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Not all recent immigrants to Europe behave this way, however. The British Sikhs who moved there in large numbers after the Second World War have, as a group, one of the highest living standards in the country. Many of the Argentinians who entered western Europe during the period of the junta have also mixed effortlessly with their host societies, as have thousands of Poles.

The answer to how these terrorists are able to appear all of a sudden, as if out of nowhere, and strike at the heart of Western civilization should now be clear. The reason apparently lone assassins suddenly materialize in prosperous European cities and are able to kill scores of people and wound hundreds is that they have a state within a state that gives them refuge, the no-go zone. There they do not need a passport. There they can store arms. There they can prepare their attack plans. From there they can quickly go out and wreak havoc. If they get lucky, their co-conspirators can disappear back into the no-go zones, knowing they will be seen as heroes by their neighbours, their religious leaders and the growing number of alienated, drug-dealing youth gangs.

Before the French, Belgian, German and British governments — including their police, courts, schools and housing authorities — offer resident Muslims in Europe the blessings of a secular society, they will have to take back the ghettos. They will have to disarm the militants, deport scores of preachers, pacify the gangs, cut off the drug supply and cut off funding from Saudi Arabia and Iran. And they will have to persuade key players in the ghetto to stand up to their violent neighbours and instead support the peaceful aims of the state.

However, if the European ruling elites and the mainstream media have stopped believing in the liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity) that was proclaimed on that fateful day of July 14, 1789, then the future of France and much of western Europe will be one of a growing series of terrorist nightmares. They will have lost the war against the jihadists, the authority of the state will wither, and the French and other European majorities will be treated like a conquered people in their own lands. The same fate awaits the British, if they do not soon take preventative action.