If you haven't heard about it, and you live in Canada, you've probably not been near a population centre in the past two weeks.
There are a few things about the situation I'd like to address:
1) The Presumption of Innocence
I have very little faith in Canadian law enforcement when it comes to accusations of terrorism. When they arrested a group of South Asian students in Toronto a while back, they claimed to have found elaborate plans by the group for terrorist attacks, including airplane schematics. They later released 3 of the kids completely and dropped the rest of the charges, except for some immigration-related offences.
Mohammed Harkat spent 4 years behind bars, and today is only allowed move around if he wears an electronic surveillance device. To this day, no one knows what he's accused of doing, aside from his accusers in government.
RCMP "information" was what led the CIA to abduct and render Maher Arar and Abdullah El-Malki to Middle Eastern governments, resulting in their prolonged torture. Despite the fact that Arar is now free and has been cleared of wrongdoing, and no evidence has been produced against El-Malki, Canadian authorities have not asked for the extradition of the Americans who illegally kidnapped them, despite the obvious nature of their crimes.
So why don't I have faith in Canadian law enforcement when it comes to these sorts of things? Because they make stuff up when it comes to Muslims.
CSIS and the police have been handling this like a PR stunt, releasing juicy details, not about anything that was done, but sensational details about what was allegedly said by the suspects, one by one, day by day, dragging out the story so that they can lead newscasts and be plastered on the front-pages of right-wing dailies.
I am presuming that they are all innocent.
You're not a court, and you're not me, so I'm not asking you to.
Until, however, there has been a transparent and impartial trial, don't believe what the cops say, just because reporters are listening.
2) Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right
Now a whole bunch of Muslims "community leaders" are coming out of the woodwork with the oft-repeated cliche that "Islam is a religion of Peace."
Then the question comes "So why are Muslims always caught trying to blow stuff up?"
And then they stutter and mumble something about how Muslims love peace.
Part one of the answer is item 1) above. Yeah, they get caught. That has little bearing on the truth of their intentions.
Given recent history though, that's a fairly unsatisfactory answer, so you must conclude that there is something special about Muslims that predisposes them to explosive behaviour.
And you'd be right.
The difference between the Muslims who do blow stuff up, and the ones that don't, is that the ones that do believe, in their hearts that two wrongs make a right.
At the present time, 3 Muslim nations are under occupation by Western forces - Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan. Vladimir Putin receives no rebuke for his crimes in Chechnya. India occupies Kashmir. Under American goading, Pakistan is currently bombing its own population. This is to say nothing of the consistent foreign involvement in the nature and policies of the cancerous tyrranies that dominate the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia.
Now, many of you will say this is exaggerated, that not all of this is the fault of any Western country, that it isn't really like that, and that the West is really interested in giving democracy to the Muslim world. You will also quote the hateful rhetoric of militant Muslim ideologues, thus proving that it is their blind religious hatred of "infidels" that motivates them, and not geopolitics.
Maybe it does. But can anyone really say that the situation I have described has no effect on the thinking of Muslim populations? Can you really say that that sort of situation isn't going to inspire violence. And if one group were subjected to that more than other people, in more places, with the might of the greatest empires and the best technology arrayed against them, even if it were all for some noble end, would it really be surprising if that group were a little more prone to radicalism than others?
Two wrongs don't make a right. Most people in the world understand this, and Muslims understand it profoundly. Some of them, however, don't. The more first wrongs you have, the more people you will have who are willing to perpetrate a second.
3) Now let's talk Canada.
Specifically our involvement in the Muslim world, which is most extensive in Afghanistan.
Building schools and hospitals is great.
The Karzai government is now installed. It isn't ideal, and it's hardly democratic, but we can't just let it be overrun in a blood bath.
Protecting reconstruction operations is necessary. Afghanistan is a mess, and the Afghans will need help cleaning it up.
What we are doing in Southern Afghanistan, now involves artillery and airstrikes, involving ordnance at least as large as 2000lbs. I don't see a role for those in any of the above.
What a 2000lb bomb can do, however, is make you a lot of enemies. Some of these enemies will already be pretty bad characters. Some of them will be good people, with a legitimate grievance, who won't accept a lame apology for why their wife and kids are dead.
We Canadians will have to fight these people.
And that's wrong.
And there might be some Canadians around who watch the situation closely, looking for an excuse to perpetrate a second wrong.
4) Isolation breeds Radicalism
We don't yet live in the sort of country where if you say something that runs counter to the prevailing opinion, it will cause someone to show up at your door and threaten to drag you away. (Billions of people are not so fortunate).
Bombings like the July 7th bombings last year in Britain succeeded in creating a discourse in which British Muslims did not feel as "British" as everyone else. The results could be catastrophic.
Canada is not invulnerable to this.
There are a few things about the situation I'd like to address:
1) The Presumption of Innocence
I have very little faith in Canadian law enforcement when it comes to accusations of terrorism. When they arrested a group of South Asian students in Toronto a while back, they claimed to have found elaborate plans by the group for terrorist attacks, including airplane schematics. They later released 3 of the kids completely and dropped the rest of the charges, except for some immigration-related offences.
Mohammed Harkat spent 4 years behind bars, and today is only allowed move around if he wears an electronic surveillance device. To this day, no one knows what he's accused of doing, aside from his accusers in government.
RCMP "information" was what led the CIA to abduct and render Maher Arar and Abdullah El-Malki to Middle Eastern governments, resulting in their prolonged torture. Despite the fact that Arar is now free and has been cleared of wrongdoing, and no evidence has been produced against El-Malki, Canadian authorities have not asked for the extradition of the Americans who illegally kidnapped them, despite the obvious nature of their crimes.
So why don't I have faith in Canadian law enforcement when it comes to these sorts of things? Because they make stuff up when it comes to Muslims.
CSIS and the police have been handling this like a PR stunt, releasing juicy details, not about anything that was done, but sensational details about what was allegedly said by the suspects, one by one, day by day, dragging out the story so that they can lead newscasts and be plastered on the front-pages of right-wing dailies.
I am presuming that they are all innocent.
You're not a court, and you're not me, so I'm not asking you to.
Until, however, there has been a transparent and impartial trial, don't believe what the cops say, just because reporters are listening.
2) Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right
Now a whole bunch of Muslims "community leaders" are coming out of the woodwork with the oft-repeated cliche that "Islam is a religion of Peace."
Then the question comes "So why are Muslims always caught trying to blow stuff up?"
And then they stutter and mumble something about how Muslims love peace.
Part one of the answer is item 1) above. Yeah, they get caught. That has little bearing on the truth of their intentions.
Given recent history though, that's a fairly unsatisfactory answer, so you must conclude that there is something special about Muslims that predisposes them to explosive behaviour.
And you'd be right.
The difference between the Muslims who do blow stuff up, and the ones that don't, is that the ones that do believe, in their hearts that two wrongs make a right.
At the present time, 3 Muslim nations are under occupation by Western forces - Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan. Vladimir Putin receives no rebuke for his crimes in Chechnya. India occupies Kashmir. Under American goading, Pakistan is currently bombing its own population. This is to say nothing of the consistent foreign involvement in the nature and policies of the cancerous tyrranies that dominate the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia.
Now, many of you will say this is exaggerated, that not all of this is the fault of any Western country, that it isn't really like that, and that the West is really interested in giving democracy to the Muslim world. You will also quote the hateful rhetoric of militant Muslim ideologues, thus proving that it is their blind religious hatred of "infidels" that motivates them, and not geopolitics.
Maybe it does. But can anyone really say that the situation I have described has no effect on the thinking of Muslim populations? Can you really say that that sort of situation isn't going to inspire violence. And if one group were subjected to that more than other people, in more places, with the might of the greatest empires and the best technology arrayed against them, even if it were all for some noble end, would it really be surprising if that group were a little more prone to radicalism than others?
Two wrongs don't make a right. Most people in the world understand this, and Muslims understand it profoundly. Some of them, however, don't. The more first wrongs you have, the more people you will have who are willing to perpetrate a second.
3) Now let's talk Canada.
Specifically our involvement in the Muslim world, which is most extensive in Afghanistan.
Building schools and hospitals is great.
The Karzai government is now installed. It isn't ideal, and it's hardly democratic, but we can't just let it be overrun in a blood bath.
Protecting reconstruction operations is necessary. Afghanistan is a mess, and the Afghans will need help cleaning it up.
What we are doing in Southern Afghanistan, now involves artillery and airstrikes, involving ordnance at least as large as 2000lbs. I don't see a role for those in any of the above.
What a 2000lb bomb can do, however, is make you a lot of enemies. Some of these enemies will already be pretty bad characters. Some of them will be good people, with a legitimate grievance, who won't accept a lame apology for why their wife and kids are dead.
We Canadians will have to fight these people.
And that's wrong.
And there might be some Canadians around who watch the situation closely, looking for an excuse to perpetrate a second wrong.
4) Isolation breeds Radicalism
We don't yet live in the sort of country where if you say something that runs counter to the prevailing opinion, it will cause someone to show up at your door and threaten to drag you away. (Billions of people are not so fortunate).
Bombings like the July 7th bombings last year in Britain succeeded in creating a discourse in which British Muslims did not feel as "British" as everyone else. The results could be catastrophic.
Canada is not invulnerable to this.