The London attack is the latest in a series of terror incidents conducted by an individual attacker inspired by IS propaganda.
It was the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil after over a decade, but is a continuation of a trend of single-actor terrorism following Orlando, Nice, and Berlin.
IS-affiliated Amaq News Agency announced that the group claimed responsibility for the Westminster attack, saying that the attacker was a “soldier of the Islamic State.”
Therefore, it pointed out the increasing threat of home-grown terrorism inspired by IS ideology.
This single-actor kind of terrorism has become prominent, and is far more difficult to track down rather than organised attacks through networks.
This has gained momentum after the shrinking of IS’s hold on Iraq and Syria. In the beginning of 2016, the vast territory captured by IS began to liberate because of continuous successful operations led by US-led coalitions.
In the meantime, the high command of IS recommended its followers to target the citizens of “coalition nations.”
The repeated terror are wreaking havoc among the people of Europe. These attacks have fuelled the surge of an anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee populist movement in Europe and the US
The IS-issued English language magazine Dabiq first echoed that the smaller the numbers of those involved and the less the discussion beforehand, the more likely it would be to carry out the operation without problems.
The Orlando shooting was the first illustration of single-actor terrorism inspired by IS ideology on Western soil, but the attack in Paris on November 13, 2015 was the first organised attack claimed by IS.
The main distinction between the two attacks is the direction of the attack -- IS was involved directly behind the Paris attacks, while the perpetrator of the Orlando shooting was merely motivated by IS ideology.
After the proclamation of a new worldwide Islamic caliphate by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on June 29, 2014, IS has become an enormous threat to international security through its operational and ideological warfare.
The group has recruited thousands of foreign fighters to fight in Syria from all over the world since 2014. Following continuous losses in the battlefield and a change of strategy, this phenomenon of foreign fighters to join jihad slowed down.
Some surviving foreign fighters returned to their country of origin.
Meanwhile, a few wannabe jihadists and individuals vulnerable to the influence of violent extremism became the greater threat for Western metropolitan cities than groups such as IS or al-Qaeda themselves.
The London attack is one of the prime examples of the implementation of higher security risks from the radicalised individuals.
These individuals are seemingly invisible as echoed by the British Prime Minister Theresa May in her parliamentary briefing after the attack on March 23.
The prime minister also revealed that the perpetrator was British-born and was once linked to violent extremism and investigated by intelligence services.
Therefore, the failure of British intelligence along with the government to rehabilitate persons formerly engaged in violent extremism cannot be ignored.
The repeated terror attacks inspired by IS ideology are wreaking havoc among the people of Europe.
In the meantime, these attacks have fuelled the surge of an anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee populist movement in Europe and the US.
The movements represented by Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party, Marine Le Pen of the National Front in France, Geert Wilders of the Party of Freedom in the Netherlands, along with US President Donald Trump, are misinterpreting these attacks for their own political gain.
The populist political parties spread “fake news” in the “post-truth” era, in which they benefit from propagating fear among people.
Circulating Islamophobia is one of their key strategies.
Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son of President Trump, shared a seven-month-old article on Twitter in which London Mayor Sadiq Khan “urged people of London to be vigilant,” citing terrorism as a part and parcel of big cities like London.
Trump Jr’s use of an easily misinterpreted part of the article in his tweet immediately after the attack in London is nothing but a case of the use of propaganda for political gain.
The London attack has less significance in terms of the number of casualties than other recent attacks, but it reflects the reach and power of IS ideology. It also reminded us that the fight against terror cannot be won in the battlefields of Syria alone.
The far-reaching power of IS ideology will continuously create headaches for Western governments as well as their intelligence agencies.
FM Arafat is a freelance contributor.