Make Sense of the world
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The suspect in the terrorist attack on a synagogue in the German city of Halle in October, 27-year-old Stephan B., was driven by anti-Semitism and a radical-right worldview. After the murder of Walter Lübcke in June, this was the second deadly radical-right terrorist attack this year to shake...
Without the delivery of integration work at the local level, any effort to counter extremism is effectively built on a shaky foundation with too much sand in the mix. “Communities Defeat Terrorism” was the tagline when I worked as the head of strategy and policy in the office of the UK’s...
Anti-Muslim hate crime, which spikes following terror attacks, is inextricably intertwined with racism. This article has been difficult to write because I was hoping that, in 2019, I would not need to start talking about international terrorism and how it can impact the streets of Britain....
Throughout its development, Prevent has faced severe criticism but has remained protected by the armor of national security. On January 22, Britain’s security minister, Ben Wallace, announced there was to be an independent review of the government’s Prevent strategy. The review was launched...
A case of an IS bride’s newborn child raises questions of citizenship, personhood and agency. You probably haven’t heard of Marshae Jones. Last December, she was arrested after a shooting at a convenience store in Pleasant Grove, a small town in Alabama. Jones, who was pregnant at the time,...
1983 is an alternative history that bears disturbing resemblance to contemporary politics. Popular culture is full of alternative histories. Mackinley Kantor wrote a famous article in Look magazine in 1960 about what would have happened if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. Philip Roth’s...
Moscow begrudgingly permits regional power play in exchange for North Caucasian security, but at what point will it clash with its internal security framework? Two months of contentious ethno-politics between Chechnya and Ingushetia, which prompted extended public demonstrations in the Ingush...
The assimilation policy of integration, actively practiced across Europe, is one of the main prerequisites of xenophobia. The latest measurements in Europe show that after a sharp spike in xenophobia and radicalism in 2015 caused by the migration crisis, the situation has improved slightly, but...
The international community must side with Turkey in the face of a probable full-scale assault on Idlib in an attempt to prevent a humanitarian and diplomatic crisis. The Astana process, which aimed at formalizing security arrangements and de-escalating tension between Turkey, Russia and Iran,...
Islam is not at war with Britain, just as the latter is not at war with Muslims, even if extremists on both sides want that to be the case. The Arabic phrase Bismillah, ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim translates as “in the name of Allah the beneficent the merciful.” These words open all but one of the...
Norway's politicians have not dealt with or intervened to undermine the racist ideology that made Anders Behring Breivik's 2011 attacks possible. In July, Norway remembered the victims of the Utøya and Oslo attacks of 2011. A temporary memorial was unveiled with the names of those killed. The...
