Category: World politics

European officials say the perpetrators in the most recent attacks appear to be part of a new wave of recruits that are not “radical Islamists” but rather “Islamized radicals” — people from society’s outer margins who feel at home with a terrorist organization noted for beheading hostages and executing unarmed civilians.

The el-Bakraoui brothers highlight the links between terrorism and criminal records, and the strength of family in Islamic militancy.

Brussels is home to an increasing number of angry and alienated young men who feel they are not treated as equal citizens and have no future.

These European attackers are not like the Al-Qaeda members of old—the radicalized adherents to fundamentalist Islam. Many of these new age killers were small children when the World Trade Center fell in 2001 and have spent much of their lives watching major wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria.

Analysts believe there will be more security alerts and cancellations of major events after Paris attacks.

In the wake of the Paris attacks and the security scare in Belgium, European governments and radicalization experts are once again struggling to understand what is driving young European Muslims to join the Islamic State and carry out savage acts in their own countries, against fellow nationals

Maysa, a teenager from Brussels, was a music fan and a “ray of sunshine” at school. But a chance encounter on social media had changed her within a year.

With no end in sight to the unprecedented crackdown in the Belgian capital, its economic, social and political costs are rising … and the Belgians react with cat posts…

The failure of Belgian authorities to keep tabs on the men who plotted this month’s massacre has thrown into relief the gaps in the European Union’s security apparatus.

Until now, European security services largely ignored the growth of extremism in the Muslim neighbourhoods of Brussels

President Barack Obama can make great strides in combating al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups if he abandons George W. Bush\’s heated rhetoric and unrealistic view of how terrorism is structured, says Rik Coolsaet, a top European expert on terrorism.