…although the one at the same time in Britain might also get the prize, at least for its followup.
“Authorities confronted ‘wall of silence’: CSIS, RCMP briefed Muslim leaders before going public with news of arrests,” from the Globe and Mail, with thanks to scaramouche:
It may have been the most politically correct terrorism bust in history.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP met with members of the Canadian Muslim community every month for a year to discuss security concerns before last Friday’s 17 arrests. But the outreach program took an unprecedented turn during an 8 a.m. meeting last Saturday — two hours before authorities briefed the world about the arrests — when Toronto-area Muslim community leaders were told the details of the most high-profile terrorism sweep in Canadian history.
“It was a form of pre-emptive outreach, for lack of a better word,” said spokeswoman Barbara Campion.
Canada’s secret security apparatus has been putting serious effort into softening its image for much of the past year, conscious of the fact that for many Muslim immigrants, the phrase “secret police” is synonymous with violence and coercion.
Yes, Canada, like Britain, is a terrifying police state: the knock on your door at midnight, the boot on the face and truncheons at the back, the concentration camps where you are held without charges…
For pete’s sake. The secret security apparatus shouldn’t soften its image. It should do just the opposite. If people thought it had any teeth, they wouldn’t merrily plot in a public chat room to behead the Prime Minister.
Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer and member of the government’s cross-cultural roundtable on security, said he and others tried to explain to police why they had to engage the Muslim community.
“We would say, ‘Look, you’re doing a negative job when doing outreach because you have this wall of silence,’ ” he said. “I don’t think they listened for a long time.”
Meanwhile, no one — but no one — seems to be saying anything to the effect that the Muslim community bears any responsibility in all this. And this despite a glaring absence of any significant evidence that large numbers within that community actually oppose the jihadists in any active way.
But recently, CSIS has been listening. Under the tenure of Jim Judd, who took over as director in November of 2004, the spy agency has taken specific steps to bring the Muslim community onside.
For example, the agency has dropped phrases such as “Sunni Islamic extremist threat” from its lexicon. At last Saturday’s news conference, agents very deliberately avoided using the words Muslim or Islamic when describing the arrests.
How wonderful. And after Kristallnacht, agents very deliberately avoided using the words Nazi or National Socialist when describing the arrests. Imagine the fantastic absurdity of a secret security apparatus that voluntarily declines to investigate anything having to do with the motive behind terror activity. That voluntarily abdicates, for the sake of political correctness, its responsibility to discover why terrorists are doing what they are doing, what their goals are, and how they are recruited and motivated. If this were fiction, no one would believe it.
Agents also made sure to mention they’d received assistance in the investigation from the Muslim community. According to Mr. Hamdani, this served two purposes: It projected a “we’re in this together” message to Muslims, and it indicated to other listeners that not all members of the religion are extremist sympathizers. Authorities also quickly translated the contents of the news conference and other news releases into Arabic and Urdu….
Great. Now when will the Muslim community do anything significant to project a “we’re in this together” message to non-Muslims?
Muslim Canadian Congress representative Tarek Fatah, who was at Saturday’s meeting, said imams brought up a number of concerns after being told what had happened. One asked why authorities hadn’t told them sooner about the suspects, so the religious leaders could have put a stop to their plot, Mr. Fatah said.
Why hadn’t the religious leaders done anything to stop the spread of the jihad ideology? We have seen people at the Ar-Rahman Islamic Center admit that they knew at least one man was preaching violent jihad there — one of those later arrested. Why didn’t they go to authorities?
According to Mr. Fatah, another imam asked whether the authorities could keep the meeting a secret.
“If bishops were meeting regularly with the RCMP, what do you think their congregations would think?” Mr. Fatah said.
Gee, Mr. Fatah, I guess I would think that maybe they were concerned about heading off some violent actions — if any violence was being plotted in Canadian churches, which is farfetched enough to begin with. Are you similarly concerned?