Jihad Penal Intercession

"We need to help these people transform themselves and take responsibility for their actions, so they avoid falling back into the same destructive behaviours."
"I have concerns about my ability to do my job effectively and in a way that promotes the vision of corrections and promotes public safety."
"There have been a slew of changes that have had a major effect on the quality of chaplaincy care and the quality of pastoring. Not only with Muslim offenders but also non-Muslim offenders."
"The tough-on-crime agenda, while important from a rhetorical point of view, needs to be balanced. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. There needs to be an integrated approach to promoting public safety."
"The phenomenon of radicalization is real, it is current, and the Muslim community has to be accountable and has to take responsibility."
"Chaplains are the front-line workers. Real investment must be given to this work because it is important, timely and relevant -- and effective."
"We have violence-prevention and addiction programs, but nothing that deals with counter-radicalization. As Muslim chaplains, we had to improvise because there was no formal support from the system. We were forced to figure things out on our own."
"But with the privatization model there was no acknowledgement that a counter-radicalization program was important or necessary."
Imam Yasin Dwyer, former prison imam, Hamilton, Ontario

Imam Yasin Dwyer has helped develop programs meant to 'turn' terrorists back into contributing members of Canadian society.    Geoff Robins / Ottawa Citizen

"CSC [Correctional Services Canada] works co-operatively with all faith communities to facilitate the rehabilitation of offenders. The national contractor [Kairos] ensures the provision of chaplains who are qualified, official representatives of their faith traditions and capable of ministry in the correctional environment."
CSC statement

It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a serious issue. Prison systems within Canada have become notorious as venues for those being held in those penal institutions utilizing opportunities to communicate with other inmates for the purpose of converting them to Islam, and in many instances, to Islamist ideals celebrating jihad, violent acts committed against non-believers in service to fundamentalist Islam.

What more ideal surroundings in which to find converts, where people already are assembled who are there because they have devoted themselves to criminal activities, with many ripe for recruitment? If there is any way of finding a communication method that could succeed in intervening, in convincing Islamists that as members of a civilized democracy they might prefer to bypass jihad for engagement in civil democracy, those methods should be attempted.

Even though the reality is that those who have found solace or meaning or a hoped-for resolution to their own social disaffection in the message of violence committed in the name of the sacred, respond to inner emotions and a penchant for psychopathy, and as such would not present as subjects for reasonable discourse leading them to abandon their commitment to violence in the name of religious conviction.

Imam Dwyer claims to have created a religious and spiritual program that is effectively useful while still in its infancy stages, and he has taken exception to the fact that the federal government has chosen to outsource through privatization prison chaplaincy which he insists will have a negative effect on achieving success.

Two years ago the public safety minister stated it was the intention to cut 40 part-time, mostly non-Christian chaplains in favour of giving a $2-million privatization contract to a company calling itself Kairos Pneuma Chaplaincy Inc., comprised of a group of imams whose specialty is that of prison chaplaincy. That original contract was renewed for an additional two years to the value of over $18-million.

Kairos now handles 90 percent of clerical services within federal prisons, aimed at Muslim inmates. The CSC responded to charges of ineffectiveness by stating its recognition of the "important contributions of Canada's faith communities in prevent crime and ensuring the safe reintegration of offenders into the community". It's a convincing statement.

But according to Imam Dwyer the privatized model lacks experience and a community connection considered a vital component in the rehabilitation of offenders, homegrown terrorists in particular. He cites the testimony of Kingston Penitentiary's former chief psychologist, Dr. Wagdy Loza, at the Ottawa sentencing hearing of terrorist Misbahuddin Ahmed, decrying what he interpreted as a lack of interest in providing programs for those prosecuted under post-911 terrorism legislation.

If memory serves, Dr. Loza's testimony on that occasion was not particularly convincing in relation to his opinion of the individual on trial. Imam Dwyer had counselled some of the Toronto-18 terrorist group. "We have to be honest. If what they were planning was carried out, it would have been a real disaster. But I was surprised how very Canadian they are. Most have grown up in Canada and have very Canadian sensibilities", he said.

"And they are all very young. That caught me by surprise -- how young, Canadian and impressionable they are. There is a lot of fear (among Canadians) and misunderstanding and it's all understandable. But in my years working with these men I was able to see another side of them and was able to extract from them some accountability and responsibility for their actions."

Generously forgiving to a fault. Imam Dwyer is a cleric, a religious intermediary between God and man. The injunction that he is duty-bound to perform is that of forgiveness and aid to those who have gone astray; he is naturally and spiritually and professionally attuned to lead doubters to the true path and to seek forgiveness for their sins. How he interprets success may not be reflected by the true outcome.

An onlooker, however, could be forgiven for having doubts respecting the conclusions that Imam Dwyer reached about the naivete and innocent Canadianism of his theistic charges. From reported interviews and reports of court proceedings and evidence displayed at trial, it seemed more than evident that rather un-Canadian views and activities motivated the Toronto-18.

Even their spouses and girlfriends expressed beliefs and contempt for Canadian values. While efforts to hopefully guide prison inmates who have engaged in terroristic activities away from the pathology that led them to seek out those paths are commendable, and perhaps necessary in the hope that they might succeed, it's difficult to echo the faith that the imam expresses in the tenability and success of what he has set out to do.

As being, in fact, superior to what other imams are offering through their professional group. Though his perspective does elicit a certain amount of empathy.