Johann Hari: Having created these fundamentalists, are we condemned to fight them all our lives?

When I sat opposite a suicide bomber, I wanted to imagine he was angry about the same things as me

After the suicide-murders, the autopsy. After the deaths, the contradictory explanations. By now, almost every Londoner has gone through the nervous ritual of getting back on the Tube, minding far more than the gap. And by now, most of us have heard a thousand conflicting reasons why: They hate our freedom. They hate the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. They hate the pillaging of the Middle East's oil supplies. They hate the Infidel. They just hate.

Even as bodies lie rotting in the tunnels below King's Cross station, it is right to ask why. Some people are saying these massacres of civilians were simply mindless psychopathy, with no more purpose than Fred and Rosemary West's butchery of young girls in Gloucester. That is wrong. These were vile acts of political murder, emerging from a political context created, in part, by Western statecraft and driven by political goals. It is always better to know what you are up against.

In occupied Palestine, in Syria and in London, I have met radical Islamists who support the slaughter of civilians; some have pined to commit these killings themselves. In the rash of explanations this week, I have yet to hear an account that explains how they came to exist or what they think. So here is my attempt.

For more than 60 years, Britain and America created, armed and funded tyrants across Muslim lands in exchange for access to oil and for co-operation in the Cold War. Whenever there were shoots of democracy or Islamic reformation - like the election of Mossadeq in 1951 in Iran - our governments destroyed them. Any wannabe democrats were swiftly tortured and killed. Generations of Arab democrats - their Garibaldis, Jeffersons or Chartists - were lost to history.

In this warped environment, an undemocratic opposition movement was born. The Middle East was turned into a petri dish for the virus of Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalism. Since democracy was not an option, this austere form of Islam grew in popularity as the only alternative outlet for rage at the obvious corruption of Western proxy rulers. It is a simple philosophy, expressed eloquently by every radical Islamist I have met.

Wahhabis are obsessed with purity. They believe in complete unquestioning subjection to Sharia law, which is the one and eternal source of morality. They believe that reason and democracy are evil sources of "Westoxification", bent on weakening the True Muslims. Every other form of Islam - those practised by most Muslims - are to them as disgusting as Christianity, Judaism or atheism. Although this ideology was born in the Middle East, it has spread across the world, to Indonesia, Chechnya and now - it seems - Yorkshire.

It is tempting to assume that a movement born in reaction to injustice must be just. It is tempting to project your own concerns - your desire for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, or for a free Chechnya, or for an end to poverty in the Arab world - on to the bombers. When I sat opposite an Islamic Jihad suicide-bomber in Gaza, I wanted to imagine he was angry about the same things as me. But then he explained that gays and Jews should all be killed, that poverty is a good thing because it makes people more "spiritually pure", and that all women should be shrouded in burkas for life.

We have been here before. In a situation of terrible injustice, a totalitarian movement has been born with goals of its own. Nazism was born in the stunned and cruel humiliation of the Versailles Treaty. Marxist-Leninism was born in the torture chambers of Tsarism and it became its mirror-image. Each created their own set of monstrous injustices to replace the last.

Nobody should now doubt that Islamism is totalitarian. Talk to its followers: they are admirably candid. They seek absolute control of individuals, even if they do not share their beliefs, in order to subject them to a 9th-century code of ethics. Realise their concerns are not your concerns; they have a logic of their own and it was in place before the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reasoning of the perpetrators is explained in the 2001 book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man Bin Laden describes as his "mentor". Into the 1990s, the Islamists became frustrated that they could not rally the "Muslim masses" to overthrow their local tyrants. So they decided to strike the "big enemy" - Western states - to re-energise Wahhabi jihadism and precipitate revolutions throughout the Middle East.

So Islamism is more a response to the decisions of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt than of Bush and Blair. Last Thursday was not the price for Afghanistan and Iraq; it was the price of decades of trading oil for tyranny without any regard to the consequences. These recent wars may have been useful propaganda tools for the jihadists, but saying they were their primary motivations does not match the evidence.

So where do we go from here? Having created a totalitarian movement, are we condemned to fight it for the rest of our lives?

There is one simple solution that I think will fail, and one complex solution I think could succeed in time. The bad solution is simple: give the totalitarian movement what they desire. One letter-writer to The Independent expressed this view well yesterday: "Osama bin Laden is very clear about what he wants: remove Western support from the regions' tyrants, withdraw the occupying troops and the attacks will stop. It really is that simple."

Right now this is a view confined to a Gallowayite minority, but if there is an 11 September, Madrid or 7 July every 18 months for decades to come, it will swell. If the attackers ever get dirty bombs or worse, it may become a majority view.

And it sounds so persuasive, doesn't it? Except when you realise that Osama Bin Laden considers Spain (or "Andalucia", as he calls it) to be a Muslim land because it was an Islamic territory until 1492. Not to mention all of Israel (Bin Laden is no fan of the 1967 borders), much of the Balkans and all of Kashmir.

So where does the logic of the Gallowayites stop? Once the Middle East is handed over to sharia law, would we then cede Spain, Tel Aviv, Kosovo and chunks of India to get al-Qa'ida off our backs? There are good arguments for withdrawing the troops from Iraq - but doing it because Bin Laden wants us to is not one of them. No matter how many steaks we feed this tiger, it will not become vegetarian.

I'll discuss a more effective - albeit agonisingly slow-burning - solution on Friday. But for now, we must not allow myths to emerge about the motives of the bombers or of jihadists across the world. They speak very clearly for themselves. This was a fight that began long ago. If it is going to end in our lifetimes - if we want to be able to have a worry-free Tube ride again one day - we have to look out not only for suspicious packages, but for suspiciously simple explanations.

j.hari@independent.co.uk