Canadian Immigration

"We know there are elements who are recruiting, who are brainwashing people. There are people who are recruiting these young Muslim boys. For sure, they are recruiting in our communities: in mosques, in universities, through lectures, through community events."
Imam Syed Soharwardy, Islamic Supreme Council of Canada

Imam Syed Soharwardy, leader of The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, speaks in Calgary, in a Aug. 31, 2010 photo. Soharwardy says he intends to reach out to other imams to make sure that new converts to Islam are watched closely for signs of radical beliefs. 

 

Canada, a country of immigrants. Founded on the immigrants who came to the top portion of the North American continent to eventually forge a country. A country that began with a challenge between France and Britain to conquer new territory for their own imperialist hegemony, finally melding with two founding nations living in perpetually uneasy communion with one another. A country with the second-largest geography on Earth, and one of the sparsest of populations.

Expanding the population base has always included the primary method of encouraging immigration. Emigration from a country of origin that offers its population too little to one that offers much, and with ease of process combined, enticing hundreds of thousands of new migrants annually to make application as permanent residents of the country. Roughly a quarter of a million people make the effort year after year to come to Canada.

At one time only those of European stock could be assured of acceptance. Visible minorities were rarely to be seen among the population. Although Canada did bring in Asians as virtual slave labourers to do the 19th Century back-breaking work of linking the vast geography from east to west, south to north, from ocean to ocean to ocean, by railway. Non-Caucasians were regarded as inferior, and treated as such, shamefully.

And then Canada grew up and recognized its inexcusably discriminatory attitude toward other ethnic groups, cultures, religions and minority groups, welcoming them all to inflate the ranks of Canadian citizenship. It wasn't always that bringing people in from offshore might result in accepting people of low moral character; in any event, an enlightened society felt that succeeding generations would become more "Canadian", accepting of its values.

By and large that's just what has happened. But there are exceptions to all generalities. And now it seems that disproportionally, Canada has accepted within its population a culture and a heritage that is proving to be vastly disruptive to the Canadian way of life. And Canada is not alone in this situation; across Europe as well as Oceania and North America questions of security and law are emerging.

A soldier, police and paramedics tend to a soldier shot at the National War Memorial near Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday Oct.22, 2014.   Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Muslims entering those countries from all points of the Islamic compass have succeeded in isolating themselves in clusters from the mainstreain indigenous societies they have joined. Joined in the sense that the geography is shared, but not the values, not an acceptance of the prevailing culture, a pride in the existing history, but sharing the social amenities while spurning the social compact. Muslims who deplore the insular hostility of fundamentalist Islam are considered apostates.

Young Muslim men appear to fall into opposing categories; those who attend post-secondary institutions to attain degrees in professions, a small proportion of whom begin to view their faith in a harder light of obligation to Islam requiring surrender to jihad. These are the mujahideen of the Islamic call for a caliphate; they embark on foreign conflicts in a mission to martyr themselves, in the process martyring unwilling Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Then there are their less-ambitious counterparts, those whose social setting is somewhat reduced from the privileged attending universities and colleges. They are those who often find it inconvenient to complete a high school education, who find the allure of gangs, guns, violence, drugs and criminal activity in general far more appealing. In the nation's capital, shootings are becoming commonplace as rival gangs target one another.

Names like Yusuf Ibrahim, (violently latterly deceased), Ahmed Zalal, Mohamed Zalal (deceased as well, violently), Abdulaziaz Abdullah, Hussein Mohammad, Mohamed Najdi, et all, identify origin and religion, all names associated with gang-related violence, turning the city's concerns of crime to a fever-pitch of blighted reality.

And from colleges and universities in Ottawa come other names of concern, those arrested for conspiracies to commit terrorism.

John Maguire aka Abu Anwar al-Canadi

The names are somewhat similar, such as Awso Peshdary, Khader Khalib, John Maguire, Ashton Larmond, Carlos Larmond, Suliman Mohammed and Samr Farhat, for example, many associated with the Muslim Students Association, some of them departed to fight as mujahideen in Syria with Islamic State, others recruiting for ISIS, and others still raising funds for the noble jihadist vision of a universal Caliphate.                   

Make of that what you will.