Search: “Al Qaeda”

There are few places on Earth more pitiable than Mali, a landlocked country in West Africa that is about the size of South Africa.  It ranks in the bottom ten with respect to poverty, has one of the world’s largest birth rates (6 children per mother), and has a serious terrorist problem to boot. It […]

It is natural for like to gravitate to like.  We tend to associate with people that look like us, think like us, have the same fundamental beliefs as us.  We also tend to read news items with which we agree, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias.  There is probably something to do with evolution behind […]

As if the recently terminated (and interminable) US Presidential election campaign wasn’t bad enough, right on cue at least two terrorist groups have threatened to carry out attacks to disrupt it.  The first out of the box was apparently Al Qaeda, at least according to US officials, who warned about non-specific plots in New York […]

Terrorist groups are really good at telling a story.  This skill contributes to what we call narrative: a worldview that explains why a group does something, provides meaning and helps to draw others in.  Islamist extremists in particular have crafted what we call the “Single Narrative”, a wide historical and current canvas in which the […]

OK, I admit I am a little sensitive when it comes to the term “intelligence failure”.  You would be too if the profession you devoted three decades to was constantly criticised in the media for screwing up.  The failure to predict 9/11.  The failure to predict India’s acquisition of a nuclear weapons capacity.  The classic […]

I like Tariq Ramadan, I really do. I have had the privilege of hearing him talk several times in Ottawa and I find him to be a very well spoken and intelligent man. And I don’t buy the accusation that as the grandson of Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, he is […]

Today (July 22) marks the fifth anniversary of one of the darkest days in Norway’s history.  Anders Behring Breivik set off bombs outside a government complex in Oslo, killing 8, then traveled to an island called Utoya where a young person’s political function was occurring and massacred 69 people. Today also marks the fifth anniversary […]

Now that the immediate horror of what happened to John Ridsdel has passed – not that this heinous act will ever be forgotten – many have turned their attention to what the Canadian government could or should have done to save the life of this Canadian citizen.  Debates of this nature are inevitable as everyone […]

The Canadian Council of Imams has announced that it intends to launch a series of deradicalisation clinics in the Greater Toronto Area this summer.  Describing the move as “proactive”, Imam Hamid Slimi noted that “nobody wants to see another Brussels or Paris” in Canada.  No, we don’t, whether we are Muslim or not. The CCI […]

I see that one of the greatest terrorism scholars alive, Bruce Hoffman, has just published a piece in Foreign Affairs predicting an eventual alliance between Al Qaeda (AQ) and Islamic State (IS).  I see this article as Mr. Hoffman’s attempt to remind us,  as he so often has, that AQ is not dead and cannot […]