Another overdue one from the post queue, on an issue I said I’ll get back to – the debate in Canada following the June 2-3 arrests of 17 Islamist terror suspects.
I will not go into the details of the arrests, the plot and the court proceedings here, as that has been thoroughly covered on many sites. Check out the Wikipedia entry or the related post on the Counterrorrism blog.
Instead, here is collection of quotes I compiled over several weeks following the arrests. The media surveyed here is by no means an exhaustive list, but I covered a farely good chunk of it, at least in Canada. A look at the whitewash, the common sense, the inane political correctness, the voices of reason and the voices of delusion.
I decided not to try to attempt to categorise the quotes, they are presented in chronological order, as they appeared in the media. At little rough around the edges, but you get that. This list is sure to come in handy for future reference.
As a prelude some relevant background quotes from 1998-2006, compiled by Steward Bell in his June 3rd article in the National Post.
TARGET: CANADA
1998 “You cannot stop us.” A World Islamic Front letter is sent to police advising that a biological and chemical weapons attack would be launched in the Montreal subway system.
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A group of Algerians is arrested and deported.
1999 "In the summer of 1999, Samir Ait Mohamed and Ahmed Ressam discussed placing explosives in the Outremont suburb of Montreal because it was a predominantly Jewish neighborhood," the FBI says.
2001 "Special file for our brother Abu Bakr al-Albani on the nature of his mission. First, the mission. Gather information on ... the possibility of obtaining explosive devices inside Canada." -- August 2001 e-mail found on al-Qaeda computer in Kabul.
2001 "In the lead-up and immediate aftermath to 9/11... there was a conspiracy of eight individuals who had designs to execute an act of serious violence in the Toronto area," Jack Hooper, CSIS Deputy Director of Operations, states.
2002 "As you kill, you will be killed." -- Osama bin Laden in an audiotaped speech that threatened Canada.
2004 "Human Targets: We must target and kill the Jews and the Christians.... The grades of importance are as follows: Americans, British, Spaniards, Australians, Canadians, Italians," instructs Al Battar, an al-Qaeda training manual.
2005 "And now you will get news of what hurts you." A jihadists video production posted on the Internet repeats bin Laden's 2002 threat to Canada.
2006 "We have a bifurcated threat at this point -- the threat that comes to Canada from the outside as well as a homegrown threat, and the homegrown variants look to Canada to execute their targeting," Mr. Hooper warns.
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Same Steward Bell article, former RCMP jihadism expert Tom Quiggin, now a university researcher in Singapore and “Canada’s only court-recognized expert on jihadism”:
Canadians should not be surprised to see terrorism coming so close to home… A clear sense of denial exists in Canada about the degree to which terrorism activity occurs. Political correctness is wielded as a weapon against anyone who dares to speak out. Yet some of the world’s most infamous terrorists have operated in Canada almost unhindered for years…Even direct threats against Canada and attacks against Canadians with multiple deaths have not broken this denial. As a result of the highly suppressed political discourse in Canada, the domestic response to this growing problem has been limited.”
Steward Bell himself now. Bell is the author of “Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World”:
In Europe, the United States and Australia, intelligence agencies have been reporting the same trend: loose homegrown youth networks (some of them virtual networks that exist only in cyberspace) inspired by al-Qaeda but that operate locally and autonomously.
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Western jihadist youth counterculture is the next phase in the evolution of global terrorism. Since becoming a credible threat in the late 1980s, al-Qaeda has decentralized and spread from its origins in Pakistan and Afghanistan to the point that a "high percentage" of the extremists on the CSIS radar screen are now Canadian-born. "These individuals are part of Western society, and their 'Canadianness' makes detection more difficult," a "secret" CSIS report notes.
Generation Jihad encompasses a variety of ethnic backgrounds, and includes Africans and South Asians as well as converts to Islam. Some are educated and computer-literate, while others have criminal records and more closely fit the profile of street-gang culture.
But they share a devotion to puritanical Islam, contempt for non-Muslims (and other Muslims deemed not sufficiently Islamist) and a seething anger at what they see as the worldwide oppression of Muslims. On top of that, they believe that terrorist violence is a justified response to the "war on Islam" they are convinced the West is waging in such places as Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as within Western countries such as Canada, which have arrested Muslims for terrorism.
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from a review of Bells “Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World”:
Bell worries most about al-Qaeda-style radical Islam, because it preaches and practises “violence without limits” and “serves not only a strategic purpose, but fulfills the will of God.” To Islamic terrorists, chemical, nuclear and biological weapons are “the bigger, the better.” He observes that “their hatred arises from centuries-old grievances and their aim is long term: a world under the rule of Islam, the one true faith.”
Alvin Chand, the brother of suspect Steven Vikash Chand speaking outside the courthouse. (New York Times):
“He’s not a terrorist, come on, he’s a Canadian citizen… The people that were arrested are good people. They go to the mosque. They go to school, go to college.”
Tarek Fatah, the communications director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, (in the same NY Times article), speaking about Qayyum Abdul Jamal, the oldest of the suspects and the imam of the Ar-Rahman Quran Learning Center:
“He took over an otherwise peaceful mosque and threw out the old management. There were reports throughout the community of him making hate speeches.”
“This is the work of people who believe they are victimized when they are not. Many Islamacists are preying on the Islamic community.”
“Law enforcement agencies have done a great service to the Muslim community by busting this terrorist cell.”
More reason and common sense from Mr Fatah further down.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
(in the same NY Times article):
“These individuals were allegedly intent on committing acts of terrorism against their own country and their own people. Today, Canada’s security and intelligence measures worked.”
Mike McDonell, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police assistant commissioner
(in the same NY Times article):
“They represent the broad strata of our society. Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed.”
Yep, the whitewash brigade has sent in the PC cavalry.
Roger L Simon, June 3, commenting on the above NY Times article, in “Eight Paragraphs down”:
I can’t say I’m surprised it took eight paragraphs before the New York Times deigned to tell us what might be behind (have motivated) the arrest of 17 people in Ontario over the last couple of days. In fact it takes them six paragraphs before they even name any names. And of course they hasten first to make sure we know most of these men (not yet identified as Islamists) are “young people,” shades of the French linguistic obsession with les jeunes, lest we might think them representative of a hostile ideology. This political bowdlerization is accomplished in paragraph four. Think for a moment how the Times would have constructed an article (has constructed many articles) about the malfeasance of US servicemen. They sure wouldn’t bury the lede. They would scream “American failure” at the top of their semi-refined lungs in paragraph one.
Andrew C. McCarthy, June 5th, commenting on the “broad strata of society” comment above, in The Elephant in the Room: The mainstream media continue to suppress the “Islam” in Islamic terrorism. (National Post):
In point of fact, however, they represent a very narrow stratum of Canadian society: They are Muslims, many of whom attend the same mosque, the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre for Islamic Education in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.
Not only were all those arrested Muslims. The reported evidence against them fits to a tee the shopworn pattern of Islamic terrorism repeated for much of the last two decades. Young men were radicalized at the local mosque and its companion school by elders preaching from the Koran. They participated in paramilitary training in rural outposts. The training involved firearms and communications equipment. The plotters may have conducted surveillance on specific targets. And they ordered prodigious amounts of explosives components—in this case, tons of fertilizer in preparation for the construction of crude but deadly effective ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) bombs.
Nonetheless, the rigorous media practice in Phase One is to suppress any reference to Islam,…..
[#M_Click to expand extract inpost.|Close| the single thread that runs through virtually all modern terrorism—from New York, to Virginia, to Bali, the Djerba, to Baghdad, to Mombassa, to Tel Aviv, to Nairobi, to Dar es Salaam, to Ankara, to Paris, to Riyadh, to Amman, to Sharm el-Sheikh, to Aden, to London, to Madrid, and, now, to Toronto.
Consequently, the piece of information most obviously pertinent to the public’s understanding of what could be catalyzing this global savagery is consciously withheld. Such a revelation might, after all, lead people to ask the sensible question: What is it about Islam that makes it such a fertile breeding ground for this pathology?
Instead, we are given the defendants’ nationality, or, even more vaporously, the continental region from which they emigrated to wherever they happen to be making mischief at the moment. The Times relates that the “17 men” arrested in Canada “were mainly of South Asian descent and most were in their teens or early 20’s.”
....
Yes, public discussion of Koranic verse and all things Islamic is permissible only when the coverage template moves into Phase Two. This phase is basically the group hug for Muslims—modern journalism’s act of contrition for reluctantly having to report on all these pesky arrests and plots and ANFO bombs. And somehow, the media-mined verses are never, for example, “[F]ight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)” (Sura 9:5). Rather, they are about a humble, unarmed man laid low by the infidels … while he’s dabbling in chemical explosives.
Phase Two was also in full swing Monday, as the Times returned to the Canadian plot. The conspiracy’s leaders, we were told, may have “led prayers” and given “fiery speeches,” but this doesn’t mean they “openly embrace[d] violence.” After all, it’s just Islam (many of whose fiery scriptures openly embrace violence).
….
No, in Phase Two, balance is not a priority. Once the press finally summons the courage to utter that Muslims have been arrested, its primary duty is to obsess over how the “Muslim community” will react. The Times thus admonishes that “some in the Muslim community [are] skeptical about the lack of specific charges.” Indeed, “[s]ince Sept. 11,” we are advised, “several police investigations against Muslims here have unraveled after arrests were made, which has left a bitter legacy within the Muslim community.”
Naturally, there is no discussion of what the Muslim community thinks about the more important “bitter legacy”—namely, the violence that stems from within the Muslim community. There is no mention of the fact that, before and after the 9/11 attacks, numerous indicted Muslims have been convicted by impartial juries of terrorist acts and plots—to say nothing of the countless Muslims who proudly claim credit for barbaric acts while managing to evade capture. Nor is there acknowledgement that convictions for terrorism routinely follow these monotonous protestations about Muslims being framed, Muslims being entrapped, and Muslims being otherwise ensnared by “Islamophobic” authorities—such claims having been dutifully echoed ad nauseum across our 24/7 media, regardless of whether they passed the laugh test.
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