I see that the US State Department has elected to list the Pasdaran – the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC – as a “foreign terrorist organisation/state sponsor of terrorism”. In a tit for tat move, Iranian lawmakers have prepared legislation that would label the US military as a terrorist group, according to Iran’s state-run […]
What to do with the term ‘extremism’
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass are two of my favourite books, in large part because of the way in which the author played with language. There is so much of linguistic interest in these (allegedly) children’s novels that one of my textbooks during my undergraduate courses in linguistics at […]
I would imagine that many people would reject state involvement in religion as a matter of principle Isn’t there, after all, a belief that the two are responsible for different functions? The state is supposed to look after everything that has to do with, well, running a state, and religion is concerned about things like […]
Before I go any further it is important that I make a confession: I know next to nothing about guns. I have never owned a gun and never fired one – wait, that last bit is not 100% true. My older brother let me fire one in our family basement when I was nine years […]
Just when you think you’ve seen everything you realise you haven’t. The world is a big place and there are always new things to see, new experiences to undergo. Thankfully there are lots of wonderful novelties and that is indeed a positive, enriching fact. Unfortunately, there are also lots of not so wonderful people, events […]
Imagine the following scenario. You arrive at the airport to check in for a flight to take you to your vacation. You give your passport to the attendant and wait for your boarding pass. The attendant swipes your documentation and suddenly furrows her/his brow. The passport is swiped again. More furrows. The attendant asks you […]
I know I have written about this before but some things just bear repeating, even if that repetition is repetitive. An act of terrorism is an act of serious violence carried out for political, religious or ideological reasons. The first part of that is usually fairly easy to distinguish. After all, serious violence is an […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on March 25, 2019. When important events occur this is news. People want to know what is happening as it is happening: that is how reporting the news works. We want to know more, not less, and we want to know it NOW. We want as many details […]
You know you are getting old when you come across a story about an event you were heavily involved in and realise that it happened so long ago that most of your friends, family and acquaintances really have no idea what you are talking about when you raise it. In my case the story centres […]
I have written a few blogs about China’s counter terrorism approach when it comes to Uyghur Islamist extremists. I have dedicated a podcast to it as well as a partial chapter in my third book The Lesser Jihads. And yet it is a topic that I need to return to – again – in light […]