I have been stalking members of the terrorist group Tawheed Network (formerly al-Muhajiroun). I have spied on them over the Internet, and heard much gossip about them in my neighborhood of Bury Park, Luton. Unfortunately, I have uncovered something disturbing. The local jihadis have been cautious since December 2015, when their leader Istiak Alamgir was arrested. They […]
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We’re all familiar with the routine by now. A terrorist attack occurs. Hours later, the world learns the identity of the attacker (or, the identities of the attackers). Then comes the inevitable question, “What was the motive for the attack?” Sometimes a general consensus is quickly reached. Few disagree, for instance, that Anders Breivik was […]
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This is Part 2 of Gurwinder Bhogal’s report. Gurwinder is a writer embedded in Luton, England and has spent the last year and more researching the causes of extremism. Read Part 1, which is essential to understanding his conclusions, here. *** From my research thus far I had concluded that jihadism was not strictly social, political, […]
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In the aftermath of yet another Islamist attack in Europe, this time in Barcelona, the usual excuse makers will still be trying to blame the Iraq war, or the Crusades, or the fact the perpetrator may have been unemployed as the motivations for the atrocity. I worked for several years as a youth worker with […]
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Terrorism is on the rise. But as ISIS is being beaten back in the East, their operations have only increased in the West. 2016 saw a slew of Islamist atrocities throughout the Western world, from the murder of a priest in Normandy, to the Brussels bombings, to the axe-attack on a train in Wurzburg, to the […]
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Hezbollah is not ISIS. They are much more sophisticated than your everyday insurgency of religious fanatics.
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Music is perhaps the most potent medium in all the arts, eliciting profound emotional experiences through its surging melodies and pulsating rhythms. The sheer ubiquity and variety of music found throughout the globe — Mexican mariachi, New Orleans jazz, Navajo night chants, Peruvian panpipes, Indian raga, Seattle grunge — suggests too that it is an […]
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When I first launched my Taking The Myth podcast as a companion piece to the regular interviews, the idea was to bring listeners a regular dose of skeptical discussion without an emphasis on religion. The odd deconstruction of homeopathic claims here, a debunking of a “ghost sighting” there coupled with some reporting on scientific innovation. […]
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While each one of the three terrorist attacks to have taken place over the last three months in the UK is a profound call of concern, the case of the second should have been the easiest to solve. Unlike the more recent attack in London, the only direct perpetrator behind the Manchester attack was Salman […]
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