Homefront Homegrown Terror

Who ever thought it would lead to this? Talk about embracing vipers at one's breast. How is it possible that an open and free society, nurturing of the differences within its heterogeneous population - as a society historically comprised of immigrants - respecting and honouring all, encouraging and respectful of other cultures and religions, ensuring the protection of our universal laws for all, would now have to contend with the very real situation of homegrown enemies in our midst?

Enemies? These are immigrants and children of immigrants for whom the country has opened new opportunities; political, economic, even cultural. For in so many instances these people have come from societies that practise totalitarian repression; from countries where freedom under the law is not guaranteed; from nations at war; from economically depressed countries where there is no hope for the future.

Yet, with all the acceptance and the provision of freedoms and opportunities, guarantees of equality under the law, there are those within the society who find fault, nurse grievances, and seek to destroy the very democratic and liberal values that have allowed them to flourish and realize opportunities - even to fomenting a vicious and violent backlash against the very society that has taken them in. The response has been, from a minuscule portion of the disaffected, to embrace Islamic radicalism.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), has issued its latest annual report clarifying to some degree, the malaise festering within some segments of Canadian society, and the potential threats to the entire society from elements seeking to harm us from without. The most immediate threat to Canada's safety and security remains from the threat of foreign extremists planning terrorism against this country. A religion-inspired terror, jihad, led by al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

Yet another avenue of possible attack is from within, from disaffected religious and ethnic-cultural minority groups ripe for radicalization by outside agents, or self-directed, seeking inspiration from terror networks on the Internet. Terror networks that actively recruit and inspire young male Muslims convinced by network propaganda that the West is targeting Islam and Muslims in an effort to eradicate both.

Perhaps the most surprising element here is the rapid process described by the CSIS report in transforming a handful of youths from angry onlookers to activists to jihadist terrorists convinced that their religion is in peril and their participation in a global jihad is required to alter the equation. Young people who become enraged by what they perceive as a western "war on Islam", and whose enticement by extremist clerics into jihad has been successful.

"The most important factor for radicalization is the perception that Islam is under attack from the West. Jihadists also feel they must pre-emptively and violently defend Islam from these perceived enemies", concludes the report. Intelligence agencies have their work cut out for them in detecting and tracing the stealth networks of committed young jihadists before violence ensues, while still in the planning stages.

It's not at all surprising that this message of Islam-under-attack has met with success, given the fact that high-placed Islamic clerics have issued condemnations and warnings to Western governments, post-conference, that they are responsible for the growing radicalization of young Muslims, by western interference in Islam's affairs, and a growing incidence of what they call "Islamophobia".

This neatly coincides with the message that impressionable and societally-aggrieved young Muslim men are receiving from jihadist mentors. That responsible Islamic scholars, clerics and politicians do not see that connection, do not recognize their singular responsibilities to exert pressure on those who interpret passages of the Koran to legitimize jihad against perceived infidels and western institutions is a failure within Islam itself.

It's the sad old story of the victim being blamed for his own tragedy that the Muslim clerics and scholars have turned inside out. Refusal to accept primary responsibility; instead charging those who are being attacked for reprisals in their own defence is reminiscent of a culture and a religious tradition that cannot view itself in the round, will not submit to a test of justice, and claims itself a victim.

That's the macrocosm of the situation; the microcosm can be seen in what is happening in the Middle East, with Islamist Hezbollah and Hamas viciously attacking a liberal democratic country in their midst, representing another religion alien to Islam, but not to the ancient geography, and shouting out to the world how repressed and ill done by they are by the "occupier" they attack.