Search: “Islamist extremists”

The rolling hills of West Sussex provide a beautiful backdrop for just about any activity. I have just returned from a two and a half day conference at Wiston House (Wilton Park) at which 50 people were charged with looking at the relationship between religion and radicalisation.  An emotional and difficult topic to be sure […]

The famous French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy has penned an op-ed piece in which he asks whether there is a fight within Islam for the soul of the faith.  He makes the familiar argument that there are elements within the global Muslim polity that are at a minimum grossly fundamentalist and intolerant and at a maximum […]

Intelligence is usually a plodding business.  Not that it is not exciting – quite the contrary! – but that it takes time to gather information, process it, analyse it, figure out what gaps remain, and then go out and get more.  Rarely do you paint a complete picture, regardless of how good and diverse your […]

The new Liberal government in Canada has been talking about terrorism quite a bit lately.  We now have a decision on what Trudeau’s policy on Islamic State (IS) will be as well as a renewed – and much needed – emphasis on countering radicalisation in this country. And the Defence Minister, Harjit “bad-ass” Sajjan, has […]

Do you remember when former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in an interview with the CBC, said that “Islamicism” was the greatest threat to national security?  I think we all knew what he meant – Islamist extremism – but his use of “Islamicism” was roundly criticised and led to accusations that the Conservative government viewed […]

Most Canadians have heard of the “Toronto 18”,  a group of homegrown extremists who were arrested in the summer of 2006 before they could detonate truck bombs, an act that could have killed and maimed thousands.  At the time, and probably to this day for that matter, it was the largest and most complicated terrorism […]

Whenever a terrorist attack happens we collectively strive both to understand it and to look over what we may have missed.  We do so in order to figure out how we can better identify the signs of violent radicalisation and perhaps act before terrorist events occur. I have long argued that the signs of violent […]

Terrorism eats up a lot of our time as citizens and news consumers.  IS.  AQ.  Boko Haram.  Hizballah.  Hindu extremists.  Anti-abortion extremists.  Boy, things have really changed since I was a kid.  Sure there was the odd story about a hijacked airplane and the Troubles in Ireland, but it wasn’t a daily occurrence (maybe it […]

With a new government sworn in yesterday in Canada, there is an added impetus to do CVE (countering violent extremism) in this country.  We used to do it, and do it well, until a few – ahem unfortunate – phrases were dropped over the past year by certain government officials.  We can now set that […]