Is the IRA comparable to IS? @RuthDE and @colmdore clash

A newspaper columnist has been getting denounced on social media for likening Islamic State terrorists to the IRA. Ruth Dudley Edwards is standing by her comparison, made in an article for the Irish Independent. She claims the IRA were "driven by the same fanaticism and nihilistic hatred and absence of human feeling as the Islamist gunmen in Paris on Friday". But her critics claim she's making crass cheap points on the back of a tragedy