Book launch – When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith

Are Islamist terrorists the only ones to use religion to justify violence?

Join us on January 16 for the launch of Phil Gurski’s 5th book, When Religion Kills. Phil will present his book as he explores violent extremism across a broad range of the world’s major religions.

Christian fundamentalists. Hindu nationalists. Islamic jihadists. Buddhist militants. Jewish extremists. Members of these and other religious groups have committed horrific acts of terrorist violence in recent decades. How is this possible? How do individuals use their religious beliefs to justify such actions? How do they manipulate the language and symbols of their faith to motivate others to commit violence in the name of the divine?

Join us for the book launch:

Thurday 16 January 2020
Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies
Montreal, QC

Phil Gurski will present his book and address some of these essential questions as he explores violent extremism across a broad range of the world’s major religions.

Copies of book will be available for sale on site at the price of $40.

About Phil Gurski

Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. and Programme Director for the Security, Economics and Technology (SET) hub at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute (PDI).

He worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East. He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013, focusing on community outreach and training on radicalisation to violence, until his retirement from the civil service in May 2015, and as consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) from May to October 2015. He was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the SecDev Group from June 2018 to July 2019.

Mr. Gurski has presented on violent Islamist-inspired and other forms of terrorism and radicalisation across Canada and around the world. He is the author of “The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West” (Rowman and Littlefield 2015) “Western Foreign Fighters: the threat to homeland and international security” (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), The Lesser Jihads: taking the Islamist fight to the world (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), An end to the ‘war on terrorism’ and When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith (Lynne Rienner 2019).

He regularly blogs and podcasts (An Intelligent Look at Terrorism), and tweets on terrorism. He is an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter Terrorism (ICCT) in the Netherlands, a digital fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies at Concordia University, a member of the board at the National Capital Branch of the CIC (Canadian International Council) and an affiliate of the Canadian network for research on Terrorism Security and Society (TSAS). Mr. Gurski is a regular commentator on terrorism and radicalisation for a wide variety of Canadian and international media. He is fluently trilingual in English, French and Spanish.