Amarnath Amarasingam

Last updated
Amarnath Amarasingam
NationalityCanadian
Alma mater Wilfrid Laurier University
Known for Diaspora, media studies, radicalization and deradicalization, religion, social movements, societal response, Sri Lanka, Tamils
Scientific career
Fields Extremism
Institutions
Thesis Pain, Pride, and Politics: Social Movement Activism and the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora in Canada  (2013)
Doctoral advisor Lorne L. Dawson
Website https://cchs.gwu.edu/amarnath-amarasingam

Amarnath Amarasingam is a Canadian extremism researcher.

Contents

Career

Amarasingam studied religion and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University from 2007 to 2011. Since September 2011 he teaches as a lecturer at Wilfrid Laurier University, since January 2012 additionally at the University of Waterloo. 2013 he was awarded a PhD with a thesis on social movement activism, his doctoral advisor was Lorne L. Dawson. From May 2014 to May 2016, he conducted research with a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council as a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University. He is a senior research fellow at the London Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a fellow in the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security extremism program and since January 2017 directs a study on Western Foreign Fighters at the University of Waterloo.

Amarasingam has written for The New York Times , [1] Politico , [2] The Atlantic , [3] Vice News, [4] The Daily Beast , [5] Foreign Affairs , [6] The Huffington Post, [7] Al Jazeera [8] and War on the Rocks. [9] 2016 he participated in the TV-documentation ISIS: Rise of Terror. [10]

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Velupillai Prabhakaran</span> Leader of militant Tamil organisation in Sri Lanka (1954–2009)

Velupillai Prabhakaran was an Eelam Tamil revolutionary. Prabhakaran was a major figure of Tamil nationalism, and the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE was a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka in reaction to the oppression of the country's Tamil population by the Sri Lankan government. Under his direction, the LTTE undertook a military campaign against the Sri Lankan government for more than 25 years.

A lone wolf attack, or lone actor attack, is a particular kind of mass murder, committed in a public setting by an individual who plans and commits the act on their own. In the United States, such attacks are usually committed with firearms. In other countries, knives are sometimes used to commit mass stabbings. Although definitions vary, most databases require a minimum of four victims for the event to be considered a mass murder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inter-Services Intelligence</span> Military intelligence service of Pakistan

The Inter-Services Intelligence is the largest and best-known component of the Pakistani intelligence community. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant to Pakistan's national security. The ISI reports to its director-general and is primarily focused on providing intelligence to the Pakistani government.

ProfessorRohan Gunaratna is a threat specialist of the global security environment. Professor Gunaratna has over 30 years of academic, policy, and operational experience in national and international security. He is Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technology University, Singapore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sri Lanka and state terrorism</span>

The Sri Lankan state has been accused of state terrorism against the Tamil minority as well as the Sinhalese majority, during the two Marxist–Leninist insurrections. The Sri Lankan government and the Sri Lankan Armed Forces have been charged with massacres, indiscriminate shelling and bombing, extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, disappearance, arbitrary detention, forced displacement and economic blockade. According to Amnesty International, state terror was institutionalized into Sri Lanka's laws, government and society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilfrid Laurier University</span> Public university in Waterloo, Brantford, and Milton, Ontario, Canada

Wilfrid Laurier University is a public university in Ontario, Canada, with campuses in Waterloo, Brantford and Milton. The newer Brantford and Milton campuses are not considered satellite campuses of the original Waterloo campus; instead the university describes itself as a "multi-campus multi-community university". The university also operates offices in Kitchener, Toronto, and Yellowknife.

The Anuradhapura massacre occurred in Sri Lanka in 1985 and was carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This was the largest massacre of Sinhalese civilians by the LTTE to date; it was also the first major operation carried out by the LTTE outside a Tamil majority area. Initially, EROS claimed responsibility for the massacre, but it later retracted the statement, and joined the PLOTE in denouncing the incident. The groups later accused the LTTE for the attack. Since then, no Tamil militant group has admitted to committing the massacre. However, state intelligence discovered that the operation was ordered by the LTTE's leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. He assigned the massacre to the LTTE Mannar commander Victor and it was executed by Victor's subordinate Anthony Kaththiar. The LTTE claimed the attack was in revenge of the 1985 Valvettiturai massacre, where the Sri Lanka Army killed 70 Tamil civilians in Prabhakaran's hometown. In 1988, the LTTE claimed that the massacre was planned and executed under the guidance of Indian intelligence agency, RAW.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islamic State</span> Salafi jihadist militant Islamist group

The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist group and a former unrecognised quasi-state. Its origins were in the Jai'sh al-Taifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004, which fought alongside al-Qaeda during the Iraqi insurgency. The group gained global prominence in 2014, when its militants successfully captured large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, taking advantage of the ongoing Syrian civil war. By the end of 2015, it ruled an area with an estimated population of twelve million people, where it enforced its extremist interpretation of Islamic law, managed an annual budget exceeding US$1 billion, and commanded more than 30,000 fighters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute for Strategic Dialogue</span> Think tank

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a political advocacy organization founded in 2006 by Sasha Havlicek and George Weidenfeld and headquartered in London, United Kingdom.

Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies (CSS). From 2005 to early 2007 he was a deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he served both as a senior official within the department's terrorism and financial intelligence branch and as deputy chief of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. From 2001 to 2005, Levitt served the Institute as founding director of its Terrorism Research Program, which was established in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Previously, he provided tactical and strategic analytical support for counter-terrorism operations at the FBI, focusing on fundraising and logistical support networks for Middle Eastern terrorist groups. During his FBI service, Levitt participated as a team member in a number of crisis situations, including the terrorist threat surrounding the turn of the millennium and the September 11 attacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seelan</span>

Charles Lucas Anthony was a Sri Lankan Tamil rebel and leading member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist Tamil militant organisation in Sri Lanka.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pon Sivakumaran</span> Sri Lankan rebel

Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran was a Sri Lankan Tamil rebel and the first Tamil militant to commit suicide by swallowing cyanide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessica Stern</span> American scholar and academic on terrorism

Jessica Eve Stern is an American scholar and academic on terrorism. Stern serves as a research professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Earlier she had been a lecturer at Harvard University. She serves on the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. In 2001, she was featured in Time magazine's series on Innovators. In 2009, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on trauma and violence. Her book ISIS: The State of Terror (2015), was co-authored with J.M. Berger.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Balsillie School of International Affairs</span> International affairs school in Waterloo, Canada

The Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA) is a centre for advanced research and teaching on global governance and international public policy, located in Waterloo, Ontario. As one of the largest social sciences initiatives in Canada, the school is a collaborative partnership between the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation. The BSIA is an affiliate member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, a group of schools that educate leaders in international affairs. The BSIA is housed in the north and west wings of the CIGI Campus. Admission to BSIA is highly selective.

Terrorism, fear, and media are interconnected. Terrorists use the media to advertise their attacks and or messages, and the media uses terrorism events to further aid their ratings. Both promote unwarranted propaganda that instills mass amounts of public fear. The leader of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, discussed weaponization of media in a letter written after his organization committed the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In that letter, Bin Laden stated that fear was the deadliest weapon. He noted that Western civilization has become obsessed with mass media, quickly consuming what will bring them fear. He further stated that societies are bringing this problem on their own people by giving media coverage an inherent power.

Arie W. Kruglanski is a social psychologist known for his work on goal systems, regulatory mode, and cognitive closure. He is currently a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Terrorism in Sri Lanka has been a highly destructive phenomenon during the periods of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) and the first and second JVP insurrections. A common definition of terrorism is the systematic use or threatened use of violence to intimidate a population or government for political, religious, or ideological goals. Sri Lanka is a country that has experienced some of the worst known acts of modern terrorism, such as suicide bombings, massacres of civilians and assassination of political and social leaders, that posed a significant threat to the society, economy and development of the country. The Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1978 is the legislation, that provides the powers to law enforcement officers to deal with issues related to terrorism in Sri Lanka. It was first enacted as a temporary law in 1979 under the presidency of J. R. Jayewardene, and later made permanent in 1982.

Haroon K. Ullah is an American author, educator, scholar, diplomat, publicist and researcher specializing in his work on South Asia and the Middle East, in particular in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ullah has co-authored six books on political science and geopolitics, including Vying for Allah's Vote: Understanding Islamic Parties, Political Violence, and Extremism in Pakistan, The Bargain From The Bazaar: A Family's Day of Reckoning in Lahore and Digital World War, among others. He has been a contributor to various news outlets and the US Department of State, writing primarily about foreign and domestic affairs in the US and abroad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clint Watts</span> Research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute

Clint Watts is a senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University and a Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow. He previously was an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was the Executive Officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at United States Military Academy at West Point (CTC). He became a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation where he served on the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). He has consulted for the FBI Counterterrorism Division (CTD) and FBI National Security Branch (NSB).

Online youth radicalization is the action in which a young individual or a group of people come to adopt increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject, or undermine the status quo or undermine contemporary ideas and expressions of a state, which they may or may not reside in. Online youth radicalization can be both violent or non-violent.

References