The Internal Security Department's (ISD) latest Singapore Terrorism Threat Assessment Report, released this week, notes that there is no specific and credible intelligence of an imminent terrorist attack on the country. This state of affairs underlines the quiet work that the ISD and related agencies perform out of public view to keep Singapore safe from the scourge of terrorism.

It speaks well of the vigilance of these agencies that the country has not experienced a physical or deadly act of terrorism since religiously inspired extremism and violence exploded after the Al-Qaeda terrorist group's 2001 attacks in the United States and, nearer home, the 2002 Bali bombings masterminded by Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a group linked to Al-Qaeda. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which began as an Al-Qaeda splinter group, gave institutional form to sporadic insurgency by capturing and ruling large swathes of territory in the two Middle Eastern states before it was repulsed.