Why would jihadi terrorists attack Canada? Better to ask: why not?

The attacks in Canada probably seem non-sensical to some people. After all, much of the press and political class in the West has spent years trying to cover over the motivations of people like those who have spent this week targeting soldiers and politicians in Canada.

‘Why did they target Canada?’ headlines are asking today. And well they might. There has been a great push in recent years to put the causes of Islamic jihad not onto the perpetrators but onto the victims of this problem. So, for instance, when America has been attacked, it has regularly been suggested that ‘the United States had it coming’ (as Mary Beard so charmingly put it immediately after 9/11). Of course Israel should always be presumed to be inciting attacks by such people.

When it happens here in the UK – as it did just a year ago with the decapitation of Lee Rigby – the UK media goes into overdrive to say the perpetrators’ actions make ‘no sense’. The job of the media to inform the public is thus viciously reversed. It is now much of the public who know better than the media what is happening around us. As for politicians, it was only last month that US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed the Islamic State (Isis) has nothing to do with Islam, and presents no bigger a threat than global warming.

Because there is such a lack of information, we will probably be able to look forward to several days of ‘Why Canada?’ stories. So let me just put out the other possibility. There is a great problem in the world today within Islam. However many speeches Western politicians make saying that extremists have nothing to do with Islam, the attacks will continue.