Conflicting Loyalties

"They have conflicting loyalties. They don't know where to report the individual [radicalized friend or family member] except for the police, and they don't want to be responsible for their loved one being arrested."
"Maybe the person has a reputation for being over-the-top, or exaggerating things, or being rather extreme in their judgement and views on things."
Lorne Dawson, terrorist radicalization expert, professor, University of Waterloo

"If public safety is in jeopardy, we need to make sure the right people are notified."
"But if this is something that we could work with in terms of engagement, and there's an issue with a certain person who is in the infancy stage of being radicalized, then we engage the community and address those issues and share what resources are out there in the community."
"When the community comes and informs us about certain things in terms of they're concerned that certain people are coming to town and giving hate speech, we provide them with the information to make an informed decision."
Staff Sgt. David Zackrias, head, Diversity and Race Relations, Ottawa Police Service

"The RCMP and different municipal police forces have worked with vulnerable communities and leaders. They've reached out and some of these programs are really fantastic."
"Having parents and families involved is a really important tool for not only deradicalization but also in preventing wannabe foreign fighters. Like any social problem, dialogue, bringing it to the fore, and having a conversation can be helpful."
Bessma Momani, senior fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, Waterloo, Ontario

THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo   Michael Zehaf-Bibeau mentions Prime Minister Stephen Harper in his video and Ottawa’s decision to join the U.S.-led coalition striking the Islamic State in Iraq.

Well, there's a surprise. Canadian authorities seem fairly firm in their belief that they are able to tackle the increasing problem in Canadian society where young Muslim men and women have been convinced through their own online searches and through recruitment they find at certain Islamist websites -- and sometimes by people they trust who act as recruiters at local mosques and community centres that they have an obligation as Muslims to accept the need to join a universal jihad -- by appealing to their friends, family members and contacts to speak with the police.

The police and security agents in turn plan to field a team of specialists, special investigators, psychologists, social workers, to interact with the families, with the individual affected, to persuade them that they act in haste out of a misguided sense of mission, and they don't really want to join forces with fanatics who don't mind executing innocent people. But the thing of it is, people belonging to a specific group, a religious community already feeling itself battered through the influence of public perception relating to the crimes against humanity enacted by others of their faith, will be loathe to come forward, since doing so implicates those they care for with the criminality of the Islamists.

The surprise here lies in the fact that people behave in predictable ways, and not recognizing that represents a formula for failure. People who feel embattled by the unspeakable acting in the name of their religion, and being held as a result in suspicion because they too share that religion, aren't all that likely to open themselves to what they may perceive to be additional notice. To be given close scrutiny leads to their feelings of insecurity because they understand that their legitimacy as citizens are under suspicion. The tendency rather, is to lash out and blame those who they feel hold them to blame.

It's hard to imagine it to be otherwise, given the horrors perpetrated by a significant minority claiming to represent all Muslims and the values inherent in Islam, supported by the sacred texts written in an age of barbarity and tribal and religious strife in a Bedouin 7th Century landscape, transporting that time and place and those brutal values to the present. The people who worship Islam in the main prefer to cling to their version of Islam, as a religion of peace and tolerance, enabling them to integrate as best they can into Western life.

They don't understand, nor will they acknowledge that they are used as pawns by many of their clerics and the 'activists' among themselves in a larger plan to launch a long-term and long-range aspiration for Islamist domination of the very societies that have taken them in as immigrants, escaping intolerable conditions of oppression and conflict of one manner or another in the areas of the world where Islam dominates. The slow, steady and covert transformation of non-Muslim countries to infiltration and transformation has proven itself as a reality.

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, speaking to a parliamentary committee felt that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau's increasing radicalization should have triggered alarm bells in the minds of those who knew him. And those alarm bells should have led them to report his bizarre behaviour before he launched into his Parliament Hill attack and killing of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo in October last year. Then there's the realization that those who are intimate with people who they see as behaving out of character as they believe, are loathe to report them to police.

People have a tendency, when in a situation where a family member or a friend is behaving strangely or in frightening ways, to prefer to believe that they are exhibiting transitory behaviour. That things will return to normal and the nightmare will end. To call in police is tantamount to betraying those they love. The outcome will be arrest, incarceration, notoriety. Staff Sgt. David Zackarias, vice co-chair on the policing side of the Community and Police Action Committee, an advisory body, tries to persuade family and community members to report those appearing to have been radicalized.

His panel discussions with imams and Muslim community leaders, to hear out their concerns and grievances give him, he feels, an inside track in working within that community. That's the track planned to become a useful strategy to counter violent extremism by focusing on engaging and interacting with communities. One partner in the situation (police) appears forthcoming and anxious to succeed, however while the other appears resentful and uncommitted (community).

Chris So / Toronto Star file photo

Ziyaad Mia, of the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, says anti-Muslim sentiment in Canada is a growing concern and "some of this xenophobia is being stoked by political leaders."