• Europeans try counter-radicalization hotlines to combat Islamists’ appeal

    Much attention has been given to Islamic State recruitment efforts targeting Europe’s Muslim population, and now a coalition of private and public sector groups are countering those recruitment efforts with preventative measures. Current counter-radicalization hotlines were launched after European governments effectively used them to de-radicalize neo-Nazis. Despite the success with skinheads, observers note that many hotlines for would-be Islamic terrorists do not seem to be effective, at least not yet.

  • U.S. struggles to counter extremist Islamist narrative and its appeal

    Since the George W. Bush administration, U.S. officials have understood that winning the war on terror would require changing the narrative used by terrorist groups to recruit new followers. In a 2006 report on America’s strategy for combating terrorism, the administration called the war on terror, “both a battle of arms and a battle of ideas.” Today, U.S. officials still find it difficult to counter extremist narratives that have helped terror groups recruit many young Western Muslims to the Middle East.

  • Concerns grow about attacks on rail systems by domestic terrorists

    Between September 2001 and December 2011, at least838 attacks on passenger rail systems have killed more than 1,370 people. As DHS officials focus on assuring the American public that security agencies remain on high alert, last week’s incidents on two of the nation’s major metropolitan rail systems raised more concerns about public safety and preparedness.

  • Belgian police raids operational Islamist terror cells in four cities

    The Belgian federal police yesterday raided a residential building in Verviers, a town of about 60,000 residents seventy-five miles east of Brussels, located between Liège and the Belgium-German border, killing two suspected terrorists and seriously injuring a third. Eric Van der Sypt, a spokesman for the office of Belgian federal prosecutor, said a terrorist outrage may only have been hours away: “This operation stopped a major terrorist attack from taking place. You could say a second potential Paris has been averted,” he said. At the same time that the raid on the house in Verviers was unfolding, special police units carried out at least a dozen raids elsewhere in Belgium in what was a coordinated operations. They focused on neighborhoods which are predominantly populated by Muslim immigrants in at least four districts in and around Brussels, with explosives reportedly found in the western Brussels area of Anderlecht.

     

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  • A first: PA, PLO on trial in New York for supporting terrorism

    On Tuesday, a New York federal court opened a trialwhich will decide whether the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) should be held responsible for seven shootings and bombings that killed thirty-three people and wounded more than 450, some of them Americans, in Jerusalem between 2002 and 2004. The lawsuit was launched in 2004 by victims and families of victims, and was filed under the Antiterrorism Act of 1991. It seeks up to $1 billion from the PA and the PLO.

  • Understanding Muhammad: we need a more informed approach

    In any terrorist attack by Muslim extremists perpetrated in the name of Islam — such as the recent Charlie Hebdo atrocity — discussions about the Prophet Muhammad, his life, and his teachings come to the fore in Western societies. From the “prophet of peace” to a kind of terrorist antichrist, ideas about who Muhammad was and what he means vary among both Muslims and non-Muslims. There is no similarity between al-Qaeda’s interpretation of Muhammad and the Muhammad of a Sufi Muslim. But how much of this discussion is relevant to understanding the motivations behind Islamic extremism? How can the West understand Muhammad impartially, and what is Muslims’ relationship with Muhammad?

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  • What drives killers like the Ottawa or Paris attackers?

    Zehaf-Bibeau, the Islamist convert who recently killed a Canadian military reservist on duty in Ottawa, Canada, represents a type of attacker rarely discussed — a person so obsessed with an overvalued idea that it defines their identity and leads them to commit violence without regard for the consequences. Although it appears that the assailants in Paris had more ties with terrorist organizations, the individuals still fit the description of people acting on overvalued ideas.

  • U.S. fight against extremism, terrorism hobbled by Obama’s qualms about using the term “Islamist”: Critics

    On 18 February the White House will host a global summit on “Countering Violent Extremism.” Critics say that the title of the summit captures a disturbing aspect of the administration’s efforts to counter terrorism: The preference for using anodyne language about the nature of the challenge rather than calling it for what it is – terrorism carried out by Islamic extremists, or, even more sweepingly, Islamist-fueled terrorism.The administration’s reluctance is not merely a problem of nomenclature, a refusal to employ terminology which may be overly broad or which might be offensive to some, says one critic. Rather, it evinces a lack of strategic focus, weakening the U.S. hand in the fight and undermining efforts to counter Islamist extremists and their supporters.

  • Delicate balance: Fighting extremist Islamists while guarding against anti-Muslim backlash

    The terror attack on Charlie Hebdo’s office in Paris has shed more light on the problem France is facing dealing with extremist elements in its Muslim population. As is the case with many young Muslims who have recently joined militant groups, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the two brothers involved in the Charlie Hebdo attack, were French-born, leaving many in France to wonder how fellow Europeans could have become violent extremists. Many Muslim immigrants to France live in the grimy banlieues, the ugly and impersonal “suburbs” consisting of exposed-concrete housing projects on the outskirts of large French cities, and these shantytowns are also where the most radical elements of the Muslim population effectively market their ideology to young, vulnerable, and largely under-educated and unemployed Muslim men.

  • U.K. anti-radicalization strategy is not working: Critics

    The surge in young Britons flocking to Syria and the Middle East to join radical Islamist groups is a result of failed policies and inadequate funding for anti-radicalization efforts, according to counterterrorism experts. In 2007 the Labor government established Prevent, a counterterrorism strategy aiming to deter individuals from becoming radicalized. Critics say that Prevent, especially as it is being carried out under the current government, is failing to tackle radicalism at its roots.The current strategy is “focusing only on people who have already been radicalized,” but she warns, “prevention is better than cure,” says Labor MP Hazel Blears who introduced the Prevent program when she was a member of the cabinet.

  • Controversial French comedian Dieudonné investigated over “Charlie Coulibaly” post

    The anti-Semitic French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala is in hot water again. The Paris prosecutor’s office has said it has opened an investigation into the comedian’s Facebook post, in which he mocked Sunday’s mass rallies against Jihadist terrorism in France. “Know that tonight, for me, I feel CharlieCoulibaly,” Dieudonné wrote in his post, merging the names of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper where two gunmen massacred twelve people, with that of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four Jewish hostages at a kosher supermarket.

  • Sisi calls for “revolutionizing” Islam

    In an important speech delivered to Islamic scholars at Al Azhar University, Egyptian president Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi calls for revolutionizing Islam. “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing, and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!” he said. “That thinking — I am not saying “religion” but “thinking” — that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world!” adding: “I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution.”

  • Boko Haram's deadliest massacre yet: 2,000 dead

    Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist insurgency, has been gaining ground in the face of what Western security analysts consider an ineffective, even counterproductive, campaign by an incompetent Nigerian military weakened by corruption and lack of professionalism. The number of victims of Bomo Haram’s brutal campaign is mounting exponentially, with the latest tally reaching 2,000 dead in and around the northeastern town of Baga, on the border of the Nigerian border with Chad. Amnesty International described the attack on Baga as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram. The Baga campaign also saw the first use by Boko Haram of a child suicide bomber: A 10-years old girl detonated powerful explosives concealed under her veil at a crowded Monday Market in Maiduguri, the shopping hub in a city which is at the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency.

  • Gunmen, holding hostages, surrounded by police in small town outside of Paris

    As we put today’s HSNW issue to bed (06:00 EST), the French security forces are surrounding a printing facility in Dammartin-en-Goële , Seine- et-Marne, where the two brothers who shot and killed twelve people in and around the offices of Charlie Hebdo Wednesday are holed up, holding one or more hostages. We will continue to update the story as events unfold.

  • The ICC may be asked to classify IS's actions against the Yazidis as genocide

    Genocide is defined as the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial, or religious group. Proving such a case against IS might seem easy enough, but doing so would require complex investigative, analytical, and legal work that Iraq may not have the resources for. Last August, Islamic State (IS) militants seized control of villages in Sinjar, northern Iraq, home to thousands of Yazidis, a minority group who IS has attempted to wipe out due to the group’s religious beliefs. Women and children were raped and sold as slaves, and thousands of Yasidi men were shot or imprisoned. Many were given an ultimatum to convert to Islam or be executed. A new campaign is underway to get the International Criminal Court(ICC) to classify IS’s actions as genocide.