The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) announced on Thursday (Jun 1) that the threat of terrorism to Singapore stands at its highest level in recent years and that the Islamic State militant group has demonstrated that Singapore is “very much on its radar”.

The Ministry also said the threat posed by radicalised individuals is Singapore’s greatest concern, even as the possibility of an attack by regional terrorist networks remains.

But this differentiation between a lone wolf and a regional network is not that clear cut. In fact, if we held onto our old ways of looking at new terrorist threats, and think about the menace as either of the two, we may inadvertently miss the real nature of terrorism to Singapore.

… Dr Jolene Jerard is a Research Fellow with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University.