“Quiet, Religious Men”
Back in March, I wrote in my Daily Sun column, “What if, while patiently waiting and planning the next big “hit,” our enemy was able to unleash small, individual attacks randomly throughout the US? Is it possible that the radical Islamo-fascists could unleash such attacks with virtually no coordination or planning, meaning no direct contact or communication between any would-be attackers? Is it possible that a radicalized strain of Islam, subtly taught in mosques throughout the US homeland, can have an effect on the ideological outlook of individuals in attendance week after week? Could some individuals so inclined toward jihad find communion with other like-minded persons via the technologies widely available in today’s modern world? Could ‘ideas’ be implanted in certain persons most receptive to such powers of suggestion?” This phenomenon is coming to be widely referred to as “random acts of jihad.” And it has now spread to Canada, our neighbor north of the “other border”.
The June 5th Daily Sun reported that, following the delivery of several tons of bomb making ingredients, 17 members of a homegrown Canadian terror ring consisting of “a group of Muslims apparently inspired by al-Qaida” have been arrested. A Toronto Star (www.thestar.com) report from the same day describes them as “a shadowy group of disaffected urban youth” that “began talking in an Internet chat room in the fall of 2004 espousing anti-Western views.” Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell on the three tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer: “It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack. If I can put this in context for you, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was completed with only one ton of ammonium nitrate.”
Sgt. Asan Akbar rolls hand grenades into three tents housing fellow US army members of the 326th Engineer Battalion assigned to the 101st Airborne Division stationed in Kuwait. Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drives a rented Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo into the campus square (known as “the Pit”) at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, running down 9 people. Behrouz Nahidmobarekeh gets convicted of sprinkling fecal matter on pastries and baked goods at a Fiesta grocery store. The Beltway sniper attacks resulted in the deaths of 10 people. Muslim John Allen Muhammad has been convicted for those awful murders. Add to this group 17 Muslims from the Canadian group. None of these villains ever knew each other. Yet they were all motivated towards the commission of “random acts of jihad.” The only common thread is Islam. You know- “the religion of peace.”
In a June 6th Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com) article, reporter Rebecca Cook Dube writes that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)
“deputy director of operations Jack Hooper told a Senate committee last week that young Canadians are becoming radicalized through the Internet. ‘They are virtually indistinguishable from other youth,’ Mr. Hooper said. ‘They blend in very well to our society, they speak our language, and they appear to be, to all intents and purposes, well-assimilated.’ Many of the Toronto-area suspects - whose parental origins range from Somalia to Egypt to Jamaica - are described by friends and neighbors as normal young adults - some with well-to-do parents, promising careers, and young families.”
The previously noted Toronto Star article tells us that, for the neighbors of the arrested terror suspects,
“the arrests and charges came mostly as a shock. They talked of quiet men, religious men, who played basketball and went to school and looked for jobs, of an elder who mentored younger men, but mostly, of men who kept to themselves, coming and going silently to and from their homes in Mississauga and Toronto. ‘They never spoke to anyone,’ said one neighbor.”
So goes the story, over and over like some annoying song stuck in your head...
