I woke up on Saturday morning, rolled out of bed and made a cuppa tea. “Terror plot near Toronto”, screamed my first email of the day and I almost choked on my chai masala (thanks, Abhi!). My blood pressure grew worse as I scoured the web for more and found only speculation, fabricated tie ins with Al Qaeda and fictitious “targets”. My five simple ‘W’s remained unanswered. Three days later a story has finally emerged in bits and pieces.
A report by the Toronto Star says the Canadian Security Intelligence Service began monitoring internet sites, which the suspects allegedly used, and in 2004 brought the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in on the case to facilitate a criminal investigation. Toronto mayor David Miller was informed of the investigation this past winter due to growing concerns about the groupÂ’s activity. Upon learning of their plot to build a bomb using ammonium nitrate, investigators intercepted the delivery of three tons of fertilizer to certain group members in a massive sting operation. There have also been reports of a connection between the Toronto group and two U.S. citizens, one was indicted while the other was arrested on terror charges earlier this year.
Shortly after the operation, on Friday night, RCMP officers arrested 17 Canadian residents on terror-related charges in a raid on their homes. Many of these suspects are long-time Canadian residents, five of them are teens under 18 years of age while the oldest two in the group are 30 and 43 years of age.
Details of the suspects are being revealed slowly as trusty journos bang on doors and beat on windows to answer that one as-yet elusive ‘W’. Who?The suspects are, well, multicultural, and include Somali, Pakistani, Indian, Egyptian, and West Indian backgrounds. Three appear to be of South Asian background in profile reports to date.
The first is Saad Khalid:
The 19-year-old is said to be a business student at the University of Toronto’s’ Mississauga campus. Khalid, who moved to Canada from Pakistan when he was 8, told his parents he was attending a job fair in Toronto on the day police stormed his parents’ townhouse. [Link]
Khalid became friends with two of the other suspects, Fahim Ahmad and Zakaria Amara, in school:
As the four high school years passed, the three friends began to change. They became more serious, at times depressed, devout in their faith. Khalid created R.A.C., the “Religious Awareness Club,” where he’d preach Islam during lunch hours in the school’s drama room. But there were still glimpses of the goofiness for which they were known. In a 2005 video made by Khalid and other friends, he spoofed the stylized Bollywood films. Khalid donned a hijab for his role as a forlorn lover and in one scene is shown running in slow motion across a field with his arms outstretched. [Link]
In 2005, Mr. Khalid… left a serious message to his graduating class at Meadowvale Secondary School, a public school with a large Muslim population. He wrote “La ilaha illallah,” a creed that every person has to say to be considered a Muslim and means there is no one worthy of worship but Allah. “Do you really believe in it? You do? Then prove it … .” he added “Before us there were many … after us there will be none … we are the ones … Allahu Akbar.” [Link]
In 2005, Khalid, Amara, and Ahmed began associating with Quayyam Abdul Jamal, the alleged mastermind, at Al Rahman Islamic Centre in Missaussauga:
Jamal, the eldest member of the group now charged, has been a key fixture at the centre since 1999, working as a caretaker who had enough free time to go and open the doors for several daily prayer sessions. An immigrant from Karachi, Pakistan, Jamal is married to a Canadian woman who converted to Islam and has four sons. “(Jamal) was very popular among the children and young people” recalled one member who asked to remain anonymous. “He played basketball, went camping and went fishing with them. He would sit down and talk with them — he hung out with the youth crowd.” Although Jamal’s radical Wahhabist and anti-Western views alarmed some of the centre’s members, many of the older members never perceived him as a dangerous extremist. [Link]
Five of the suspects will incur charges relating to the bomb plot. It is being alleged that 20-year-old Zakaria Amara, father of an 8-month-old child, purchased the ammonium nitrate. Saad Khalid, Quayyam Abdul Jamal, Asad Ansari, and Shareef Abdelhaleem are also being counted among the five.
A third (presumably) South Asian suspect is 25-year-old Steven Vikash Chand:
Friends of Mr. Chand say he hasn’t always been the devout Muslim he is today. Born into a Hindu family, the Toronto native converted to Islam about four years ago. Mr. Chand regularly distributed material about Islam at local public schools, encouraging youths to accept God, Mr. Ally said. He would sometimes go with Jahmaal James, 23, another of the 17 terror suspects arrested on Friday. About six months ago, Mr. Chand moved in to a basement suite near his mosque. The homeowner, Mohamed Attique, said Mr. Chand was quiet and polite. His son, Mohsin Attique, 17, said he thought Mr. Chand’s conversion to Islam may have caused tension between him and his family. [Link]
The suspectsÂ’ profiles are varied and no details of a unifying link between all suspects have been released. Interaction between some of the 12 adults can be broken down into groups depending on where they prayed, family connections, or in the case of Mohammed Dirie and Yasin Abdi Mohamed, who they went to prison with. The plot is still unfolding as further arrests are expected. Reaction to the arrests by the suspectsÂ’ families, friends, and neighbours has, for a large part, been disbelief. On Sunday the International Muslims Organization of Toronto mosque was vandalized in what clearly appears to be a hate crime. Toronto muslims, especially those who reside in areas where the arrests were made, are fearing a backlash. The atmosphere is tense as people start readying their pointer fingers. Starting off the blame-slinging (in a very public way, his name is in every newspaper) we have Mr. Aly Hindy, Imam at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre:
“Are we now the enemy within? We completely reject that,” Mr. Hindy said, outside court. The imam said that because “Afghanistan is closed now,” CSIS and the RCMP are targeting young Canadian Muslims, just so that departments can justify their budgets. “This is to keep George W. Bush happy, that’s all,” he scoffed. Mr. Hindy said he knew about half of the defendants, mostly from the times when they used to pray at his mosque. He conceded there might be one or two troublemakers in the group, but predicted most of the accused would be acquitted. More worrisome, the imam said, was the direction Canada is headed. Devout Muslims, he said, are at the moment more free to practise religion in Canada than in states like Egypt that crack down on fundamentalists. Mr. Hindy is afraid authorities here will round up people indiscriminately. [Link]
The sheer amount of international coverage given to this story makes one wonder if a fair trial can really be possible. Many questions surround the actual sting operation used to tie suspects to the bomb plot. But seeing as Hindy has been personally linked to at least two of the suspects, I canÂ’t wrap my head around why he would choose this particular time to launch an unfounded attack on CSIS or the RCMP. Now would be a good time to at least pretend to respect the arms of Canadian justice. Legal aims cannot be justified using illegal means. That goes for both sides of this fence we find ourselves teetering on.
Story = Developing…
+++ UPDATE +++
The CBC is reporting that Steven Chand’s lawyer, Gary Batasar, has made a statement regarding allegations against his client:
Batasar said he was given an eight-page synopsis of the allegations, including storming Parliament, blowing up some of the buildings and taking politicians hostage to demand the withdrawal of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. If the demands were not met, it is alleged, the hostages would be beheaded. The documents allege that Chand, 25, personally wanted to behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Yikes!
Yes badmash. This is what I was thinking of. I was going to put together a counterpoint to Manju on this, but my brain feels a little frazzled.
Are you actually following his logic? He’s lost me in the shrillness.
A terrorist attack by anyone of Southeastasian descent is an issue that affects everyone of the subcontinent.If the attacker came from a particular country in the area, the backlash affects us all ( eg:people can’t tell the difference between an Arab,A persian and a S.E Asian). When i was passing through immigration i saw a paper pinned on the officers cubicle while trying to look as harmless as possible for that damn logitech Camera) It pretty much stated that the people from Yemen,Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan to name a few warranted special attention. I always wondered if India would be on that list, I believe an individual of Indian origin was implicated in the London bombings and now if Mr.Vikash Chand is indeed guilty this might be part of a developing trend. I wish the fundies that were raised on the Western Lands realised that terrorist action they took would have consequences for their family and friends.
badmash:
I agree. Multicultuaralism represents one of the many critiques of classic liberalism and at the end of the day we will find that it is not at “home in a liberal framework” as you say.
Think of the Californa hispanic seperatist school which is a product of a radical multicultural mindset.
But as far as being outward looking and learning and embracing other cultures goes, this pre-exists multiculturalism as the West has always been outward looking. But identity politcs actually robs us of this as we are expected to embrace our own culture over others.
Nonetheless, i think multicultualism has added to society by pointing out that certain values/traditions are indeed culture-relative and/or ethnocentric…not universal.
On it’s own terms, yes! As a sort of proto-multiculturalism, no! Also depending on what one means by “West” – Arab countries have been outward looking for centuries, however, I don’t think most Arab societies are models of multiculturalism today.
Yes, I agree – the real value of multiculturalism is in its potential to heighten an informed and resfectful awareness of difference, rather than extinguishing them (which seems to be the idea that some of its critics have in mind). Irshad Manji explores this brilliantly in her book “Risking Utopia” – “multiculturalism” as a first step rather than and end in and of itself.
Sorry for nitpicking, but South East Asia usually refers to most of the island nations around Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore etc… some might even say Vietnam and Thailand.
I think the area you’re thinking of is South Asia.
Suki Dillon is our old friend “PearlJamFan.” Isn’t it obvious. He brings his anti-Punjabi views into every single freaking thread that he surfaces on.
Suki Dillon is our old friend “PearlJamFan.”
Now it seems so obvious!
Ravin-You are right, thanks for pointing it out
Kesh
ASEAN = indonesia, malaysia, burma, vietnam, cambodia, laos, singapore, thailand and philippines for what it’s worth
Punjabis what about em
CAFE ASEAN = this place in lower manhattan that has good food.
were you eating/sniffing the masala raw?
Its not multiculturalism.
There are 750,000 Muslims in Canada. Yet, this is the first indication of a real threat and plot. Why didn’t their siblings and family members also become influenced by their jihadist mentality? They obviously maintained the culture too and did not assimilate. Hell, I would argue the older generation is probably less assimilated, than their kids who are atleast exposed to Canadian society for 15 years on a daily basis when they went to school. The suspects played basketball, went fishing – alleged mastermind even married a white woman. Even looking at the London bombing, Jermain Lindsay was freakin Jamaican. In this case you have a Hindu who converted, so its not like he brought the jihadist culture with him. There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims kids who might disagree with all they see around them, but yet don’t make that leap to violence and jihadism.
I blame the wahabis.
What we’re seeing now in the London bombings and this plot is the exportation of this Wahabi/Salafist ideology through the internet. However, the problem also lies in the fact that the Saudis have been funding mosques worldwide ever since the oil crisis, and like IMF funding, it comes with conditions as to how the mosque leans in terms of its religious and political slant. Its this ideology that has permeated the young minds of a few Muslims, and it causing the most grief to people everywhere.
Now my understanding is that even if Saudi Arabia has stopped funding everything after 9/11, those informal institutions and networks it created that spread Wahabi thought, are very much alive. And thanks to the internet, they have an even larger audience, attracting confused, disconnected and generally crazy people to become foot soldiers in the war that they want to rage. Its not reforming Islam, or rethinking multiculturalism that has be done – its the weeding out of this backward, anti-modernist and highly dogmatic and rigid interpretation – hell I think perversion is a better term – of Islam out of our countries.
Now the issue is how to do we do it? Legislate how mosques are funded by requiring only local donors? Use the UK’s example and take a very hardline in terms what Imam’s say inside their mosques? Even then, can we stop or monitor every group of teenagers from accessing websites and forming their own groups? Or do we punish all the innocent people and just stop letting in Muslims altogether? Its a complex problem, and it requires a concerted effort on part of the Muslim community as well as the public and government in general. It doesn’t help that CSIS is already on bad terms with the Muslim public, because the handling of several cases (ex.sending Canadian citizens to the US to be interrogated, who send him to Syria where he’s tortured and finally released – then there’s the current case where they held a suspect for 2 years without charging him). Look there are lots of people who have publicly denounced violence and terrorism, but at the same time you have the freaks like Hindy who are in complete denial because of experiences that Muslims have had with CSIS.
Attacking multiculturalism, or the religion in general, or being a conspiracy theorist is going get us nowhere. Its a time to really sit down and figure out how to solve the problem as a country.
I’m reminded of a few brownies I knew in secondary school who, lacking social skills became outcasts. Later they seemed to turn to religion to find meaning/purpose and became quite fundamental/radical despite the fact their parents (and siblings) were relatively liberal and assimilated.
Back then, it was frustrating to hear their nagging about how haram my lifestyle was. I couldn’t of cared less if they wanted to wrap themselves in a Hijab and spend their time rocking, nose buried in the Quran. Yet MY lifestyle was always a big problem for them.
I met a few of these clowns in college too.
Years later I watched My Son the Fanatic, and it’s the basis of the storyline.
Back to these kids in Canada. They seem cut from the same cloth to me. They’re not representatives of their religion or our common bronwnie background anymore than the Trench Coat Mafia of the Columbine Massacre represents the typical Denver school kid. Yet that’s the way society sees it.
I used to think that Religious freedom was a good thing. Seeing what the fundamental Christians support, how the Born Agains simply can’t help themselves and MUST tell me WWJD, and the behavior of the more radical Islamists… I’m now starting to think it’s not always a good thing at all.
If the allegations hold water against these kids, maybe their punishment should be to send them to some backwards madrasa in the tribal hinterlands of Pakistan. They get the world they want. We get rid of the garbage.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Eh? Who has mounted the police and Why?
I recommend converting them to garbage. Woodchippers are our friends.
I don’t believe ‘Multi-culturalism’ is a new thing, or something that the West or Europe or America has to ‘deal’ with or accept or discard. Humans are pretty mobile. The range of mobility is completely dependent on the means of transport available. Multiculturalism was an issue when the Aryans moved down from the Levant eight thousand or so years ago into the Indian Subcontinent. It was an issue when people from central Asia moved into the Indus value a few thousand years later. Sure there was conflict, and I am sure a lot of soul searching as well. But now, this has melded into a fairly unique (IMO) south asian identity. Immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland and the Baltic states were treated with disdain when the moved to the United States less than a hundred years ago. And I am sure there was enough of a hue and cry about them as well. Given enough time, most people find their own ways of life in relation to their new country or society. I guess the difference is that the tiny minority that rebel now have an easy way to let their frustration out and make the whole world know.
I am rambling, but my point is that this sort of behaviour is nothing new. Its the means of expressing opinions and of disseminating them that have made them accessible to a wider audience making it an ‘issue’. Social upheaval and a degree of turmoil surely is a predictable outcome of a world where it so easy to travel and to relocate from one place to another. The availability of a common language and extremely fast mass communication just makes it very visible.
Yes, the poor persecuted lot never gets any justice. Fair trial is not possible for them ???? Questions about sting operations???
This feeds right into these people’s idea of being “under seige” and at war with “the west”. The supposed lack of “fair trial” will be a calling card for another set of nhilistic barbarians to feel “under seige” and go on to be human bombs. Then we will come up with another excuse, and on and on ….. Religious fanatics have one thing in common ….. feeling of “being under attack”
comment #9 says this better.
It’s interesting that this thread on an alleged terrorism bust has about 75 comments right now, many of which expound various conservative (and i use that word charitably) positions on Muslims, terrorism, etc., while the thread just below it on a report on some of the actual impacts of “public safety” and “anti-terrorism” policies as documented by some desis affected by them currently has 4 comments.
And yes, if these charges are proven I hope they go after the real reason behind these and not lock up some of those who are barely in their teens. I am talking about the radical Imams. Its like the Feds here in the US, would give deal to Sammy “the Bull” Gravano to get to the John Gotti.
I think you are right dude and it makes me ill. I am going to leave a comment on the other post now that says “fight the power, and the military-industrial complex that drives it forward.” Then I will forward various far-left (and I use the word “left” charitably) positions on terrorism. Working together we can bring a balance to the force. 😉
Lot’s of info still to come, but the usual suspects are bashing the poorly-understood concept of “multiculturalism” — a word that seems to mean something different to every speaker and writer.
First, Canadian Muslims are not ghettoized. They are sprinkled throughout the GTA, less concentrated than Sikhs or Jews. Second, they are not particularly marginalized — like all immigrant groups, they are very well educated, have below average incomes, and the second generation is doing better than the first (though it’s skewed Ismaili right now).
So what’s going on? In my view, it really is a problem of cultural assimilation. Out-of-touch FOB parents send kids unsupervised to play basketball at the mosque, to keep them from being ‘corrupted’. Instead the some of the kids (at least 17) wind up part of a new, wholly western Islamic-alienation.
(The Khalistani-Canadians are also very western. Talwinder Singh Parmar arrived in Canada a left-wing Punjabi social worker. He left as a Sikh terrorist.)
(Further back, it was disillusioned Canadian-born Ukrainians that left Canada to join Stalin’s cause in the Ukraine in the 1930s, to become further disillusioned. Immigration has always been a bitch.)
So what’s the lesson? FOB parents, work harder to integrate into Canadian life. Give up on arranged marriages. Give your children the choice of rejecting dietary taboos (eat pork, eat beef, eat haram!). But at the same time, provide some cultural grounding, preferably a humanistic kind (dance, music, literature, poetry, architecture). And recognize that ‘corruption’ is both necessary and inevitable — the old way of life is impossible, and the alienated-Muslim style is the worst outcome.
This is all better expressed in fiction — I’d start with MG Vassanji’s short story collection, When she was queen which is about Toronto’s Desi and Muslim communities.
Wow…that truly was evil. Good job! Have fun.
The suspectsÂ’ profiles are varied and no details of a unifying link between all suspects have been released.
I know, hmmm, unifying link, what could that be, let me think…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060605.terror-court05/BNStory
The judge said he’d try to make sure the suspect would get his glasses. And then he vowed that every suspect would get a Koran, as consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1149329598732&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154
Brampton: Family members of some of the men facing terrorism-related charges – wives, mothers and fathers – met in the parking lot of a Brampton courthouse early this morning. Standing behind a metal barricade police put up to seal off the court entrance, women dressed in burkas rubbed each otherÂ’s backs to console one another.
Hmmm, boy, it’s quite a mystery as to what that “unifying link” could be! Let’s put the media on it, I’m sure they’ll report the story to us uncut and unfiltered.
Saurav
I think that people are horrified and want to try to understand what is going on here. They are trying to get to grips with this. Because this is going to taint our lives for a long long time, perhaps for the rest of our lives. Not only as potential victims of this mania, but through secondary backlash, all of us, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu will have this shadow over us, our families too. This fascination and desire to work out the implications of it all, means people are passionate about this. That is why there are so many posts on the subject.
By the way, Alybaba, I really appreciated your insights.
Saurav, Abhi, here is a great post!
http://sixteenvolts.blogspot.com/2006/06/i-guess-somebody-forgot-rules-of.html
bwahahaha…
Red Snapper is right. This is the great issue of our time and this alone explains all the posts. We shouldn’t shy away from it because it is a bit inconvienient to us (ie, the fanantics are brown/desi). If the tables were turned and 17 white supremiscts were arreseted for tring to kill non-whites I’m sure we’d all have a lot to say about it and would be far less charitable toward excuses such as oppression and I’m sure we’d all take a hard look at the underlying bigotry in a society that produces such individuals.
A few things have been consistent in the profiles of western Jihadis.
*High proportion of converts (often ex prisoners – Richard Reid, London bomber of Jamaican descent, Canadian Hindu convert)
*Morbid fixation with ultra right wing Saudi sourced Islamism – apocolyptic ideology and extreme anti-semitism disseminated via modern media, internet.
*This suggest a high level of evangelism and prosletysing is involved in the cultivation of grievance.
The point is, alienation is a normal phenomenon, especially among minorities. By the time most alienated youth reach their early twenties, they have a girlfriend or wife, get married, they settle down, and work hard because they have a stake in the society they live in, because of their children, their future. It’s a normal phase.
But it takes an extra ingredient, an extra recipe, as it were, a virus, to transform into this level of what is almost a psychosis.
My main worry is that this has become so dispersed, this virus, that it is beyond the control of anyone to do anything about it. It is promulgated on the internet, through study groups, on the street, informally. And this ideology is off the scale. It lies beyond conventional explanation; even in the terms of terrorism as previously understood in terms of ethnic or nationalist conflict. That is at least explicable in terms of nominal cause and effect.
But this epi-phenomena takes on the dimensions of a kind of nihilist revolt against modernity and life itself. Think about it – a Canadian kid wants to kill Canadians – because Canada is….what exactly? What has Canada done to the Muslim world to be a target? What conventional excuses can be made?
This ideology is a self-perpetuating self-anouncing self-justifying cult of death. It is a parasite on Islam and mainstream Muslims. It seeks to destroy because that is what it is – an existential ideology of destruction. It has to kill because that is it’s purpose. Why is that it’s purpose? Because it is. The conspiracy, the paranoia, the persecution complex.
For us, conventional explanations do not apply. This is something else entirely. Talking about the failures of either multicultural policy or the mistakes of FOB Muslims with their children is talking to the periphery. There is something deeper at play here. The seed is dispersed and almost self sustaining. That is why I am pessimistic for the future. I can’t see how bad things are not going to keep happening.
gc – Are you trying to tell me that every Muslim in this country knows the other simply because they are Muslim?
Come ON. I hear what you’re saying, RC, but any sort of prejudice that becomes evident on CSIS or the RCMP’s part is going to come back to bite them in ass and the rest of us are going to have to hear the wails of the “persecuted” forevermore. It has happened before.
alybaba – Big ups and well said.
If the tables were turned and 17 white supremiscts were arreseted for tring to kill non-whites I’m sure we’d all have a lot to say about it and would be far less charitable toward excuses such as oppression and I’m sure we’d all take a hard look at the underlying bigotry in a society that produces such individuals.
non-whites don’t have power, so they can’t be racist or bigoted to any great effect. i live in a 95% white region and i’m terrified constantly that racists will attack me in the middle of interracial coitus.
p.s. the attack subsequent to violating private property. i’m not going public with sex acts or anything!
p.p.s. i hope these canadians freeze their beards off!
Very Funny. I think razib also touches on an important side point, related to our discussion on multiculturalism. This is only a small point but I think the redefinition of racism to mean only those in power can be racists is a small example of how our educational system can enable terrorism, by protecting wannabee terrorists from the stigma of being bigots.
This whole definition itself is problematic (as terrorists obviouly have a lot of power and does this mean white s. africans are no longer racist?) but it also plays into a world view where we see everyone as members of a group–no longer can the individual simply be racist.
I think its important not to further feed this exagerated sense of victimization, as post #77 shows.
If anyone’s interested, I’ve written a short bit on what I believe to be the origins of “Islamic terrorism” on my blog. I’ve incorporated some of the stuff I wrote there onto my comments here, so there is some overlap.
alybaba,
ok posts. the main issue i have is that just as the those who demonize all muslims lack nuance, simply eliding over the islamicness of the terrorists by ascribing it to salafi contagion is not totally right. i might elaborate further, but (for example) the muslim kingdoms of indonesia waged jihad against hindu kingdoms in east java into the 18th century. it is rather a complex situation….
Please dont forget that its always a minority amongst any groups anywhere in the world who has done violent uprisings both good and bad. This is a Fareed Zakaria quote on ABC’s “This Week” several months back.
Ikram and Alybaba makes a few good and interesting points. I want to add to that. The community must deal with the fact that since they live in the modern world, they have to live with the “nation state” concept. The unconditional support for “XXXX-brother hood” is not acceptable. (You can feel XXXX by any group)
Please dont forget that its always a minority amongst any groups anywhere in the world who has done violent uprisings both good and bad.
more accurately, it is those out of power (which can be the majority), as that is tautological from the term “uprising.” if it was power on non-power it would be a pogrom, e.g., cossack ‘pogroms’ against jews in the 17th century. of course majorities can be out of power. hutus and black south africans for example.
So what’s the lesson? FOB parents, work harder to integrate into Canadian life. Give up on arranged marriages. Give your children the choice of rejecting dietary taboos (eat pork, eat beef, eat haram!). But at the same time, provide some cultural grounding, preferably a humanistic kind (dance, music, literature, poetry, architecture). And recognize that ‘corruption’ is both necessary and inevitable — the old way of life is impossible, and the alienated-Muslim style is the worst outcome.
This is an excellent post by Ikram.
Neha, I do not know enough about prejeducial treatment of minorities by RCMP or CSIS, so I will take your word on that. But from what I have read, SA community is well represented in the elected representatives in many parts of Canada. That should take care of potential abuses by law enforcement against the minority SA community. IMO
yeah, i agree with the frozen canadian european jew. bacon is good 🙂
My post of wahabism relates specifically to brand of global terror that we have today. History is rife with examples of holy war being declared as a pretext for territorial expansion.
Posts such as this one and the comments which follow it only serve to show how poor of a platform “blogs” truly are. I think everyone commenting on this post – involving terrorism which is a very serious issue – is quick to jump to conclusion with their reactions, citing hearsay and claiming it to be a fact.
The commentors on this page, as a result, propogate hearsay which through the growth of the debate ends up on more blogs and gives hearsay an unnecessary platform. Everyone commenting, it seems, is looking for an underlying current which requires significantly more expertise than Hanif Kureshi’s books or a personal experience with a muslim Mr. X or a muslim Ms. Y. Surely making any broad generalizations about “terrorists” or “…” or “…” is about as valid as generalizing everyone commenting on this post as “people with nothing better to do”.
Clearly everyone on ths page has a geniune interest in learning/discussing terrorism, but should we not be careful of the facts we cite and the generalizations we conclude?
No offense to anyone. If you are offended, sorry, as my intentions were not to do so. I am just curious if anyone walks away from any of these discussions with a profound revelation about the behaviors of terrorists.
If you are offended, sorry, as my intentions were not to do so. I am just curious if anyone walks away from any of these discussions with a profound revelation about the behaviors of terrorists.
didn’t you read my comments? christ man!
I think everyone commenting on this post – involving terrorism which is a very serious issue – is quick to jump to conclusion with their reactions, citing hearsay and claiming it to be a fact.
“everyone”? that generalization needs some facts to back it up!
while i do empathise with people who might feel alienated or made invisible by a majority culture (hello!) i wonder sometimes whether we give terrorists a bit too much of a group hug.
most terrorists are educated and privileged and seem more concerned with personal glory than with actually respecting islam.
it’s sad to see such a beautiful religion (not mine, but still beautiful) reduced to the caricature of the angry young brown man with a messiah complex.
in poorer countries terrorists could well be uneducated youths brainwashed by mullahs, in western countries there is no way they are not cold-blooded killers. if only they didn’t make the rest of us look that way too.
tashie – the thing that gets me about this particular case is that many of these men are really boys. 5 of them are under 18 and most of the rest are in their early twenties. it’s scary to think that regardless of having a home, a family, and education they are being swayed by mullahs.
vikash – from what i can see people are trying to explain how this sort of thing can happen in your average north american setting. you don’t need a phd to take a stab at explaining the world around you. i think the discussion has been a good one.
The Toronto Star paints a less the flattering picture of the competency of this batch of terrorists. It looks like there were a seriously amateur group.
Ramanan – thanks for the link!
my favourite part:
The Star’s coverage of this case has been excellent. The other papers in the city are a bit too shril for my liking. It sounds very much like these kids were dumbasses for the most part. Earlier suggestions in this thread that the timing of the arrests may have been motivated more by politics than an interest in security may have some merit to them. Of course, removing people who want to blow shit up from the general public is a good thing, regardless of how incompetent they may be.
he quest for a moderate Islam may be futile. Theodore Dalrymple 4 June 2006
Islamic Imperialism: A History, by Efraim Karsh (Yale University Press, 288 pp., $30)
The week following the Muslim protests in London against the Danish cartoons—with marchers carrying signs calling for the beheading of infidels—other Muslims demonstrated to claim that Islam really meant peace and tolerance. While their implicit recognition that peace and tolerance are preferable to strife and bigotry did these Muslims personal honor, the claim regarding Islam was both historically and intellectually preposterous. Only someone ignorant of the most elementary facts could believe such a thing. From the first, Islam was a religion of pillage, violence, and compulsion, which it justified and glorified. And it is certainly not “the evident truth of the doctrine itself,” to quote Gibbon with regard for what, with characteristic irony, he called the primary reason for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the civilized world, that explains the exponential growth of the Dar-al-Islam in its early history.
It is important, of course, to distinguish between Islam as a doctrine and Muslims as people. Untold numbers of Muslims desire little more than a quiet life; they have the virtues and the vices of the rest of mankind. Their religion gives to their daily lives an ethical and ritual structure and provides the kind of boundaries that only modern Western intellectuals would have the temerity to belittle.
But the fact that many Muslims are not fanatics is not as comforting as some might think. Consider, by way of illustration, Eric Hobsbawm, the famous, much feted, and unrepentantly Marxist historian. No one would feel personally threatened by him at a social gathering, where he would be amusing, polite, charming, and accomplished; if you had him to dinner, you wouldnÂ’t have to count the spoons afterward, even though he theoretically opposes the idea of private wealth. In short, there would be no reason to suspect that he was about to commit a common crime against you. In this sense, he is what one might call a moderate Marxist.
But Hobsbawm has stated quite openly that, had the Soviet Union managed to create a functioning and prosperous socialist society, 20 million deaths would have been a worthwhile price to pay; and since he didnÂ’t recognize, even partially, that the Soviet Union was not in fact on the path to such a society until many years after it had murdered 20 million of its people (if not more), it is fair to assume that, if things had turned out another way in his own country, Hobsbawm would have applauded, justified, and perhaps even instigated the murders of the very people to whom he was now, under the current dispensation, being amusing, charming, and polite. In other words, what saved Hobsbawm from committing utter evil was not his own scruples or ratiocination, and certainly not the doctrine he espoused, but the force of historical circumstance. His current moderation would have counted for nothing if world events had been different.
In his new book, Islamic Imperialism: A History, Professor Efraim Karsh does not mince words about MohammedÂ’s early and (to all those who do not accept the divinity of his inspiration) unscrupulous resort to robbery and violence, or about IslamÂ’s militaristic aspects, or about the link between Islamic tradition and the current wave of fundamentalist violence in the world. The originality of KarshÂ’s interpretation is its underlying assumption that Islam was, from the very beginning, a pretext for personal and dynastic political ambition, from the razzias against the Meccan caravans and the expulsion of Jewish tribes from Medina, to the siege of Vienna a millennium later in 1529, and Hamas today.
Contrary to its universalistic pretensions, Karsh argues, Islam has never succeeded in eliminating political power struggles within the Muslim world, where, on the contrary, such struggles have always been murderous. Islamic regimes, many espousing in the beginning the ascetic principles of what one might call desert Islam, invariably degenerate (if it be degeneration) into luxury- and privilege-loving dynasties. Like all other political entities, Islamic regimes seek to preserve and, if possible, extend their power. They have shown no hesitation in compromising with or allying themselves with those whom they regard as infidels. Saladin, a mendaciously simplified version of whose exploits has inflamed hysterical sentiment all over the Middle East, was not above forming alliances with Christian monarchs to achieve his imperial ends; the Ottoman caliphate would not have survived as long as it did had the Sultan not exploited European rivalries and allied himself now with one, now with another Christian power.
In short, Islamic imperialism, in KarshÂ’s view, illustrates three transcendent political truths: the Nietzschean drive to power, MichelsÂ’ iron law of oligarchy, and MarxÂ’s economic motor of history. Religious feeling, on this reading, is but an epiphenomenon, a mask for what is really going on.
This interpretation raises the difficult and perhaps unanswerable question of what should count in history as a real, and what as merely an apparent, motive for action. When Bernal Diaz del Castillo claims a religious motive for the conquest of Mexico, at least in part, should we just dismiss it as a sanctimonious lie to justify a more rapacious motive? That he ended up a rich man does not decide the question; and Diaz himself would have taken his material success as a sign that God smiled upon his enterprise, just as Muslims have viewed their early conquests as proof of GodÂ’s approval and the truth of MohammedÂ’s doctrine. (On the other hand, failure for Muslims never seems to provide proof of the final withdrawal of GodÂ’s favor, much less of his non-existence, but rather shows his dissatisfaction with the current practices of the supposedly faithful, who will return to His favor only by restoring an earlier, purer form of faith.)
Karsh seems to oscillate between believing that Islamic imperialism is just a variant of imperialism in general—imperialism being more or less a permanent manifestation of the human will to power—and believing that there is something sui generis and therefore uniquely dangerous about it.
I hesitate to rush in where so many better-informed people have hesitated to tread, or have trodden before, but I would put it like this. The urge to domination is nearly a constant of human history. The specific (and baleful) contribution of Islam is that, by attributing sovereignty solely to God, and by pretending in a philosophically primitive way that God’s will is knowable independently of human interpretation, and therefore of human interest and desire—in short by allowing nothing to human as against divine nature—it tries to abolish politics. All compromises become mere truces; there is no virtue in compromise in itself. Thus Islam is inherently an unsettling and dangerous factor in world politics, independently of the actual conduct of many Muslims.
Karsh comes close to this conclusion himself, when he writes at the end of the book:
The fundamental question is whether Islam as a private faith would still be Islam, or whether such privatization would spell its doom. I think it would spell its doom. In this sense, I am an Islamic fundamentalist. The choice is between all and nothing.
ramanan
The relevant comparison to the Toronto “would-be” bombers are not the 9/11 guys but the London bombers. I think this lot was also relatively amateurish and immature. Yet they were able to kill and injure a lot of people.
It doesnt really matter whether the people involved are kids (last week a 15 year old boy threw a hand grenade into a bus full of bengali tourists in Kashmir) or fools. The point is that they want to kill masses of other people.