You should read The Mind of Jihad by Laurent Murawiec, Firefinga
Belgium and Sweden possibly motivated by a general dislike for the secular West
The repeated attacks in the UK and France very likely bc of direct military involvement.
St. Petersburg Bombing just happened a few weeks ago. And in Iran - it's a Shiite country.
And for years many people tried to explain Islamist terrorism in Europe with the single word "Iraq", which may have had some traction in the UK and Spain but certainly doesn't apply to France.
And for years many people tried to explain Islamist terrorism in Europe with the single word "Iraq", which may have had some traction in the UK and Spain but certainly doesn't apply to France.
The bombing in Russia is the only one, recently, that I've heard of. I'm contrasting that to the fact that Russia has far more direct military involvement in Syria, and has killed (and is killing) far more Muslims there, than all Western countries put together.
Of course, it could just be that it's far easier to catch would-be jihadis before they can carry out an attack in a country with an ultra-authoritarian regime and no regard for civil liberties and human rights.
Which shows certain people's ignorance of the matter, in the mid 1990s there were Terror attacks carried out by the "Armed Islamic Group" (repeated bombings of the paris Metor, plane highjacking). Reason: French invovlement in Algeria. There'S quite a tradition of France being Islamists' target.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Islamic_Group_of_Algeria
You'll see more like this. Islamist terror attacks have happened in the past in Russia repeatedly, connected with the war in Chechnya, the most brutal one in 2004 (schoolkids held hostages in Beslan)
Still true - not in terms of motivation necessarily, but in terms of origin. Afghanistan gave us Bin laden, Iraq gave us widespread global Islamist terror.
Again, Beslan was not an 'Islamist' attack by any credible definition of the term. It was an extension of the vicious nationalist conflict of the 2nd Chechnyan war.
Yeah, you wouldn't really call the Chechen separatist militants "Islamists" any more than you'd call the IRA "Catholic fundamentalists".
Feuding field commanders and foreign jihadists, such as the Saudi known as Emir al-Khattab, ruled small districts with their own little armies. Kidnappings for ransom - along with primitive extraction of oil - were their main sources of income.
Many of the foreigners adhered to a puritanical Muslim ideology known as Wahhabism that ran counter to Chechnya's Sufi traditions.
Akhmad Kadyrov, who was appointed as top Mufti of Chechnya, came into opposition with the puritans and their Chechen supporters, because he saw their extremist views as a threat to the separatist movement. In 1998, Kadyrov openly renounced the Wahhabis - and barely survived the first of many assassination attempts.