Where is the PM when Quebec needs him? Lysiane Gagnon

2016/01/21 Leave a comment

Worth reading, but not as sanguine about her conclusion regarding overall Canadian fears or not regarding Canadian Muslims.

Virtually all polling I have seen, as well as the identity politics practiced by the Conservative government, suggest that a significant number of Canadians do share this fear.

Fine balance between over and under-playing, but overall better to downplay and avoid over-heating fears:

Former prime minister Stephen Harper was too warlike. Now, we have the other extreme: a prime minister who hates conflicts and sees the world through a New Age prism in which everything can be solved with love and understanding. Unfortunately, the country he leads doesn’t live in a dream world.

Maybe Mr. Trudeau’s timidity is also due to the fear of raising anti-Muslim sentiments. But this is a misplaced fear: Canadians are not stupid and they know that the huge majority of Muslims have nothing to do with radical Islam. And Muslims are often the first victims of the murderous groups who reign by terror over large parts of the Middle East and Africa.

Source: Where is the PM when Quebec needs him? – The Globe and Mail

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Ralph Goodale says Canada must be ‘world leader’ in tackling radicalization

2016/01/11 1 Comment

Strong messaging on the softer aspects of that strategy.

Will be interesting to see how the precise mandate and implementation of the Office of the Community Outreach and Counter-radicalization Co-ordinator:

Canada must become a “world leader” in stamping out radicalization, because our open, tolerant society is at stake, says Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

In a wide-ranging interview with CBC News Network’s Power & Politics, Goodale said Canada must become the “best in the world” at community outreach, engagement and counter-radicalization to avert a fundamental threat to Canadian values.

“We’re an open society, we’re one of the most plural societies in the world; the most inclusive, the most tolerant. In order to preserve that nature of our country, we need to be among the best in the world at identifying radicalization and the techniques for countering radicalization and working with all other Canadians to make sure that’s effective,” he told host Rosemary Barton.

Goodale could not provide the current number of individuals considered home-grown militants or “foreign fighters.”

But he said the government will make a “vigorous” effort to stamp out radicalization. The minister’s mandate letter includes an order to create an Office of the Community Outreach and Counter-radicalization Co-ordinator.

More money for the RCMP

Goodale also promised the Mounties would have the necessary resources to keep up the fight. Last year, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson said he was forced to divert 600 officers from white-collar crime and fraud files to focus on national security investigations.

“We cannot have a situation where your national police force has got to rob Peter to pay Paul,” he said. “When we call upon them to perform serious functions in the name of national security, crime prevention, law enforcement and all the other important things that they do, they need to have the physical resources, including budget, to do that well.”

Source: Ralph Goodale says Canada must be ‘world leader’ in tackling radicalization – Politics – CBC News

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Half of the attacks since 2001 were committed by men born in the United States.

2015/11/26 Leave a comment

Similar pattern to other countries:

Since then [9/11], most of the attackers in the United States claiming or appearing to be motivated by extremist Islam were born in this country or were naturalized citizens. None were refugees.

The paths to violence for the United States-born attackers varied. Some were recent converts to Islam. At least three who were born in the U.S. had previous criminal histories, and onehad a history of mental illness. One seemed to have radicalized after spending time in Yemen. Another became radicalized after being convicted of lying to F.B.I. agents — denying he had made plans to travel to Somalia when in fact he had.

Security experts argue that the risks of routine travel — including the U.S. visa waiver program, which allows citizens of Britain, France, Belgium and 35 other countries to enter the United States without a visa for stays of up to 90 days — are greater than the threat of foreign terrorists coming through the refugee program.

“Further restricting the acceptance of refugees does not address the most likely vulnerability to attacks from abroad, which is the large number of people from visa-waiver countries involved in the conflict in Syria,” said David Sterman, a researcher for the International Security Program at the New America think tank who has been cataloging terrorist attacks carried out since Sept. 11.

Source: The Origins of Jihadist-Inspired Attacks in the U.S. – The New York Times

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Margaret MacMillan: Terrorism almost fully died out in the 20th century. It could burn out again

2015/11/18 Leave a comment

Lessons of history:

In the next few days and weeks there will be many attempts to find explanations just as there have been after previous atrocities. Poverty is often singled out but that does not account for the fact that so often, as with 9/11, the perpetrators have come from the middle classes and had solid professions. Religion is blamed but the connection of many previous terrorists to Islam has frequently been tenuous. When two would-be jihadists left the United Kingdom a couple of years ago for the Middle East they took with them a copy of Islam for Dummies.

What we can say is that we are now seeing the dark side of globalization. The spread of information, ideas and above all images, are powerful tools of radicalization. Young men and women can identify with causes thousands of miles away. Most stop there, but a handful select themselves as warriors with a mission, even if it means they and others will die in its name. Every society has its maladjusted who, for whatever reason, feel themselves neglected, humiliated or marginalized. The cause does not make them radical; rather they are in search of something that will make them feel important and powerful. That could be the radical variants of Islam — or Christianity or Buddhism — today, or, as in the 19th and 20th centuries, revolutionary socialism or fascism.

The reasons for which people are prepared to commit terrorist acts against civilians have varied over time but terrorism itself is not new. In the years before the First World War anarchists in Europe and North America threw bombs, blew up railway tracks and assassinated key political figures from President McKinley of the United States to the Tsar of Russia. Their goal, as much as they had one, was to destroy what they saw as a corrupt and decadent capitalist society. One anarchist who calmly finished his meal in a restaurant in Paris and then shot a fellow diner said simply ‘I shall not be striking an innocent if I strike the first bourgeois that I meet.’ And like the terrorists of today those of the past frequently radicalised themselves. The young conspirators who succeeded in killing the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo ordered and read the works of the leading anarchists of the time. Gavrilo Princip, who fired the fatal shots, died without showing the slightest remorse for the catastrophe his act had brought on European civilization.

The terrorists of the past, like their counterparts today, were well aware of the disturbing effects of random acts of violence. In Barcelona, a bomb at a performance of an opera which killed 29 innocent people served to terrify the local population. In Paris in the early 1890s a series of attacks on the cafes, business offices, or the French parliament, spread panic and for a time Parisians avoided public spaces. Terrorists then as now knew the value of publicity both to call attention to their cause and to spread fear. Where in the past terrorists used handbills and letters to the newspapers, today they have access to a much greater range of techniques from tweets to professionally made videos such as the ones ISIS makes of its atrocities. And in the past as now there was the copy-cat effect. Terrorists imitated earlier atrocities perhaps to demonstrate their own revolutionary determination. In a chilling recent article in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik explores the ways in which successive students carrying out mass shootings in American high schools have consciously modelled themselves on the Columbine murders right down to getting the same type of weapons and wearing similar clothes.

As we think about the events in Paris and wonder what is to come next, it is not much comfort to think that we have been through such things before. While history cannot offer us clear lessons as to how to respond, it can perhaps help us to avoid making some mistakes. We should remember the importance of good security and policing. Already this year effective surveillance and co-operation among police forces have uncovered and foiled several terrorist plots in Europe. Governments have to be careful not to act hastily in ways that can be counter-productive. An indiscriminate crackdown on, for example, all mosques and Muslim organizations, runs the risk of alienating a significant community.

The aim of terrorists is not just to panic societies but to sow divisions among them. Already in some of the responses in France and across Europe we are hearing demands that immigration from the Middle East be halted. An Egyptian passport found near the stadium was initially said to have belonged to one of the terrorists. It now appears to have belonged to a man who was killed. Whatever the truth people are already jumping to conclusions. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front Party, is suggesting that France needs to drastically tighten its border controls and that French society is under threat from its own Muslims. If such reactions take strong hold in France and elsewhere across Europe, there is a grave danger that moderate and even secular Muslims, which most in Europe are, will feel themselves no longer part of European society.

Source: Margaret MacMillan: Terrorism almost fully died out in the 20th century. It could burn out again | National Post

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F.B.I. Tool to Identify Extremists Is Criticized – The New York Times

2015/11/03 Leave a comment

Although understandable that the FBI would have a targeted approach with respect to Islamic-inspired extremism, the criticism is valid given that it ignores the elephant in the room: gun violence and white extremism:

The F.B.I. is about to introduce an interactive program it developed for teachers and students, aimed at training them to prevent young people from being drawn into violent extremism. But Muslim, Arab and other religious and civil rights leaders who were invited to preview the program have raised strong objections, saying it focuses almost entirely on Islamic extremism, which they say has not been a factor in the epidemic of school shootings and attacks in the United States.

The program, according to those who saw it at F.B.I. headquarters, called “Don’t Be a Puppet,” leads the viewer through a series of games and tips intended to teach how to identify someone who may be falling prey to radical extremists. With each successful answer, scissors cut a puppet’s string, until the puppet is free.

In the campaign against terrorists such as the Islamic State, law enforcement agencies have been stepping up efforts to identify those susceptible to recruitment. The agencies have enlisted the cooperation and advice of religious and community leaders. But the controversy over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new online tool is one more indication that there is no consensus on who should be involved in detecting and reporting suspects, and where to draw the line between prevention and racial or religious profiling.

“The F.B.I. is developing a website designed to provide awareness about the dangers of violent extremist predators on the Internet,” a spokeswoman for the agency said late Sunday, “with input from students, educators and community leaders.”

The F.B.I. had told the community organizations that the program would be available online as soon as Monday. The organizations’ leaders spoke to a reporter only after learning that the F.B.I. was likely to proceed despite their concern that the program would stigmatize Arab and Muslim students, who are already susceptible to bullying.

“Teachers in classrooms should not become an extension of law enforcement,” said Arjun S. Sethi, an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Sethi, who specializes in counterterrorism and law enforcement, was invited by the F.B.I. to give feedback on the program.

“The program is based on flawed theories of radicalization, namely that individuals radicalize in the exact same way and it’s entirely discernible,” he said. “But it’s not, and the F.B.I. is basically asking teachers and students to suss these things out.”

He said the F.B.I.’s program amounted to “misplaced priorities.”

“The greatest threat facing American schoolchildren today is gun violence,” he said. “It’s not Muslim extremism.”

Teachers do not always have the training or judgment to identify extremists, said several religious leaders who mentioned the Muslim student in Texas who was detained and handcuffed after taking a clock he built to school.

Source: F.B.I. Tool to Identify Extremists Is Criticized – The New York Times

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Foreign donations to foster extremist ideology fly under Canada’s radar

2015/06/03 2 Comments

More on alleged foreign funding of fundamentalism, and the irony that these are from the same countries that are opposed to ISIS:

It has been widely suspected for years that wealthy Gulf Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar have been bankrolling conservative Wahhabi and Salafist institutions and teachings in western countries. The strict and puritanical interpretations of Islam have no direct links to terrorism. Still, security experts say the conservative ideologies offer fertile ground for individuals contemplating jihad.

Richard Fadden, the prime minister’s national security adviser, told the committee in April that money is coming into Canada to promote extremist ideology and much of it is going to religious institutions. That followed similar testimony to the committee by an imam who manages 13 mosques across the country.

“I think it’s fair to say, without commenting on the particular country of origin, there are monies coming into this country which are advocating this kind of approach to life,” said Fadden.

“A lot of these funds, I think, are directed to religious institutions or quasi-religious institutions. It’s very difficult in this country to start poking about, if you’ll forgive my English, religious institutions because of the respect that we have for freedom of religion.”

There are no restrictions on non-resident charitable donations coming into Canada, provided they are not from a banned terrorist organization. Most donations arrive by bank wires, which CRA does not have the ability to track because it does not have access to banking transactional records or money services business records.

Instead, non-resident gifts of more than $10,000 must be disclosed by the charities. Beyond that, however, Canada Revenue has no way of knowing how much of that money is directed to Islamic religious and educational programming.

“We know that that’s no ideal and we want to be able to collect better information and we’re looking at that actively now,” Hawara told the committee. (The agency is able to track foreign donations directed for political purposes and routinely audits the appropriateness of all charities’ activities and whether they support the organizations’ charitable objectives, among other things.)

The millions of dollars coming to Canada from wealthy Gulf states are for all sorts of purposes, including to support organizations that may ultimately be determined to be fronts for terrorist organizations, or affiliated with them, said Christine Duhaime, a leading expert on terrorist financing and money-laundering.

“It tends not to be funds directly sent to support overt acts of terrorism in large volumes (here). If we had that happening, terrorist groups in Canada would be more powerful and already causing damage to critical infrastructure. Yet, there is funding for so-called extremist purposes, including for terrorist propaganda.”

Foreign donations to foster extremist ideology fly under Canada’s radar | Ottawa Citizen.

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Islam and extremism: Looking within | The Economist

2015/02/28 Leave a comment

Good piece in The Economist on some of the challenges within Islam regarding radicalization and extremism:

Complicating attempts to shore up traditional sources of authority is the fact that the establishment is precisely what many extremists reject. Salafists (devout Muslims who seek to emulate the times of the Prophet), both of the quietist and the violently jihadist sort, see much of the centuries-old tradition of Islamic jurisprudence as distorting the true religion. When denounced by the emir of Kano, a former central banker who is now Nigeria’s second-most-important Muslim leader, Boko Haram retorted: “We do not practise the religion of Lamido Sanusi…but the religion of Allah.”

And Muslim-majority populations that have risen up against dictators are less willing to trust religious authorities—especially those they regard as captured by political or government interests. Egypt’s government appoints the head of al-Azhar. Members of Dar al-Ifta, Lebanon’s official body for teachings and fatwas (rulings on Islamic law), come from its two main political groupings. Middle Eastern rulers have a history of alternately backing religious groups and denouncing them as terrorists for short-term political gain.

The internet, social media and improving literacy in the region make other sources easier to find. “I think about religion myself by searching and seeing the different opinions,” says Muhammad Gamal, a chemistry teacher at Cairo University. Alternatives are often better packaged and more appealing to young people, too. A region-wide joke says that Mr Baghdadi, in his 30s, is the youngest person to head an Arab organisation.

“You see ISIS videos, all slick Hollywood style, and what a stark contrast with the turbans and robes of the sheikhs of Al-Azhar,” says Raphaël Lefèvre, a French scholar who studies Lebanon’s Sunnis. “Radical groups seem closer to the people. Institutions are seen as bourgeois, stuffy and speaking a language people don’t understand.” Some Muslim scholars compare the appeal of jihadism to that of fundamentalist Christianity: the message is clear and certain.

Firm government action against those who preach violence is probably worthwhile. And traditional centres of Islamic authority could surely do more to explain their interpretations of Islam, and in more appealing ways. But the result of the debate within Islam about the roots of extremism may not be entirely to the taste of liberal Muslims—or Western politicians.

Imposing state-sanctioned creeds has in the past pushed jihadists underground. And these versions of Islam are by no means sure to be more liberal: the Saudi regime uses harsh sharia punishments such as beheading and last year al-Azhar launched a campaign to rid Egypt of unbelief after a survey claimed the country held precisely 866 atheists. But the alternative, attempting to promote liberal doctrines in a free market of religious ideas, has dangers, too. Georges Fahmi, an Egyptian scholar, detects a conservative mood among Muslims: “What is shocking is how many people support IS’s actions even if they would not do them themselves.”

via Islam and extremism: Looking within | The Economist.

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It’s time to confront ‘the cancer of extremism’ – Khan and Dueck

2015/01/19 Leave a comment

Good conversation between Sheema Khan and Lorna Dueck on extremism. Quote below from Sheema Khan:

In conclusion, we should start to look to ways of breaking the vicious cycle anytime a terrorist incident occurs. There is shock, anger, followed by condemnation of these acts, and then the backlash against Muslim communities, thus further creating divisions, which in turn alienate Muslim youth who become susceptible to the message of extremists (i.e. the West is at war with Islam, they reject you because you are Muslim, etc).

For Muslim communities, we really have to start looking in the mirror, and ask in view of atrocities occurring in the name of Islam at a higher frequency, “what is happening to the moral core”? During the days of terror in France, almost 2,000 women, children and the elderly were massacred by Boko Haram, which has also resorted to child suicide bombers. Almost 40 Muslims were killed in Yemen by a Muslim extremist. And the killing of Muslims, by Muslim extremists continues in Syria and Iraq. All of this on the heels of the horrific murders of schoolchildren and teachers in Peshawar by the Taliban. We need to take a deep look and acknowledge that the cancer of extremism is growing, and come up with strategies on how to deal with it.

It’s time to confront ‘the cancer of extremism’ – The Globe and Mail.

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Barbara Kay: When it comes to Islam, the media needs to ditch the ‘narrative,’ and report the truth

2015/01/08 Leave a comment

What Kay misses, in her reductionist approach to ideology and extremism of all kinds, is what are the factors that push some to violence and what are the ones that increase resilience to these appeals.

With lone-wolf extremists, it is clear that mental illness and other issues can be one of the factors that push them over the edge. It does not mean that Islamist ideology is not involved; it is just that there can be other factors as well that make some individuals more susceptible.

And I would distinguish between these kinds of attacks and the more “sophisticated”and “professional” attacks that took place on Charlie Hebdo.

And of course, none of this reduces the horror over any attack, no matter the motives or factors:

We’re in the middle of a Hot War with Islamism. There will be more attempted, or realized, lone-wolf terrorist attacks on our shores. In the event, it would be helpful if the liberal media could ditch its love affair with narratives, and stick with the truth.

The right-wing media also should ‘ditch its love affair with narratives’ and recognize the complexity of the various factors involved.

Barbara Kay: When it comes to Islam, the media needs to ditch the ‘narrative,’ and report the truth | National Post.

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Opinion: There’s no link between terrorism and multiculturalism – Jedwab

2014/11/29 Leave a comment

Jack Jedwab of ACS notes the many fallacies in Farid Rohani’s piece on multiculturalism and radicalization (Opinion: Multiculturalism should not be misused to justify divisions: Farid Rohani):

Yet Rohani makes a pernicious link between these heinous acts and Canadian multiculturalism. He establishes this false association by suggesting that the Canadian multicultural framework has seen “activists promote group traditions as having more importance than individual freedoms,” and suggests it creates an environment that enables terrorists to propagate their views. He further states that multiculturalism “is being used to create different groups that contest our tolerant democracy.”

It has been increasingly common for detractors of multiculturalism to make such claims without identifying the culprits. Rohani does precisely this and, regrettably, contributes to the spread of what he describes as “quiet intolerance,” the very thing about which he expresses concern. His observation will end up inviting unfair generalizations about minority religious groups that will fuel the divisions that he suggests he seeks to remedy.

Rohani implies that such things as forced and arranged marriages, honour killings and teaching of hate toward other religions or toward homosexuals or death warrants against apostates are also to be attributed to flawed communications about what pluralism and multiculturalism entail. In general, such things are far more prevalent in non-democratic societies that reject diversity and multiculturalism. The individuals who engage in such egregious acts for the most part wish to erode multiculturalism and replace it with a model of society that would limit individual freedoms and undermine intercultural harmony.

Rohani specifically singles out newcomers to Canada as being particularly exposed to distortion about our national identity and values. So what would he make of the fact that the killings in Ottawa and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu were carried out by individuals born and raised in Canada? Indeed, newcomers value the opportunity to live in our democracy and there is no evidence that they are more likely than non-immigrants to want to undermine it.

Opinion: There’s no link between terrorism and multiculturalism | Montreal Gazette.

Clear case of ‘multicultiphobia,’ to use Phil Ryan’s phrase.

Jedwab also cites the recent polling done for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation as supporting this view (report-on-canadian-values), as do most polls that I have seen.

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