One Super-Loyal Canadian

When, back in June of 2006, Canada reeled with the impact of the news that the RCMP had arrested no fewer than 18 home-grown jihadists bent on creating terror by planned operations to bomb select institutions in the country, we felt ourselves to be imperilled through this apprehended insurrection. Eighteen Muslim men arrested - how many others were there out there planning similar acts of violence?

And then, slowly, bits of information began to be reported about the would-be terrorists, their plans, overheard conversations, the vital information conveyed to police by an undercover mole, and it was truly difficult to feel that the eighteen represented a serious threat. The insubstantiality of their stealthy meetings, their discussions, their determinations, spoke of the behaviour of loutish adolescents, societally dissatisfied and nursing grudges.

Of course even clumsy, unintelligent but determined groups, left to their own devices, are theoretically capable of visiting great harm on the public, and no country can afford, in the present climate of international terror, to ignore the terror potential on its soil. Vigilance is the order of the day, to ensure that any such incidents are apprehended before real harm is done.

So here is this arrogant braggart, a busybody of monumental proportions, a religious hypocrite, an egotistical bully, who puts himself forward as a valuable undercover agent for the RCMP. Assuring the authorities that with his background as a devout Muslim, a former member of the Canadian militia, a good citizen who wants to defend his country, he is the perfect candidate to inveigle himself into the confidence of would-be jihadists.

Post-arrest, back in 2006, this man, Mubin Shaikh, enthusiastically offered himself up to the media for interviews, where he preened himself and boasted of his love of country, and his inability to sit back and let blackguards who would disturb the peace and security of the nation, get on with their plans. Not if he could help it, that stout defender of Canadian values and freedoms. Shaikh to the rescue!

Of course the irrelevant little details such as that he was paid a $300,000 fee for his work with the federal policing authorities were absent from his oily description of himself as a Canadian hero, helping to forestall a dreadful attack on Parliament, and the potential beheading of the prime minister.

This same heroic figure was earlier involved in attempting to persuade the Province of Ontario to install shariah law in the province. He was also identified as one who threatened physical harm to outspoken members of the Muslim community in Toronto who were critical of the un-Canadian agendas of fundamentalist Muslim organizations in the country.

So why, one wonders, is the counsel for the RCMP puzzled at the kind of witness Mr. Shaikh has turned out to be in the trial of a young Muslim man as one of the group of 18 who, in reality, likely was innocent of anything but naivete. Mubin Shaikh was a paid informer whose self-aggrandizing affiliation with the RCMP surely guaranteed he was not to be trusted.

It was merely a dramatic bit of theatre, his infiltration of a suspected terror cell, which was likely in reality, a group of really brain-challenged Muslim ne'er-do-wells, playing vapid games of romantic pretend-reality to enhance their visions of themselves as champions of Islam against the evil machinations of Western democracies. Of which they were just incidentally, a part as home-grown and Canadian.

His testimony against the 20-year-old currently on trial isn't standing up to expectations. Much to the exasperation of those who paid him so handsomely as an "undercover agent". If Mr. Shaikh is good at anything, it is his propensity to embroider reality, to ingratiate himself, to draw attention to his self-pronounced sterling qualities.

As to the verity of his statements as a witness for the Crown, well, he will tell the story that most appeals to him and his sense of ironic superiority. That story will reflect whatever suits his vision of self at any given time. Discrepancies in testimony? Mere irrelevances.