Not Getting It

The original Toronto 18 terror suspects rounded up and arrested before their intrigues could result in the bloodbath they anticipated when they met in their jihadi brotherhood alliance to train as terrorists within Canada, shocked the public that Canadian-born youth could have such violent aspirations. Born in Canada, educated within the public education system, privy to all the entitlements of Canadian citizenship, and rejecting it in favour of violent Islamism.

Denial was the first line of defence from the Canadian-Muslim community. They had no wish to be tarred by anything even remotely resembling anti-Canadian values, much less the acknowledgement that their own would indulge in activities so viciously nefarious. Their boys were obviously framed, because of rampant Islamophobia, and they'd had enough of it, since the events of 9/11 altered the general awareness of modern terrorism emanating from the ranks of rabid Islamists.

But how could they not know? It lives among them and openly so. Tarek Fatah writes (Chasing a Mirage) that fanatical Islamists no longer restrict their recruiting activities to mosques or Islamic centres in Toronto. He cites a stand set up at Toronto's Word on the Street" book festival on the broad green lawns of Queen's Park. One of the publications they handed out was a booklet enjoining Muslims to join "jihad".

"In the language of the Divine Law, this word [jihad] is used specifically for the war that is waged solely in the name of God against those who perpetrate oppression as enemies of Islam. This supreme sacrifice is the responsibility of all Muslims." Words written by the founder of the radical Jamaat-e-Islami, Ala Maudoodi, the inspiration of Islamists and Jihadis globally.

"Jihad is as much a primary duty as are daily prayers or fasting. One who avoids it is a sinner. His every claim to being a Muslim is doubtful. He is plainly a hypocrite who fails in the test of sincerity and all his acts of worship are a sham, a worthless, hollow show of deception." Where is the Muslim community in condemning this siren call directed toward their misunderstood, impulsive youth?

Aside from those who belong to the Muslim Canadian Congress, Muslims who declare their fealty to Islam, and their loyalty to Canada, and who suffer threats from their greater Muslim-Canadian society. But the public unveiling through court proceedings of the radicalization of Canadian-Muslim youth has finally drawn attention in the greater Muslim community to a dire problem.

These radicalized youth who plan terror both abroad and at home, targetting civilians, government agencies, non-Muslims and Muslims alike are suddenly seen as a big problem, and particularly when sons are suddenly missing, gone overseas for jihadi training - and sometimes reap the ultimate reward of martyrdom. Did they come from well-balanced, societally-integrated, religiously-moderate homes where respect for others within society was the order of the day?

And now Muslims are looking within themselves and their institutions for a solution. And they're also looking toward government, the Government of Canada, for a helping hand. Tax payer funding to de-legitimize fundamentalist Islamism. How can this be possible? Is the rooting out of this Islamist evil not at least as vital to the health and well-being of the Muslim community as the holy pilgrimage, the Haj?

Government does not fund Churches, Synagogues, Temples or Mosques. This is a secular government that governs for the people, all of the people, administering the affairs of the country, not of any religious groups. The government, through tax dollars, funds our courts, our legal system, our national police and our military to ensure law and order prevail.

It is generally acknowledged, even among Muslim-Canadians, that apart from the Internet, many disaffected Muslim youth find their inspiration from visitors to their mosques or their social institutions whose radical invitations prove irresistible. And why would that be so? Could it have anything to do with the very real tribal nature of much of Muslim society, and its general and overwhelming sense of being embattled by the outside world?

A society that convinces itself that it is being unjustly treated, one that nurses long grudges that have their provenance in ancient religious clashes, one that believes it is a victim and permits that overwhelming sense of victimhood to fester into a shared pathology of anger that leads often to violent clashes, both among themselves and directed toward the outside world, is one suffused with the dysfunction of paranoia.

All defensive-offensive behaviour is justified when one believes oneself to be a perennial victim. Victimhood justifies the struggle against oppressors. And those oppressors are readily identifiable, they have never really changed all that much over the millennia; they remain the West and Christianity which, between them managed to wrest the world away from the justice and the glory of a universal caliphate.

And, of course, the Jews, which accused tribe have always defied the noble aspirations of Islam asserting itself as the inheritor of the One True God. Each appearance of the recognition of the oneness of God Almighty, from Israel's Yahweh, to Christianity's Holy Trinity, and finally Islam's Allah, improved outreach toward the Holy Spirit, until finally perfection was achieved, and God was pleased.

God, Allah would be mightily pleased with determined action on the part of His Islamic congregation if they conducted a determine and a successfully concentrated jihad against the presence of the vile murderers among them claiming to represent the Will of Allah.

And then the entire Islamic ummah will have cause to celebrate, having pleased Allah.