Search: “Al Qaeda”

It is often a difficult question for governments to decide which activities to allow and which to ban. There are clear cases where certain actions should not be tolerated, like murder for instance, and we have laws to take care of those.  Some argue, however, that governments should just stay out of our lives, that […]

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 […]

Although there is much still to learn about the attack in California in which a husband and his wife opened fire on a group of his co-workers, killing 14 and wounding many more before dying in a shootout with police, there is some information available that casts interesting light on what we know, and what […]

As we continually seek to understand terrorism and what makes a terrorist, we hear many reasons brought forward and defended as THE answer or cause.  I have already, on several occasions, discussed and dismissed the perennial disenfranchisement/alienation/poverty…. myth and will not return to it here. Now another “soupe du jour” has arisen, probably not coincidentally […]

When we talk of terrorism we often tiptoe around terminology.  Even the word “terrorism” itself has caused some angst: witness the debate back and forth over what to call the killing of three US Muslims in North Carolina a few months ago by a crazed neighbour and the more recent slaughter of nine African Americans […]

In some ways Canada is a post-religious nation.  This is not to say that religion is not important or that it is not present, but it is certainly not as front and centre as it used to be.  The Canadian landscape has also shifted as believers of other faiths (Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, etc.) multiply. As […]