The Paris terror attacks are seen by many as testament to the need for hard power when dealing with the Islamic State – this while the new Canadian Prime Minister has been preaching, and was elected on, a soft power Liberal line.

Today even administration officials admit that the group is dominating the digital battlefield, but there are private citizens, including former jihadis and parents of Western recruits, who are quietly taking up the fight against the ISIS message machine. [...] “ISIL has used social media better than any terrorist group before or currently. They have mastered the use of it … as a propaganda tool, as a recruitment tool and as a targeting tool.”

The Iraqi army launched 24-hour radio broadcasts targeting the population of the western Iraqi province of Anbar under Islamic State jihadist group control, local media reported Saturday.

The tripartite nature of the Islamic State creates a policy dilemma. On the one hand, it is important to use hard military power to deprive the caliphate of the territory that provides it both sanctuary and legitimacy. But if the American military footprint is too heavy, the Islamic State’s soft power will be strengthened, thus aiding its global recruiting efforts.

Warsame has been at the center of the region’s intensifying terrorism and recruitment concerns on different levels: At City Hall, he works on finding ways to create programs and opportunities leading youth to a productive future. In the community, he works with parents to educate them about the realities of radicalization in the community and the need to be involved in their children’s day-to-day activities.

The debate over what to call the Islamist extremist group that controls parts of Iraq and Syria has been raging for well over a year now. [...] Cameron's logic is simple: Calling the group "Islamic State" defers upon it a religious legitimacy and sense of statehood that should be denied.

Apparently undeterred by the backlash over its last venture into cartoon diplomacy, Israel’s government released an animated video on Tuesday that equates the threat from Islamic State militants to that of a nuclear-armed Iran. The 28-second animation, uploaded to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official accounts on social networks, attempts to erase the distinction between the Sunni Muslim extremists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and their sworn enemies, the Shiite Muslim clerics who rule the Islamic Republic of Iran.