"These are kids at a transition, between Islamic society and Western society," says John Thompson. But they are not transitioning toward Western society, but rather away from it -- encouraged by the multiculturalist imperative to cling to their ethnic identity, some gravitate toward a more assertive and aggressive Islam than that of their more assimilation-minded parents. From the Christian Science Monitor, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
TORONTO – Canadians are struggling to understand the threat of "home-grown" terrorism after the arrest of 17 Toronto-area young men in connection with what investigators said were plans to commit massive terrorist attacks in Canada.The suspects all lived in Canada at the time of arrest; many are longtime residents and citizens. Like the perpetrators of last summer's London bombings, these young Muslims apparently became radicalized not in Al Qaeda training camps abroad but in suburban neighborhoods where they led relatively unremarkable lives.
Such home-grown terrorism is a growing concern, says security analyst John Thompson.
"The cops have a nickname for it - the jihad generation," says Mr. Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute, a Toronto think tank.
"These are kids at a transition, between Islamic society and Western society," he adds. "A lot of people will get militarized if they're unsure of their own identity." Plus, Thompson says, "They're just young and stupid. If you're 17, bored, restless, you want to meet girls - hey, be a radical."
Five juveniles were among the 17 males arrested Friday night and early Sunday morning on terrorism charges related to planned attacks with explosives on Canadian targets. The group allegedly bought three tons of ammonium nitrate - 1-1/2 times the estimated amount used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 - according to Assistant Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Mike McDonell. Investigators says that the group was inspired by Al Qaeda, but that there is no evidence of a direct link to the organization.
"These individuals were allegedly intent on committing acts of terrorism against their own country and their own people," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said. "As we have said on many occasions, Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism."
But here in Toronto, a city of 2.5 million people that prides itself on its multiculturalism and tolerance, the arrests came as a shock to many.
They shouldn't. They have encouraged these young people to embrace their Islamic identity, and never tried to communicate to them the value or values of Western civilization. They are reaping what they have sown.
"That's really disturbing, to think it was a Canadian citizen. How is that for a low blow? It's 'Hello Toronto, wake up,'" says the neighbor of one of the suspects, 25-year-old Steven Vikash Chand. She asked not to be named, fearing repercussions from friends of the arrested man.Another neighbor, Jack Lovell, says nothing about Chand set off alarm bells on the quiet, suburban street. "I knew him enough to say hi, [and] wave," Mr. Lovell says. "Seemed like nice enough people."
A 2005 Canadian government report on the homegrown terror threat, declassified and obtained by the National Post newspaper under Canada's Access to Information Act, described the paths to radicalism taken by Canadian youth:
"The reasons for this are varied, and include parental influence, the efforts of charismatic spiritual leaders with extremist views, and a general sense of anger at what is seen as Muslim oppression. There does not appear to be a single process that leads to extremism the transformation is highly individual."
By far the oldest Canadian suspect arrested over the weekend - all but two of whom are aged 25 or under - is 43-year-old Qayyum Abdul Jamal, a school bus driver and an active volunteer leader at the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre in Mississauga, a western Toronto suburb. Mr. Jamal's extreme interpretations of Islam alarmed some of the other leaders at the storefront mosque, according to the Toronto Star newspaper. But because he acted as a volunteer caretaker who would always make time to open the doors of the mosque for daily prayer services, the directors relied on him. Jamal was frequently surrounded by young men and teenagers who seemed to hang on his every word, the paper reported.
Specious. If his "extreme interpretations of Islam" had really alarmed them, they would have stopped him from teaching.
Sheikh Husain Patel, an imam across town at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto, didn't know Jamal. But he says someone must have led the young suspects into extremism. "They were young kids, and they were taken down this road by someone," Mr. Patel says....Patel, the imam, says that violence has no place in Islam, and mainstream Muslims must be more vigilant about protecting young people from getting caught up in violent movements inspired abroad.
"This is a wake-up call, especially for Muslim leaders.... We need to educate people about what Islam stands for" to prevent young people from being vulnerable to radical movements inspired aboard, says Patel.
This shouldn't be a wake-up call. 9/11 should have been a wake-up call. And 3/11. And 7/7. And all the rest. It should have been abundantly clear to Patel for some time that the jihad ideology was spreading apace among young Canadian Muslims. Will he now adopt real and stringest measures against it? That remains to be seen.
From the time I was a little kid, I thought multiculturalism was a just political crock, long before I knew of something called islam. Did I have a special intuition as a child, an intuitive understanding of the inherent negativity of their culture, or did these people just happen, by luck, to turn out to be the undesirables that my ignorant and uneducated mind already held them to be?
Either way, in the end I was right about them. And my elders were wrong. It is a scary world when a 10 year-old is right about an issue like this, and the adults are the ones out to lunch. The elders are supposed to be the wise ones, and it is the child that has much to learn about the world. When the reverse is the case, especially about something so historically important, something is fundamentally out of whack.
When did the roles get reversed?
I remember a Canadian friend, shortly after 9-11, saying that he was "neutral" on the subject and that he couldn't comment on whether or not "the Americans had brought the events on themselves."
Michele, speaking of 9/11, I remember one New Yorker woman quoted on the news as saying she was vexed as to the rational behind the attacks,
"I don't understand why they attacked us. New York is a blue state."
Robert,
"This shouldn't be a wake-up call. 9/11 should have been a wake-up call. And 3/11. And 7/7. And all the rest. It should have been abundantly clear to Patel for some time that the jihad ideology was spreading apace among young Canadian Muslims. Will he now adopt real and stringest measures against it? That remains to be seen. "
The sad truth is that for Canada and the non-Muslim Canadians, this recent arrest of the 17 terrorists-in-training is for them their much needed wake-up call.
Where to begin...
"literalist interpretations of the Qur'an"
Literalism is not the problem. Non-literal interpretations can be better, yes, but also can be worse. Literal or non-literal, the problem with the Koran is its contents.
Here is an example:
98:6. “Verily, those who disbelieve (in the religion of Islam, the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him)) from among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) and Al-Mushrikun will abide in the Fire of Hell. They are the worst of creatures. 98:7. Verily, those who believe [in the Oneness of Allah, and in His Messenger Muhammad (Peace be upon him)) including all obligations ordered by Islam] and do righteous good deeds, they are the best of creatures.”
Any honest interpretation, literal or not, has to be tied to the basic ideas that non-Muslims=bad and Muslims=good. Messing around by increasing or reducing the literalness won't change the basic idea.
"Mr. Jamal's extreme interpretations of Islam"
As the example (98:6-7) above shows, the Koran itself is extreme. How can anyone make a greater contrast than "worst" at one end of the scale and "best" at the other end? Is there some moderate interpretation whereby "worst" becomes "somewhat below average" and "best" becomes "somewhat above average"?
When kids taunted him, Tang remembers, "He kept his cool, he'd just say something like, `One day, God will punish you for what you've done.'"
Exactly like Mohammad in the allegedly peaceful, tolerant Meccan period:
26:227. “Except those who believe (in the Oneness of Allah Islamic Monotheism), and do righteous deeds, and remember Allah much, and reply back (in poetry) to the unjust poetry (which the pagan poets utter against the Muslims). And those who do wrong will come to know by what overturning they will be overturned.”
7:182. “Those who reject Our Ayat (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.), We shall gradually seize them with punishment in ways they perceive not.”
...which suggests premeditation of concepts expressed in verses like this:
9:14. "Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and assist you against them and heal the hearts of a believing people."
___
Next, this statement evidently got past a follow-up question from the reporter:
"Mr. Jamal's extreme interpretations of Islam alarmed some of the other leaders at the storefront mosque, according to the Toronto Star newspaper. But because he acted as a volunteer caretaker who would always make time to open the doors of the mosque for daily prayer services, the directors relied on him."
Am I missing something here? This guy is heard giving alarming "extremist interpretations" but the other leaders felt that his meritorious conduct in holding doors open and doing part-time caretaking made him so important and irreplaceable that they could not report him to the authorities?
Have they ever heard of a doorstop? Are they sqeamish about vacuuming and mopping?
"It should have been abundantly clear to Patel for some time that the jihad ideology was spreading apace among young Canadian Muslims. Will he now adopt real and stringest measures against it?"
-- from Robert's rhetorical question in the article above
These people are what should be an impossible situation. They cannot admit that all it takes is the Qur'an and Hadith, and nothing more. It took nothing more for "Mike" Hawash, to transform himself into successful, fully integrated Intel engineer, to determined fighter for Islam going off to Afghanistan to kill what some might call his "fellow Americans" (but he knew better). No mosque, no wild-eyed preacher needed. Just the texts. Just the historic memories. Just the attitudes and atmospherics. Nor was a mosque necessary for Taheri-Reza, who had "studied" philosophy (just look at how proudly he inserts into his handwritten explanation that Cartesian phrase about "clear and distinct ideas" the memory of which makes him, in his view, a "thinker" -- a "thinker" who thunk so much he went right back to Islam, not a "perversion" of Islam, but Islam red in tooth and claw, and rented a nice large car, and proceeded to gun it into the Chapel Hill students standing in "The Pit." More examples? More examples can be found everywhere -- in Spain, and Italy, and Germany, and France, and Belgium, and Denmark, and India, and Israel, and Australia, and the Phillippines and everywhere Muslim terrorists have been caught, after the act, or in the act, or still planning the act. And not all of them were deeply observant Believers. Not all of them even attended mosques. Not all of them had Internet access. No -- for them, the texts were sufficient.
No Muslim in Canada seems willing to concede that. Why should they? How could they? To concede that it is all in the texts, and that some "fiery" preacher was not necessary to whip up the True Believers, even if he was sufficient, then Infidels would have to look at those texts, read and re-read them and take them in as Muslims understand them, and realize that over 1350 years, a great many Muslims have so understood them, and acted accordingly.
The refusal of some Canadian police spokesmen to do this, and to continue to divert attention away from Islam, to make everyone flutter about looking for the "real explanation" (what could, could, could make these boys, born and raised in Canada, plan what they planned? What could have done it? How will we ever find out?) is both condescending to Infidels, as if they will remain forever ignorant of Islam, and idiotically unable to grasp the simple fact that a belief-system -- any belief-system -- has effects. And the effect of Islam, if taken seriously, and we never know who will take it fully seriously, who is now feigning not taking it all seriously in order to get in or stay in the Lands of the Infidels, who is trying not to take it seriously but is clinging to it as an expresson of filial piety, who hopes that if he rides it out the ranks of Muslims will be so strong that he will not have to explain or justify it but can help to islamize a society where those who protest will have learned to better shut up, those who exhibit no outward and visible signs of being "real" Muslims -- and may even be largely indifferent -- but who find Islam a convenient justification for their own sociopathic and criminal behavior, those who are in fact largely unobsrevant, perhaps even raised by Muslim parents who fled too-Muslim regimes (such as that in Iran), but who on his own, to to find The Answer to his own disaffection in the big world of the West, with all that Durkheimian anomie running around those big and soulless cities, returns to Islam as a True Believer in a way his parents would be horrified to discover -- and don't until the police come knocking at the door.
We, the Infidels of this world, are not required to tolerate in our midst people whose belief-system causes them to regard us with hostility, that tells them not to take us as friends except feignedly, in order to promote or protect Islam, or to lop off our fingertips and our heads. We don't have to encourage, or permit into our midst, those who may exploit free speech, and may exploit a pluralist society, but whose belief-system flatly contradicts (as Reza Afshari has shown in his study of Islam and Human Rights) every single one of the individual rights understood and accepted in the Western world, from freedom of speech and consience to freedom of religion.
And the people of Canada, and Great Britiain, and the United States, and the rest of the Westeern world, don't have to endure those in positions where they have a duty to protect and instruct us (in the real, not the wished-for, nature of any threat), so that we may better help to collaborate in our own protection, and in the protection of the larger society.
Inconvenient truths are not to be hidden. Stupidity should not be the police's strong suit.
somethingaboutislam I like your comment I feel the same way. When I was a kid I didnt buy into any of the multicultural crap either I don't know why I found it repulsive. And my parents were immigrants. I think because I am non-conformist and all teachers are left leaning pinkos I gravitated to the right. I think that is why to this day I go to church the least out of my family but I am the most pro christian as Christianity is the most attacked thing in schools.
One of the more amusing things to me about this story is the Muslims who knew them who claim the were "alarmed by their radical views" but did nothing, nada, zilch about it. Probably because they hold similar views themselves and didn't see why they should report their Islamic brothers to the Infidel authorities.
This re-enforces what's been said in Jihad Watch many times before. The most foolish thing we can do is put our faith in the "Mythical Moderate Muslims". They will never stand with Infidels against the Jihadists, and indeed will support them in ways large and small, from giving them jobs to keeping quiet about their statements and activities. They can not be trusted.
Michele, speaking of 9/11, I remember one New Yorker woman quoted on the news as saying she was vexed as to the rational behind the attacks,
"I don't understand why they attacked us. New York is a blue state."
Posted by: somethingaboutislam
The same reaction in Canada is "we are not in Iraq" (heard on FNC). What these people don't understand is the entire non-islamic world is their enemy, even if they don't participate in the WOT. Better wake up!
Carolyn2 wrote:
"The same reaction in Canada is "we are not in Iraq" (heard on FNC). What these people don't understand is the entire non-islamic world is their enemy, even if they don't participate in the WOT. Better wake up!"
That seems to be one of the hardest things for people to grasp. Part of the reason for that is that the MSM and politicians have continued to spew that "Religion of Peace" nonsense despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The voices speaking the truth about Islam are growing though. Soon even the most brain dead, pc/multiculturalist idiots will be forced to confront the facts.
Islam intends to expand the Ummah over the entire earth. Our continued "disbelief" is enough to prompt an attack. As in days of old, the amount resistance determines the kind of attack. Thus, a vigorous thwarting of Islamic goals will result in more violent attacks.
If your head is filled with the notion that you are being kept down by inferior, undeserving Infidels, a desire to destroy and assert your proper place in the sun is only natural. The Muslim leadership at the mosque that allowed extremist sermons are responsible, but in long run, we all know that the impetus is Islam.
Americans brought this on themselves,
Yep sure did. And chief among the reasons was our willingness to appease our other western nations by playing nice and not disrupting the status quo. Don’t offend the tyrants. Don’t pit Iran against Iraq. Help out your enemies America but the next week we will brand you racists. Don’t confront communism in your hemisphere. When was the last time any country came to our aid? Oh that’s right we are the imperialistic great satan remember? We own half the world don’t you know. Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Phillipines, Japan, Belguim, Mexico, parts of North Africa, Burma and yes even Russia and China. We fought there at one time, and well, we own it! We are the only country in the history of the world who gives back land won in war to those who lost it in the first place. We may have some racism in the US but we have spent 230 years on steady progress toward equality for all. Most of the racism that exists is imported not homegrown. The fact is most Americans have better things to do in life. But in an insane world we are the bad guy. Well, I say fine have it your way world. You are getting a glimpse of the future that awaits you unless those views are changed. A world of racists that don’t give back conquered lands.
Re: “Another neighbor, Jack Lovell, says nothing about Chand set off alarm bells on the quiet, suburban street. "I knew him enough to say hi, [and] wave," Mr. Lovell says. "Seemed like nice enough people."
This probably wouldn’t set off alarm bells since I believe Steven Vikash Chand was a recent convert to Islam from Hinduism. I’m not sure the neighbours noticed the difference but I read somewhere his parents were having a fit over his changed behaviour.
Regarding the multiculturalism angle, while I’ve always regarded it a BS, let’s cut to the chase. No one in Toronto worries about the Indian Hindus, Chinese Buddhists and Christians, Vietnamese, etc. I live in a neighbourhood that has become mainly Chinese over the past twenty years – no problem; generally speaking they are nice neighbours (bad drivers maybe). Other than the Jamaican gang problem, there appears to be only one other group intent on causing mayhem. The common denominator of the group – Islam.
"Mr. Jamal's extreme interpretations of Islam"
Someone do tell what it was he was saying, and then we can understand if he was extreme, or allowed to preach for reason.
It's the Bebsi Generation.
Guys
I am from India, Yesterday in the news, The mulim patriots of India wants a ban on th 100 yeard old National Song.
I am really very hurt at their demand, how can they be so rude...I know that muslims are the worst people to live along with but from what does they get this rude and unyeilding behaviour to ask for a ban on everythig and anythign that they dont like that to in a country where they are a minority.....
I guess when they breed well to even 30 to 40% I can see the temples being blown up frequently...
The World heritage site of AJanta and Ellora were recently saved by cracking a plot to blow them up...
Multicultaralism is a bane for any society.Secularism renders our societies fragile and prosperity cannot last on a fragile society...
Chinese are best placed in the 21st century rather than any other country becuase they ae almost all are huns....