Ayman al Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda leader, put it succinctly a few years ago: “More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. We are in a media battle, a race for the hearts and minds of the [the Muslim community].”

The West’s jihadist enemies understand only too clearly that there is an information war on. Most worryingly, they are comprehensively outperforming the West at it. And Daesh [more commonly known as ‘Islamic State’] is overtaking Al Qaeda.

The crucial backdrop to the Daesh crisis and the maelstrom in the Middle East is not only the power struggle between two predominant terrorist groups – Al Qaeda and Daesh – and their associates, but also the overarching conflict between Sunnis and Shias.

This reverberates across the Middle East, down into Africa (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Sudan) up into the Russian Islamic republics of Dagestan and Chechnya, and even to Indonesia and the Uighur population of China.

Through the brutal and mind-numbing beheadings appearing on our screens and the blood-curdling threats that these terror groups are uttering, they have instilled fear in the West.

They have learnt the shock value of horrifying acts of violence, including the effects of committing mindless acts of cultural heritage vandalism on an epic scale.

On a daily basis, the world witnesses the savagery and utter lack of respect for human life that is the hallmark of jihadists.

From beheadings to the slaughter of innocent tourists on the beaches of Tunisia, Daesh is an example of human nature at its most primitive.

But it is necessary to accept that this is the nature of terror, part of the psychological warfare to which we are being subjected. Above all, we should recognise that we are subject to the battle of minds that Daesh is waging. The information war is absolutely crucial to their recruitment of hundreds of radicalised misfits in the West, losers as well as idealists, innocents as well as adventure-seekers.

The current campaign of violence being waged by Daesh in the Middle East and other Islamic fundamentalists around the world is a toxic phenomenon encouraged by increased ease of individual mobility and the exponential improvement in communications, particularly through the internet. The internet makes it easier than ever to recruit the most vulnerable and disaffected in society.

But a stateless “caliphate” whose currency is the indiscriminate beheading of westerners cannot be allowed to poison our minds against all Muslims, nor to cow or demoralise us. This would be to play into their hands.

The West needs to raise its game in the information war. The first thing it has to do is to reverse the idea that these bearded insurgents in Syria and Iraq – in the words of many western political leaders – “have nothing to do with Islam”.

They have everything to do with Islam, as its adherents clearly define themselves by their religious beliefs.

But as I argued in an earlier article, it is a grossly distorted, backward-looking, seventh century form of Islam in which cultural vandalism, slavery, misogyny, rape, crucifixions and beheadings constitute the low common denominator.

It should not be an argument based on western values being different from the alternatives, but about their being better

Daesh and other extremists represent a blasphemous interpretation of Islam that sanctions and even encourages the killing of citizens of all nations and religions even, importantly, moderate and orthodox Muslims who disagree with the radicalisation and distortion of their faith.

In Daesh’s view, not only infidels but also “not sufficiently Islamic” Muslim rulers should be killed.

The West has failed to notice that for terrorists, first there is the jihad of the tongue. Secondly, there is the purse. And finally, there is the sword. The last is supreme.

The West needs to counter all three. First, by using military means to support Arab states to crush Daesh – a subject I shall cover in next week’s article. Secondly, by encouraging economic prosperity and social pluralism to reduce the reservoir of potential jihadists.

Above all, thirdly, the West must recognise the scale of the ideological battle. It must acknowledge that this is a competition for the hearts and minds, a conflict of values and ideologies. Just as during the Cold War against Soviet Communism, the West should muster every communication tool at its disposal, including its lost skills for propaganda and psychological warfare.

The bloodiest, but most effective, contribution to the global information war is currently being made by the tech-savvy jihadists of Daesh, who produce a stream of English language videos using a range of sophisticated techniques, have started an Arabic-language Twitter app, and know how to promote themselves on You Tube. Daesh is a generation ahead of other terrorist groups at propaganda.

The objective of Daesh propagandists is to convince all Muslims that establishing a “caliphate” is a religious duty. The West has failed to interrupt, revoke or re-shape this fundamental message, mostly relying on Imams to set young Muslims straight.

While calls for greater public funding of television and radio stations, such as Radio Free Europe and the BBC World Service, to counter the upsurge in anti-western propaganda are sensible, the critical issue in the media propaganda war against Daesh is to defend and promote, wage and win the argument in defence of western values.

It should not be an argument based on western values being different from the alternatives, but about their being better.

It is better to treat women as equals, better to have religious tolerance and freedom of expression, better to have independent justice and free markets.

Above all, the West must persuade young people across the globe that invading countries, breaching frontiers, raping women, destroying thousands of years of cultural heritage and decapitating prisoners and hostages is not part of some spurious “success story”. It is barbaric.

Young, impressionable, aspiring, potential jihadists in the West should be persuaded that Daesh’s commanders are corrupt and that the fight they might be tempted to enlist in is largely Muslims killing Muslims. Loathing for Daesh is about the only thing that unites Shias and Sunnis across the Arab world. This message has not yet got through. The role of western states in the information war is to stand up for values. Daesh is currently winning the battle by default.

A quarter of a century ago, Al Qaeda considered that its fight with the West was a battle of minds, with the balance of effort overwhelmingly propaganda and the rest military force. Daesh is the next development of a movement wedded to terrorist propaganda.

It should not be underestimated as a serious military threat, but neither should it be over-estimated as an unstoppable force for change. Daesh’s weapon of choice is not so much the butcher’s knife, but the calculated propaganda images of its brutal use.

A stateless “caliphate” whose international currency is the indiscriminate television beheading of westerners and fellow Muslims cannot be allowed to continue to win followers through such messages.

There is now a growing belief that the battle of ideas and imagery may prove as important as war on the ground. It may be that the most effective way to combat Daesh propaganda is not with more propaganda, but with military counter-action.

Nothing would be so devastating to their propaganda than a resounding military defeat.

Next week, I will discuss the military options to defeat Daesh.