Iqbal Nadvi, director of the Alfala Islamic Centre in Oakville, Ontario, “knew the Ashrafi family in Calgary and said Salman was a ‘very quiet person’ who might have had a personal crisis after his wife left.” Yes, that must be it. How many times have we seen it? A guy gets divorced, gets depressed, and ends up blowing himself up and murdering 19 people? Why, it happens all the time!
It is obvious, of course, why Salman Ashrafi did this: because he believed in the Qur’an’s promise of Paradise for those who “kill and are killed” for Allah (9:111). What led him to decide to do that is important to know, but the capacity of Islamic teaching to incite people to commit acts of violence is uniformly ignored, which only ensures that it is going to keep happening.
“Iraq suicide bomber was once a Calgary business analyst who ‘seemed like a regular guy,’” by Stewart Bell, National Post, June 4, 2014 (thanks to Stephen):
A suicide bomber who attacked an Iraqi army base last November was a Calgary business analyst who disappeared after his wife divorced him, friends said Wednesday amid rising concerns about the flow of Canadians to overseas terror groups.
Those who knew Salman Ashrafi in Calgary said they had lost all contact with him after he left Canada in late 2012. And now they know why: He apparently died seven months ago after detonating a car bomb north of Baghdad.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria posted his photo online in March, calling him Abu Abdullah Al Khorasani, but a Calgary Muslim community leader said the man was Ashrafi, a privileged Pakistani-Canadian.
“He seemed like a regular guy and he was one of those guys that actually had a career, had a wife,” the man said.
A University of Lethbridge graduate, he had worked for Talisman Energy and Exxon. “The guy was stable.”
Like its Western allies, Canada has been struggling to deal with the growing number of youths joining extremist groups in Syria. About 130 Canadians are currently serving in factions aligned with Al-Qaeda — about 30 of them in Syria alone.
Including Ashrafi, at least four have died in the past year. The danger they pose to the public was underscored on May 24 when a gunman opened fire in a Brussels museum, killing three people. Police later arrested a man who had fought with Islamists in Syria.
“There is significant concern that extremism in Syria will result in a new generation of battle-hardened extremists who may seek to return to their home countries or export terrorism abroad,” the Canadian Security Intelligence Service website says.
The RCMP and CSIS are investigating a handful of Calgary men who have taken up arms in Syria. Ashrafi lived in the same downtown apartment building as several of the others who went abroad around the same time.
“This is quite a concern to me,” said Syed Soharwardy, a Calgary imam who has been outspoken against extremist violence. “I think the government should do something. This is going on under their noses and they are just ignoring it.”
No, Soharwardy, because in the U.S. at least, every time the government tries to do something, Muslim organizations complain about “profiling” and try to block counter-terror efforts. What, meanwhile, are you doing to teach Muslims to reject this understanding of Islam?
The Ashrafi family moved to Calgary from Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, when the father accepted a position at the University of Calgary, the imam said. Salman, one of three children, was in Grade 5 or 6 at the time.
“Those kids, they grew up in front of me,” he said, adding he used to fix their computers. “They were not marginalized, they were a very good, well-off family.”
They became naturalized Canadian citizens but the father later moved to Oman to work at a university. He could not be reached for comment.
The bombing was part of a wave of attacks by ISIS, also known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a proscribed terrorist entity under Canadian law. The Public Safety Canada website says the group’s goal is to “wage jihad to expel foreign, non-Muslim forces from Iraq, and to overthrow Iraq’s democracy and replace it with an Islamic state that enforces Islamic law.”
On Nov. 7, 2013, a car exploded at the gate of an Iraqi army base in Tarmiyah. A second car then entered the compound and exploded in a crowd of soldiers and militiamen. At least 19 were reported killed and another 41 injured. It is unclear which vehicle may have been driven by Ashrafi.
“How this happened, I’m not sure,” said Iqbal Nadvi, director of the Alfala Islamic Centre in Oakville, Ont. He knew the Ashrafi family in Calgary and said Salman was a “very quiet person” who might have had a personal crisis after his wife left.
In a statement Wednesday, the National Council of Muslim Canadians said it was a crime to leave Canada to join a terrorist group and urged those with information about “the promotion of violent extremism” to contact the authorities.
“Further, our communities need to openly discuss misunderstood concepts such as jihad in order to demystify and deglamorize the message of those who would prey upon our youth and most vulnerable,” executive director Ihsaan Gardee said.
Yes, and to teach against this understanding of Islam, if they really reject it.
John C. Barile says
Just a guy searching for meaning in his life, dreaming of a chance to “kill and be killed” in the service of Allah.
St. Michael Defend Us says
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Did he become a jihadi because his wife left him, or did his wife leave him because he was becoming a jihadi?
mortimer says
Because he increased his faith in a pedophile pirate.
Jay Boo says
Imagine if Muhammad were actually telling the truth, that a suicide bomber would receive 72 virgins. And imagine further still that they were not just a bunch of mean old ugly dateless hags but instead they were beautiful young willing virgins just as prophet Muhammad claimed.
There would be no need to plunder and rape in the name of ‘Allah’
There would be no need to claim ‘victimhood’ while intimidating one’s neighbors.
For a Muslim this would be Pure Hell.
Angemon says
Soharwardy is just another run-of-the-mill mendacious grievance mongering taqiyya artist. A few years ago he compared the plight of Jews in pre-Second World War Nazi Germany with that of muslims in today’s Canada. Heck, just look at his “genuinely” surprised reaction at 1:19:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl550aLTjgA
Razzie material there.
Mirren10 says
I noticed he couldn’t *quite* control a little smirk. What scum they all are.
joeb says
By the same token, the teaching assistant who blew himself up along with co-religionists on the London Underground, killing 55 people, was described by the parents of kids he worked with and by neighbours as a lovely, polite, pleasant chap…
mortimer says
The nice terrorist next door who hates all his neighbors ‘for the sake of Allah’ because they are not Muslims and no one ever guesses, because they are not looking and don’t know what to look for.
HOW DO WE KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A ‘MODERATE’ AND A JIHADIST?
Ask Spencer.
umbra says
Realistically, is there a difference?
Angemon says
““This is quite a concern to me,” said Syed Soharwardy, a Calgary imam who has been outspoken against extremist violence. “I think the government should do something.”
Something like surveying mosques and the muslim community? Oh, wait…
Buraq says
Clearly a moderate. Only blew up 19 people. An extremist would’ve blown up far more!
Clown!
Jay Boo says
Dar al-Islam
Coexist website and ‘Retreat’ to (proselytize) Islam is peace
http://www.daralislam.org/
Retreat is a good choice of words when discussing coexist liberals.
While the Dar al-Islam Retreat is busy instructing its gullible students on Islam they might also give Islam’s true definition Dar al-Harb as an Islamist’s (free-fire Zone}
45charlie says
Did anyone did up his back yard to search for his wife ????
Walter Sieruk says
The violence and killing of the militant jihadism of Islam,Sura 2:216. 9:111,112, 47:4. ,with all the deadly actions is sometime done the jihadists who are so deluded that they actually think of the suicide/homocide attacks as “martyrdom operations.” This is because they are so thoroughly brainwashed into believing the false teachings of the Quran of a promise of a paradise with many virgins in it for the Muslim who dies as a “martyr” for Islam , Sura 44:54. 55:56. 78:31. The actual origion of this Quranic teaching is not from a divine source, but it was in reality, lifted from Arabian and Zoroastrine mythology then fused together and then inserted inthe Quran and other written works of Islam by wicked and deceptive men. Now this doctrine /myth of a place with virgins is now part of the whole hoax of Islam. Furthermore, the Bible had predicted the coming of false teachers as these imams and mullahs who very much indoctrinate this type of a myth/doctrine as of a place with virgins into the hearts and minds of others.For the Bible reads “For the time will come when they will not stand wholesome teachings, but will follow their own fancy and gather a crowd of teachers to tickle their ears. They will stop their ears to the truth and turn to mythology.”
Second Timothy 4:3,4. [NEB]
dumbledoresarmy says
One less for the RCMP to worry about.
Scratch his name off the long, long list (assuming it was *on* that list, to begin with).
Canadians: when you write to PM Harper and to your own particular elected rep and to the Foreign Minister and Immigration Minister to *demand* that all further Muslim entry into Canada should be *stopped*, like, yesterday…cite this creature as Exhibit A in evidence that you cannot tell which Mohammedan is going to Go Jihad, and which isn’t. This guy was educated, employed, married, “stable”, “quiet”, well-off. Point out that although in *this* case he Went Jihad in Syria, where no Canadians could be harmed, there is *nothing* to stop the *next* case of Going Jihad from doing it in downtown Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary… Tell your politicians that you are tired of playing what might be called Muslim Roulette.
Cite the case, too, of the bloke in France who Went Jihad, went to Syria, honed his skills, *and came back and murdered four people in the Jewish Museum in Brussels*, and *demand* that, in order to prevent the possibility of such awfulness going down in Canada, *all* Canadian-passport-holding mohammedans currently known to be Doing Jihad in Syria, should be at all costs prevented from returning.
45charlie says
We are already on that.
Citizen Warrior says
Quote: Seemed like a regular guy…
So did the Boston Bomb Brothers…
Don’t they always say that??
You can’t tell the difference between ‘moderate and extremist Muslims- only
after the blast is the difference obvious.
Canada, Australia, UK, USA all western countries have the enemy within; and
it’s only a matter of time before we see our superior western culture destroyed
bit by bit… Hey, i’m preaching to the converted here – stop letting Muslims
immigrating and we wont have this problem.
bernie says
Canada and other Western countries should instead, greatly increase the immigration quotas of persecuted minorities from some Muslim-majority nations (such as Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, etc.) Even some persecuted Muslims such as Ahmadis and Sufis might be all right…one doesn’t often hear about them resorting to extremism or terrorism?