Commentary
Oh well. Another day, another homegrown Canadian terror plot. I wonder if we should be worried?
No, wait. Before you growl “Of course, you idiot” at me or my editors, please consider that this response would be dismissed, even despised, by much of Canada’s political class.
First it was the Eldidis, father and son, with the former having passed a number of security screenings despite what the CBC
delicately calls “a 2015 video allegedly showing him participating in a violent terrorist assault overseas” and his son sliding painlessly through one security-check-like object. And now
it’s “Toronto man accused of plotting terror attack at Jewish centre in New York City.”
During World War II, then-General Dwight Eisenhower asked, “Where do we get such men?” So do I. But while Ike marvelled at how America produced so many fine soldiers despite not being warlike, I’m curious why Canada seems to be churning out jihadis despite not being Islamist.
Or rather churning them in. These three are all imports. And while of course any open society will bring in some bad apples, and grow some domestically,
what has consistently struck me about the Eldidi case is how the authorities insisted they’d done a splendid job and it’s unfair to ask them to stop such people from getting in and, in the case of Eldidi
père, getting citizenship just because we pay them to.
Another CBC story said, “A senior intelligence official with Canada’s border agency says he’s not convinced the system failed.” And the one quoted above explained that the video of Eldidi hacking some infidel to bits “was not available to officials at the time, says a senior official.” Um it was posted online.
Speaking of which, our federal Minister of Justice
tried to appoint a head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, to media
applause, who’d made blistering anti-Israeli and
arguably anti-Semitic posts and remarks, some while going by the name “Mujahid,” which they claimed not to know about but actually
just didn’t care about or find embarrassing afterward. Instead, the justice ministry
brushed aside questions about him getting a severance package in a classic Canadian Jedi mind trick where we don’t need to see information that might make us indignant at public-sector failure.
Then there’s the more recent case in which,
says CTV, “A Pakistani citizen has been arrested in Canada and charged with plotting a terrorist attack in New York City.” And to be fair, Canadian authorities did catch Muhammad Shahzeb Khan/Shazeb Jadoonhim… after the FBI said hey you Canadian authorities, this guy shared terrorist plans with American undercover agents.
So how did he get here? Canadian Jedi mind trick again: “In an email to CTVNews.ca, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada would not confirm Khan’s status in the country, saying it does not comment on active investigations or individual cases.” These aren’t the terrorists you’re looking for. But they are. And another thing.
In response to the arrest, RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme said predictably that “there is no place for such ideological and hate-motivated crime in Canada.” But clearly there is, and not just because of these two arrests. Because of open advocacy for Hamas in our cities before large, supportive crowds with apathetic or absent policing. Including, descendant of Holocaust survivors Dahlia Kurtz
underlines on X, some character barely able to string together a sentence praising “Our spokesman” announcing the Hamas policy of shooting hostages who might be rescued. Not “their,” “our.” So it does have a place in Canada, and that place is broad daylight.
Indeed, on the Birju Dattani CHRC case, it’s noteworthy that neither the government nor the press, even
in critical stories, explained that “Mujahid” means “holy warrior,” though good luck landing such a job after posting as “Crusader.” They really don’t think militant Islam is a problem, unlike Christianity.
Which explains why our immigration policy is actively making a broad place for such ideological and hate-motivated crime here. It’s not just that the borders are wide open, with literally millions of newcomers driving up housing prices and otherwise undermining social cohesion. It’s that the system is run by people who think genuine security is for far-right extremist losers. As with debates over voter ID, or those pro-Hamas protests, it’s difficult to believe what you’re hearing. But believe it.
For instance, the top priority of those in charge right now is to get as many people in from Gaza as possible as fast as possible, and any concerns about the level of support for Hamas there strikes them as deplorable retrograde bigotry. Just as they are far more concerned with mean comments on social media than about money laundering, terror financing, or what was that boring thing again? Oh yeah, members of Parliament who were foreign agents.
Plus this burgeoning crop of jihadis. So yes, we should be worried. Especially that they’re not.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
