This is a cowardly spectacle, not witnessed since the killing fields of Cambodia and the Holocaust.

Just as Australians are outraged over church culpability in child abuse within our own so-called Christian society, so Australians are equally outraged over this systematic crime against humanity in the Middle East.

Our Muslim leadership in Australia would know the risk of brainwashed Australian adolescents committing atrocities in the Middle East and returning home to continue the mission.

The beheaded American journalist did not die in vain. His death, for merely being an American reporter, has become a wake-up call to the West.

These extremists make the Al Qaeda terrorist organisation look tame.

They embody the worst of the world's atrocities against mankind. In fact they probably are the worst case.

Unless the Muslim community makes a clear statement on not just the beheading, but the very existence of the Islamic State terrorist organisation then other Australians will remain confused and sceptical.

To slaughter men, women and children indiscriminately purely because of their faith is a mentally deranged misrepresentation of Islam, which should be condemned by the world.

All clergy from whatever faith have to make a stand, loud and clear.

Even Iran, the well-known exporter of terrorism, has repudiated these extremists.

It's time for the West to aggressively end the march of the Islamic State and its twisted religious ideology.

Its real quest is not and never has been religious purity, but power.

If ever there was a just war in modern times it is this one.