Canada, Be Aware and Beware

"Therefore, we urge the Canadian public to take heed from the recent history and not allow their warmongering governments to get themselves entangled in a war of attrition with the Muslims for decades to come; a war that you can never win for we are a nation of brave lion hearts like Salman Ashrafi."
Canadian ISIL jihadist Abu Dujana al-Muhajir

Salman Ashrafi, who was a member of Al-Qaeda splinter group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). ISIS released images of him last month following a double suicide bombing in Iraq in November that killed 46 people, he was celebrated in a martryrdom notice.  YouTube ORG / Postmedia Wire

Forewarned is forearmed. The online eulogy for Salman Ashrafi of Calgary who joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant speaks of him as a "brave warrior", whom other Canadian Muslims should look to, admiring his exploits in the name of Islam to "prove their manhood" by emulating his devotion to jihad and his success in becoming a martyr for the universal Islamist cause.

The message describes itself through the medium of its author as a "wake-up call" to the faithful, warning Canadians to "put pressure on the Canadian government to change its foreign policy in the Muslim world." After all, Canadians like to be liked, and if fanatical Muslims find fault in the official Canadian position on the committing of mass atrocities in the name of a divine mission, it is incumbent upon us to rectify the error of our ways.

Otherwise? Disaster will befall us.

Canada is warned against enacting laws whose purpose is to put a stop to extremist Muslims leaving the country to do their divine duty in allying themselves with groups like ISIL and al-Shabab. Such measures will not work, we are warned darkly, they will instead fuel radicalization. What becomes forbidden also becomes more enticing to those committed to jihad.

The author of the message is a Canadian writing of other Canadians from a small Calgary circle of Muslim men ferocious in their dedication to the need to join the global jihad that is lighting up the Middle East and North Africa in the fires of bloody conflict. A group of Calgarians who pledged to devote their lives to jihad and in the process commit themselves to martyrdom has seen at least several of their number achieve that goal.

Two members of the group, the piquantly celebrated Salman Ashrafi and another, Damian Clairmont a convert to Islam, have died. While Clairmont was a former psychiatric patient, Ashrafi was a Pakistani-Canadian businessman who worked as a business analyst with Talisman Energy in Calgary. He moved to the Persian Gulf in 2012, went to Turkey, then to Syria.

From Syria he went to Iraq where he drove a car full of explosives into an Iraqi army base north of Baghdad. A wave of ISIL bombings followed, preceding the assault on Mosul that took place last week. The concern of Canadian intelligence agencies is that the radicalized Canadian Islamists will return eventually to Canada with their newfound battle experience, planning to teach Canada how jihad is done.

Refugees displaced by ISIS forces in northern Iraq in a photo taken today.

KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images

Even while the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service investigate the Calgary group, their contacts, and the role in their radicalization of a suspected Syrian-Canadian facilitator, a program has been launched to track "high-risk travellers", to disrupt their plans to travel abroad to join the jihad movement that has attracted young Muslim men from across Europe and North America.

Syed Soharwardy, an imam from Calgary has contacted police to inform them of his concern for his safety and that of his family. The online eulogy for Ashrafi mentioned Soharwardy, founder of Muslims Against Terrorism for his "deviant" actions, claiming his brand of Islam was subservient to that of the jihadists.

Apart from the death threats that concern him, Mr. Soharwardy spoke of receiving anti-Muslim hate messages in the wake of speaking out against extremism.