Search: “Al Qaeda”

This has been a very, very disturbing day. An attack – including a decapitation – in France.   Tourists slaughtered in Tunisia.  Shia Muslims killed by a suicide bomber at their mosque.  After prayers.  This evokes the senselessness of the massacre last week in Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve always advocated keeping things in perspective and […]

Intelligence agencies can get quite creative when developing ways to collect information.  But sometimes they get too creative that lead to more problems.  Not to mention endangering thousands of lives – innocent lives. Take the case of Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor in jail for his involvement in the terrorist group Laskhar-e-Islam.  What is far […]

On one level, it amazes me how open people are with their hateful ideology.  Part of me thinks that supporters or fans of extremism would be a little more careful in displaying their beliefs given society’s opprobrium and the fact that, at least in today’s Canada, their activities could cross the criminal threshold. Take the […]

Sometimes you come across a quote that really strikes you as profound.  Here’s one that remains relevant after all these years.  It comes from a 2002 issue of Foreign Affairs and was penned by Paris-based researcher Grenville Buford: “Wars have typically been fought against proper nouns (Germany, say) for the good reason that proper nouns […]

While driving through Perth last week, I listened to an interview with a University of Windsor academic who had studied the effects of a program offered on Canadian university campuses aimed at reducing sexual assault .  Her research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that the training resulted in a significant decrease in […]

This ain’t good. In an interview with Vice, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, while defending the government’s position that wearing a niqab (face veil) during citizenship ceremonies is not concomitant with Canadian values, uttered the following sequence: ” The overwhelming majority of Canadians want that rule to continue to apply. We’ve done a lot in the […]

The RCMP in Winnipeg detained a 23-year old Manitoban and seized a number of hard drives they said he used to express support for the Islamic State (see story here).  The youth arrested is a convert to Islam and the son of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.  He as apparently been on CSIS’ watchlist […]

I have already talked a bit about the Sunni-Shia split in an earlier piece (Brothers at Arms).  Today’s thoughts are along a different pathway. When I worked in the intelligence world and looked at violent radicalization, the focus was entirely on Sunnis, not Shia.  Of course, there were other kinds of violence to worry about […]

Our prime minister is quoted as saying that “jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced” (see article here). Really? Bigger than the threat of MAD during the Cold War? Bigger than the Nazi onslaught of the 1930s and 1940s? More dangerous than climate change or run-of-the-mill violence?  (homework […]

According to Al Jazeera, the Islamic State recently claimed in an online statement that it carried out a deadly suicide bomb attack at a mosque in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province of Qatif (see story here).  The eastern part of Saudi Arabia is largely Shia and tensions between the Sunni monarchy and its Shia residents have been […]