THE World Trade Centre 2001, the Bali bombings 2002, the Australian embassy in Jakarta 2004, Madrid railway station 2004, the London Underground 2005, the Taj Mahal Hotel Mumbai 2008, Charlie Hebdo, the Parramatta police station, the Bataclan Theatre in Paris — I could go on but you get the picture.

And the picture is not that all this is the work of Islamic State. Most of those jihadi attacks preceded IS. They were organised by different groups — al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba in India, Jemaah Islamiah in Indonesia — but they all had one thing in common.

Last Friday in the West African country of Mali, it was an affiliate of al-Qaeda, that stormed the Radisson Hotel shouting Allahu Akbar (God is great) before taking 170 hostages and killing 19.

Nor is the killing entirely indiscriminate. The gunmen holding the hostages in Mali’s Radisson Hotel were prepared to release some who could recite verses from the Koran.

It was similar in the Westgate Shopping Mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya (September 2013) where 67 hostages were killed. Some care was taken not to kill Muslims.

Those who could recite the Shahadah, the statement of Islamic faith, were released and spared.