Not exactly a nice gesture to a grieving mother seeking explanation for her son, Damian Clairmont’s, turn to radical Islam and death in Syria:
Chris Boudreau has been reeling for months after learning her son died fighting with a terrorist group overseas. Now, a self-proclaimed jihadist is urging the Calgary mother to embrace an extremist ideology she suspects was used to brainwash her son.
On his blog, Abu Dujana al-Muhajir claims he was among a group of young men who left Calgary to join “various fronts of Jihad” after forming a study group at a downtown mosque. Damian Clairmont, Boudreau’s son who was also part of the group, was later killed during rebel infighting in Syria.
Clairmont’s death devastated and confounded his mother, who continues to struggle with how her boy, raised in a loving Canadian family, could adopt radical views and die fighting for them.
In his latest blog post, Abu Dujana writes an open letter to Boudreau in which he explains the ideology behind her son’s path to violence and encourages her to become sympathetic to the cause.
“The attempt to get me to fall for the same thing just made me shake my head,” said Boudreau, who has branded herself an advocate against homegrown radicalization, and has met with officials across Canada and abroad to advance her cause.
“At least it means I must be getting to somebody enough that they are trying to find another way to get me to see their point of view, so that I don’t continue what I’m doing.”
… Boudreau recently returned from Europe, where she met with three other mothers whose sons had also died fighting alongside radical Islamic groups. One of those sons was killed just two months before Clairmont in the same Syrian town northwest of Aleppo.
She was able to build a bond with the other women, something she had been searching for, and learned their sons spouted the same kind of rhetoric she read in Abu Dujana’s blog.
“After talking to these mothers and hearing the exact same story over and over again, you know that (radicals are) using the same verbiage with everybody.”
… The blog posts offer an apparent window into the group’s ideology and their path to violence.
The latest missive advances a form of Islam based on a selective reading of the Qur’an, ignoring verses that contradict its point of view, said Aaron Hugues, an author who has written extensively on religion and holds a PhD on Islamic studies.
“What these guys do is they have very little understanding of the tradition … and they tell themselves these ludicrous stories that they’re waging jihad and that if they die they’ll go to paradise, and it’s brainwashing,” said Hughes, who used to teach at the University of Calgary but now lectures at the University of Rochester.
“In many respects, I think this radical Islam is a cult, and these kids need to be deprogrammed,” Hughes said.
“This thing that he wrote is really meant to unsettle us, Canadians, because it’s very articulate … and he’s trying to say, we know full well what we’re doing and we’re not brainwashed,” he said.
Mubin Shaikh, a former Muslim radical who joined CSIS as an undercover operative in a Toronto terrorism investigation, said he was considering a formal response to the blog post on behalf of Boudreau, whom he’s been helping.
He called the open letter propaganda that “cherry-picks” verses of the Qur’an to promote a radical version of Islam.
He said the missive is simply an attempt to justify Clairmont’s “indoctrination.”
“These guys are relative nobodies, and they put on this hero costume and they want people to follow them,” Shaikh said. “He’s wrong on so many levels.”
