, and I’m an atheist. Therefore I must want to blow myself up for religion.”

media_camera Screen grab of Australian teen jihadist Jake Bilardi / Picture: Supplied

“You need to speak to atheists. We raise our children not to be self serving hypocrites.”

“Miranda, atheists have beliefs — beliefs in nature, wildlife conservation, community, anti CSG for instance”. ‬

“Religion is an illness — get well soon.“

There is no understanding here of the effect a vacuum of spiritual belief has on vulnerable adolescents, or the role religion has played in human flourishing, and a feeling of connectedness.

In fact, Bilardi’s conversion from atheist child to jihadi is not so uncommon. When the Paris-based Centre of Prevention of Sectarian Derivatives last year investigated Islamist radicalisation, it ­interviewed 160 families of young jihadists and found 80 per cent described themselves as ‘atheist’.

I’ve spared you the foulest insults of my Twitter feed, but it’s important to be aware of what passes for thought online because this is the seedbed which radicalised Jake Bilardi.

In fact, the politics of his “manifesto”, a blog explaining his trajectory from “being an Atheist school student in ­affluent Melbourne to a soldier of the Khilafah preparing to sacrifice my life for Islam in Ramadi”, could be from any left wing blog.

At about age 13 he starts reading about international politics online. He is angered by injustices he discovers, identifying with underdogs from the street gangs of South America, to the Taliban and Palestinians. He blames the United States, Israel and Western democracy for the ills of the world, and then starts to relate to Islam’s ­victim narrative.

“Slowly but surely I began being drawn towards the ­religion and it was no longer a political interest for me but the truth I had been circling around for years.”

For adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg, Bilardi’s case is nothing special. He has treated plenty of lost boys like him, the sort who join gangs, or cults or who, in America, become school shooters.

“Because there was nothing in his life he became ­obsessed with a range of global issues and he simply self-activated,” Carr-Gregg said ­yesterday.

“Initially, there was spiritual anorexia. Then there was this idea of how terrible the West is and that is the cause I can jump on.

“His personalisation of injustice sped up and was exacerbated by the personal events in his life (parents’ divorce and mother’s death) and ultimately he came to believe it’s OK to use violence as a problem-solving device.”

A lonely adolescent like Jake Bilardi, with no parents, no anchors, and no other consolation or meaning in his life, could not afford to be an atheist, because all that could provide was despair.

His “soul” as his IS ­recruiters found, was easy prey. This is what educated, comfortable, happy adult atheists fail to comprehend.