KINSELLA: The greatest threat we face in Canada comes from Islamic extremists

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After Manchester – after Jews were attacked and killed while at prayer, on the holiest day of their religious calendar – after that, didn’t you wonder? Didn’t you ask yourself?

I did. I wondered: out of all the monstrous acts of terror now happening in the West with mind-numbing regularity, who is behind most of them? What homicidal ideology, more than the others, is motivating the killers of innocents?

In Britain, analyst Andrew Fox had a clear answer, hours after a man named “Jihad” – that was his actual name, folks, that was the name his parents gave to him, and no one in Britain’s police or intelligence agencies apparently found that even passingly worrisome – tried to kill Jews with his car and then succeeded with a knife.

“Jihad.”

Andrew is a remarkable person, a former Airborne officer and now a PhD student of jihads, in Gaza and Ukraine. You should follow him.

Here is what Andrew wrote:

“Fatal terror attacks in the UK since 1st January 2000.

Total killed: 109.

Killed by Islamist terrorists: 96 (+2 unconfirmed).

Please walk me through how people waving British flags, the ‘far right,’ and ‘divisiveness’ are the issues the government is most worried about.”

That is a deeply disturbing statistic. Reading that – and recalling how, here in Canada, we are so often similarly scolded by Ottawa and CBC and sometimes the Toronto Star – I wanted to know: is the greater threat coming from far-Right terrorists, or Islamist terrorists? Is the situation in North America similar to that of the United Kingdom?

Or, is it like official Ottawa always says: the monsters likeliest to kill you are found in the likes of the Aryan Nations or the Hammerskins or Atomwaffen or one of their variants.

I’ve written books about terrorism on the far Left and on the far Right, and I honestly wasn’t sure. The refrain from Ottawa is often relentless: the bigger threat, they intone, is from the far Right. Not the Islamists.

One fairly-recent study by the peer-reviewed US-based National Academy of Sciences said this: “Following the 9/11 attacks, there were large increases in Islamist terrorism driven especially by al-Qaeda, ISIS, and their affiliates. More recently, we have seen an upsurge in right-wing political extremism in countries around the world … the issue of whether there are systematic differences between political ideologies in the use of violence remains unsettled.”

So, it’s “unsettled.”

However, the scientists went on: “In the United States, we find no difference between the level of violence perpetrated by right-wing and Islamist extremists. However, differences in violence emerge on the global level, with Islamist extremists being more likely than right-wing extremists to engage in more violent acts.”

In particular, the scientists found, far-Right extremists may engage in acts of terror more often. But the Islamist terrorists are much better at killing people: “Islamist terrorist organizations had significantly higher casualty rates than other types of terrorist organizations.”

The religious fervor of the Islamist terror groups, the Academy speculated, may be why.

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In Canada – and despite what the federal government may sometimes tell us – the most authoritative study has actually been done by the Ministry responsible, Public Safety Canada. Their conclusion:  “Extremists motivated by violent Islamist ideology … have been the main source of Canadian terrorism since 2010.”

To reach that sobering view, Public Safety consulted with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canada Border Services Agency, and our other security, intelligence and assorted law enforcement agencies. NATO, the Five Eyes, the G7, the European Union, Interpol and others were also consulted, they said.

Their conclusion was unambiguous: “The main terrorist threat to Canada continues to stem from violent extremists inspired by [Islamic] terrorist groups … [they] continue to encourage followers abroad to employ simple attacks such as the use of knives or vehicles to inflict harm on the civilian population.” As was done, precisely, in Manchester.

Public Safety avoids placing a precise number on the problem – and it sprinkles its report with occasional references to far-Right threats.

But their bottom line can’t be denied:

“The principal terrorist threat to Canada continues to be that posed by violent extremists who are inspired by violent Islamist ideology.”

As of 2017, there were hundreds of them in Canada, the Ministry says.

So, in this way, we in Canada are not unlike the United Kingdom: the biggest threat we face comes from Islamic extremists.

The only difference, really, is that those extremists have killed fewer people here.

That can change, of course. And – based on recent events in Washington, Boulder, Nashua, Minneapolis and now Manchester – it likely will.

To some of us, it feels like we are overdue.