Search: “Terrorists”

It sometimes seems that we have a love-hate relationship with our law enforcement agencies.  We want to feel safe and we expect our men and women in uniform to protect us from serious crime, save women and children from domestic abuse and be human enough to engage with the homeless and destitute on on streets […]

Over the past few years we have been informed that a significant number of Canadians – probably close to a 100 according to the latest data (i.e. the CSIS Director) – have decided to travel to Syria/Iraq and join terrorist groups such as Islamic State and, to a lesser extent, the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al […]

The Canadian public were made aware of a serious allegation this week that a Sikh resident in BC was running a “terror camp” near Mission, a town of around 35,000 on the Fraser River east of Vancouver.  The story came from an article in an Indian newspaper and claimed that Hardeep Nijjar was the “operational […]

As I wrote in a blog post yesterday, today marks the 10th anniversary of the arrest of 17 men in the Greater Toronto Area in the culmination of a massive terrorism investigation by Canadian authorities.  In what came to be known as the “Toronto 18” (the last subject was arrested in August 2006) Canadians were […]

If there is one aspect of terrorism that is poorly understood it is the relationship between mental illness and the execution of a terrorist act. All too often the masses agree in the immediate aftermath of an incident that the perpetrator must have been suffering from an undisclosed – or undiagnosed – mental disease.  We […]

When a terrorist cell is disrupted, or an individual is arrested at the airport on his or her way to Turkey to join a group like Islamic State, the media rises to the challenge and splashes the news across all platforms.  The public responds in kind and for a short time the blogosphere and news […]

A lot of people and a lot of governments are getting tired of the so-called “War on Terrorism”.  More and more attacks seem to be happening all the time.  What we used to think was a problem “over there” is now “over here”: Brussels, Paris, San Bernardino, Ottawa…  We cannot seem to get away from […]

In the Western world we tend to separate out young criminals, or offenders, from older ones.  There is probably a great deal of variation in what constitutes “young”: in Canada, the Youth Criminal Justice Act covers crimes up to the age of 18.  Those convicted are treated differently than adults in keeping with scientific evidence […]

We’ve all heard the phrase “flying while Muslim”,  a reality that underscores the sorry state of affairs in Western societies in the post 9/11 period.  Muslims are disproportionately singled out for special attention at airports and elsewhere.  The genuine concern over terrorism, which is real and not some state-driven campaign to garner support, has given […]

Having just spent two and a half days with religious leaders, civil society activists, policy makers and bureaucrats from around the world at Wilton Park in Sussex, there were so many topics and perspectives presented that I will likely have to write several blogs to cover the richness of the material and the subsequent thoughts […]