And the Lowest Common Denominator Is .... !

"We're all in danger, with that bar being open. It's bringing a lot of crime here. We never had a problem before."
"I heard a pow, real loud. It was like a firecracker [so she ran to her apartment balcony]."
"He had no chance, that poor little boy [25-year-old Ashton Dickson, former footballer, lying in the  street, bleeding to death]."
"People crying, screaming. Oh my God, it was terrible. It was like you were in a horror movie."
Carole Soikie Augusta Street, Ottawa

"I hear the screaming: 'Yeah! yeah!' I hear the noise of the engine, Vroom, vroom. Three or four times sometimes a night I hear this."
"Seriously, it's awful. We have kids that have to go to school in the morning, and they are being woken up at 12, at 1 a.m., at two. It's ridiculous."
"There's nothing they [police] can do. They'd have to stay there all night to catch them in the act, so basically it's no use [calling the police to react]."
Alicia (last name withheld)

Cdn.muslimlink.ca/media

Several years ago a bar called The Mingle Room was opened on Rideau Street in downtown Ottawa. On Monday a young man, a former high school and university football star, had been shot outside the bar and was declared dead at the scene. Four men were seen to have fled the scene. A week earlier at the same venue shots were fired and a 25-year-old man had been stabbed. Police are aware that a "minor altercation" had occurred inside the bar, then spilled outside.

The owner of the building is traced to a numbered company. Its directors are named Ahmad Sobh and Hanadi Dawi. They also own the next door building where the Shawarma Palace is located. They know nothing about any altercation. "My employees didn't hear anything", declared Ms. Dawi. "I can't really put the blame on (the bar) because it could happen anywhere. The city is changing."

Yes, yes it most certainly is changing. In the area late-night activity takes place, and drug trafficking. There are gangs and gang members carry guns. Illegal they may be, and smuggled into Canada from the United States where they are not illegal. Four young men were seen by Ms. Soikie, running from the scene of the stabbing last week. From her balcony in the early morning hours this week she had heard several gunshots and watched as a car with three or four men drove slowly in front of the bar.

She kept watching and then saw a gun being held at the window of the car. And then saw the young man on the ground in front of the bar, realizing he had been shot. When the police arrived last week, despite the reports of gunfire they found Abdullahi Osman, 25, had suffered multiple stab wounds. This is the man who was accused of being involved in a gangland homicide, who had been charged with first-degree murder in 2015.

This was the execution-style shooting of Yusuf Ibrahim, a Crips gang member. Mohamed Abdi Abdullahi another associate, was accused of having pulled the trigger. Unaccountably, charges against both were withdrawn, last year. The city has changed quite a bit, actually. There has been an influx over the last few decades, accelerated recently, of immigrants from abroad whose religion, Islam, is touted as a law-abiding religion. But the culture brought with them seems to reflect one of violence.

Violent incidents of shootings and stabbings reflect identities readily recognized as Muslim through their reported names, in numbers far exceeding their density within the population. The religious culture of alcohol and drug avoidance is not one seen reflected in the gangs and violent events that unfold on the streets of Ottawa in number that belie the constant claims of Islamic probity and respect for others.

There were an estimated 66,000 Muslim settlers in the Ottawa - Gatineau metropolitan area. Despite forming some 5 percent of the population, they are startlingly overrepresented in Ottawa’s murders.
2016 in Ottawa ended with a Muslim murder in December and it began with a Muslim murder in January. Mohamed Najdi was killed by five other Muslim men. Mohamed had probably been shot in connection with the 2015 shooting of yet another Muslim man by an accused killer named Mohammad. 
And we mustn’t confuse Mohamed with Mohammad.
The other Mohammad, a Kuwaiti immigrant, had been a suspect in multiple shootings the previous year and had spent two years in prison for sexual assault.
At January’s end, Marwan Arab, Ottawa’s second homicide victim, was shot, along with his cousin. Both men were members of the Algonquin Muslim Students Association. One of the Arab cousins allegedly had links to a terror suspect. The shooting led to more arrests of Muslims for plotting another attack.
In March, Christina Voelzing became Ottawa’s sixth murder victim. The 24-year-old Algonquin college student was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Behnam Yaali. Yaali, a drug smuggler, was represented by a lawyer who also specializes in refugee law.
Twenty-four hours after almost being allowed to walk free after pleading guilty to robbery, Idris Abdulgani was arrested for murdering Lonnie Leafloor, a 56-yearold former truck driver, by stabbing him in the back of the neck.
And that was Ottawa’s seventh murder.....
Daniel Greenfield, Shillman Journalism Fellow, Freedom Center, New York