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Great White North
Canadian broadcaster defends airing 'jihad' lecture
2007-07-20
VisionTV says it will monitor one of its shows more closely after it broadcast a lecture by an Islamic preacher who said scripture requires Muslims to either fight jihad or finance it. The multi-faith channel, available in 7.8 million Canadian homes, said it took the precaution following a complaint about last Saturday's broadcast of a lecture by the Pakistani fundamentalist.

In the hour-long talk, Israr Ahmad said, "Jihad in the way of Allah, for the cause of Allah, can be pursued either with your financial resources or your bodily strength when you go to fight the enemy in the battlefield. So jihad, the highest form, is fighting in the cause of Allah."

Mr. Ahmad runs a seminary and bookstore in Lahore, Pakistan, and his writings foresee the "global domination of Islam," compare Jews to "parasites," describe the Holocaust as "divine punishment" and predict the "total extermination" of Jews. His followers in Canada include terror suspect Qayyum Abdul Jamal, who was arrested last summer for his alleged role in a plot to detonate truck bombs in downtown Toronto. According to Mr. Jamal's wife, Mr. Ahmad was her husband's teacher and mentor.

The television program left some wondering how the Pakistani preacher, who claims that Jews control the world through a secret conspiracy involving financial institutions, made it on to Canada's government-regulated airwaves. "Israr Ahmad is widely known for his hateful words and vilification of Jews," said Canadian Jewish Congress spokesman Bernie Farber. "We are deeply concerned that Vision would give this individual the imprimatur of Vision's credibility. It was a mistake in judgment and ought to concern all of us."

VisionTV's code of ethics forbids the broadcast of programs that glorify or incite violence or "have the effect of provoking or abetting domestic or international religious or political conflicts." The broadcaster acknowledged that the show, Dil Dil Pakistan, had talked about jihad and fighting but said it did not contravene the station's policies against incitement because the comments were made in a historical context. But it said the show would be monitored more closely.

"We have essentially a system of flagging shows when complaints are made, where we'll watch subsequent episodes even more carefully than we otherwise do, and take extra care and caution. So that's certainly the case here," said Mark Prasuhn, VisionTV's chief operating officer and vice-president of programming.

Toronto resident Mindy Alter, however, said the message came through loud and clear when she tuned in to the show, which aired from 3 to 4 p.m. on July 14. "The part about the jihad, he said very specifically that it is incumbent upon Muslims to wage jihad against their enemies until Islam rules supreme over the world," Mrs. Alter said. "I'm sorry, I don't think that belonged over the airwaves of Canadian TV.... You can put that in whatever context you like. To me that's preaching jihad."

Responded Mr. Prasuhn: "Definitely, the viewer is correct. [Mr. Ahmad] does make the point about, you either contribute financially or through your body, and he uses the word fight. But none of this, as far as I could see, is in any way correlated or referenced to the present day. It is strictly a historical context and reading of the Koran by a Koranic scholar."
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Great White North
Wajid Khan: 'I did my duty'
2006-06-14
Thank you. Yes, you did.
Muslim MP believes his community must expose extremists

The clash between Islamic extremism and Western democracy tends to be discussed as a geopolitical abstraction. But around a year ago, in a storefront mosque in a suburban Toronto strip mall, the confrontation was reduced to a very human scale -- a single strident Muslim ideologue against a lone elected Muslim politician. Liberal MP Wajid Khan was making what he thought would be a routine visit to the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre in his Mississauga-Streetsville riding. The drop-in took an unexpected turn when the mosque caretaker who was to introduce Khan instead began railing against Muslims participating in mainstream politics. It was a memorably unpleasant encounter for Khan, but it came to public attention only because of the identity of the radical who delivered the tirade: Qayyum Abdul Jamal, now 43, one of the 17 terrorist suspects arrested in Toronto, and the man singled out as a mentor to the much younger accused would-be bombers.

According to Khan, Jamal's rant that day reached an outrageous climax with the charge that Canadian troops in Afghanistan were "raping Muslim women." It was too much for the MP. "I stood up and moved this gentleman, if I can call him that, aside, and spoke to the congregation -- utter nonsense, this isn't true, our troops are doing a wonderful job," Khan recalled in an interview. "Most of the congregation was very pleased with my comments and very upset with this gentleman." And Khan hints strongly that he did not merely walk away from the incident. Asked by Maclean's if he reported Jamal's incendiary views to the RCMP or CSIS, Khan said cautiously, "I don't think I want to answer that question for obvious reasons. All I can say is that I did my duty. I can't be quoted on specifics."

The possibility that a member of Parliament was among those who raised the alarm about Jamal is an intriguing twist in the complex story of how police built their case leading to the arrests. Even if, as is likely, any report to the authorities from Khan was a minor element in the investigation, the episode stands out in the growing debate among Canadian Muslims about how they should interact with police and CSIS agents. Some Muslim leaders have objected in the past to the approach federal anti-terrorism investigators have taken, complaining that the line of inquiry often seems to suggest the most devout Muslims represent the greatest potential security threat. Khan argues that Muslims must now become less defensive and more co-operative, answering questions on the assumption that authorities will use information responsibly. "While the wider community must be vigilant," he said, "the onus now rests, not solely, but mainly on the Muslim community."

Khan said he expects his call for greater co-operation with police will anger some Muslim leaders. But he contends that most Canadian Muslims are so shocked by the arrests and the sensational details of the charges that their attitudes have shifted. "This has brought a new reality to our community across Canada," he said. "Up to now, people were hoping against hope that it doesn't happen here." Following last July's London transit bombings, Khan said, many Canadian Muslims, among others, emphasized that the level of poverty and youth disenfranchisement among Muslims is greater in Europe than here, making young Canadian Muslims less receptive to radical messages. But that optimistic reading of the situation now looks hopelessly inadequate.

Khan's call for Muslims to take more responsibility for identifying potentially dangerous extremists in their communities was echoed by some other Muslim leaders last week. But there are competing voices, and conflicting statements.
I'll bet
Aly Hindy, the controversial imam at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in suburban Toronto, denounced the charges as "an attack on the Muslim community," even though he also told reporters that he himself had called authorities to report concerns about one of the suspects.

Khan said moderate Muslim leaders must become more outspoken, and tout the opportunities and openness of Canadian society. A former military pilot in Pakistan, he settled in Toronto in 1974, and rose from car salesman to president of a large dealership, before winning his seat in the 2004 and being re-elected this year. His wife is a doctor. Khan, 60, says he has never faced bigotry in Canada. "Our watchwords," he said, "are diversity and respect." And in these tense days, he argues, Canadian Muslims need to trust those values -- and the RCMP and CSIS, too.
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Great White North
Jamal encouraged Canadians to attend terrorist training camps
2006-06-08
NEIGHBOURS in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga were curious about why so many young Muslims used to visit Qayyum Abdul Jamal.

The oldest of the 17 arrested as part of a North American terror cell, Mr Jamal is alleged to have encouraged his followers to attend training camps in Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. Some of the Canadians are believed to have attended the same camps, run by al-Qaeda, as British militants — thought to include at least two of those who murdered 52 people in London on July 7.

The Westerners were taught weapons handling and bombmaking, and how to operate cells and stay in touch with activists from other countries, using the internet. Their role back in suburbia was to radicalise other young people and pass on expertise.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police worked with Scotland Yard in Pakistan, tracing the movement of several individuals allegedly working on plots to bomb targets in Britain.

Investigators in Toronto are questioning Mr Jamal, 43, about claims that he helped to run a training camp in Washago, a rural community where locals heard machinegun fire and saw men in camouflage gear.

Police claim that the group tried to obtain three tonnes of ammonium nitrate for a bombing campaign, a charge all those arrested vigorously deny.
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Great White North
Canadian MP had encounter with one of Canadian jihadis
2006-06-08
Wajid Khan won't decide til the last minute whether to fly as scheduled to Brussels today for a meeting of defence chiefs at NATO headquarters. It's an important summit and the Liberal Party's associate defence critic — Khan was a former military pilot in Pakistan before coming to Canada in 1974 — wants to be there. He missed the meeting last October because he helped organize Canada's response to the earthquake in Pakistan.

There is just one problem: Khan is also MP for Mississauga-Streetsville. It's on his turf that security forces scooped up suspected Islamic terrorists last weekend. It may not be a good time to be out of the country. Khan realized with a shock on Saturday that he knew one of the accused, or rather, had had an encounter last year with Qayyum Abdul Jamal, the 43-year-old caretaker and frequent radical speaker at Mississauga's Ar-Rahman Islamic Centre.

Khan had been invited to speak at the Islamic centre at a Mississauga strip mall. Jamal was slated to introduce him. But in the process, the avowed fundamentalist launched a verbal attack on Canadian institutions and, in particular, on the deployment of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, where, he said, they were raping the Afghan women.

"It was all kinds of derogatory things," Khan recalls. "I said, `You're talking a lot of nonsense. The troops are doing a wonderful job there.'

"I told the congregation that this was misinformation and they shouldn't accept it. Then I walked out."
Good for you.
He later learned that some members of the centre were "so upset with Jamal they roughed him up a little, pushed him." The point is, Khan says, not all Muslims are like-minded.

Khan met on Sunday with representatives of 25 different non-religious Muslim organizations who want to help security forces root out Islamic extremists. He told them they can start by "not tolerating this kind of nonsense in the community."

Critics such as Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress, however, charge that ordinary Muslims are all too often left out of the loop. Police and politicians seem to meet only with religious leaders, he says.
There's an interesting point -- perhaps the average Ahmed on the street would be more willing to help the police, but the mosque leaders are getting in the way.
He's also critical of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair for holding a press conference Sunday at a Scarborough mosque. "Blair sat down with the most radical imams and gave them credibility," he says.
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Great White North
It's the Jihad, Stupid
2006-06-07
By Michelle Malkin
Canadian law enforcement officials should be proud of busting a reputed Islamic terrorist network that may span seven nations. Instead, our northern neighbors are trying their damnedest to whitewash the jihadi ties that bind the accused plotters and their murder-minded peers around the world.

We live on a doomed continent of ostriches.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police official coined the baneful phrase "broad strata" to describe the segment of Canadian society from whence Qayyum Abdul Jamal and his fellow adult suspects Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Jahmaal James, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid came.

"Broad"? I suppose it is so if one defines "broad" to mean more than one spelling variation of Mohammed or Jamal. Or perhaps, as Internet humorist Jim Treacher (jimtreacher.com) suggests, "broad" refers to the "strata" of the suspects' beard lengths.

Undeterred by the obvious, Toronto police chief Bill Blair assured the public that the Muslim suspects "were motivated by an ideology based on politics, hatred and terrorism, and not on faith....I am not aware of any mosques that these individuals were influenced by."

Well, Chief Blindspot, try the Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education. That's the Canadian storefront mosque where eldest jihadi suspect Qayyum Abdul Jamal is, according to his own lawyer, a prayer leader and active member-along with many of the other Muslim males arrested in the sweep.
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Great White North
Bomb-plot figure was mosque regular
2006-06-06
MISSISSAUGA, Ontario - Qayyum Abdul Jamal and several others arrested Friday in what Canadian police say was a foiled bomb plot were regulars at Al-Rahman mosque, a storefront space sandwiched between a Hasty convenience market and a beauty saloon in a small strip mall in Mississauga. The 43-year-old Jamal, the oldest of those nabbed in the police sweep, lived with his family just down the road, in a neat, suburban townhouse complex where neighbors said he spent a lot of time fixing cars in his driveway. ``He was quiet. Didn't say much,'' said his next-door neighbor.
"A loner. Kept to himself..."
But that was not true at the mosque. Jamal's angry view of the world, and his belief that the West is at war with Muslims, boiled over there, others say. It was so strident it startled Wajid Khan, a Muslim member of Parliament who stopped at the mosque last year on his regular rounds of his district just west of Toronto. ``I was concerned that he had found a bunch of young kids and he was able to influence them,'' Khan said in an interview Sunday. ``I think we have to be extremely vigilant in the Muslim community. We have to watch out for people who are trying to teach disaffected youths that it's the Muslims against the rest, a war of civilizations.''
Yeah. I guess you do. You might start by grabbing the guys spewing spittle and rolling their eyes and putting them in straightjackets.
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Great White North
6 busted Canucks attended same mosque, trained near US border
2006-06-05
At least 6 of the 17 people arrested by Canadian authorities in a sweeping counterterrorism operation over the weekend regularly attended the same storefront mosque in this middle-class Toronto suburb of modest brick rental townhouses and well-kept lawns, fellow worshipers said Sunday.

Their attendance at the mosque, Al-Rahman Islamic Centre for Islamic Education, is one of the few public pieces of information that clearly link any of the suspects — 12 adults and 5 youths — in one of the biggest antiterrorism arrests in North America since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Members at a mosque prayer meeting on Sunday said the six fellow worshipers who were arrested included the eldest, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, described by several acquaintances as a school bus driver and an active member of the mosque who frequently led prayers, made fiery speeches and influenced young people who attended the services.

"He spent a lot of time with youth," said Faheem Bukhari, a director of the Mississauga Muslim Community Center who sometimes attended prayers at the mosque. "He'd take them for soccer or bowling, and talk to them."
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Great White North
Police planted evidence: Terrorists’ arrest in Toronto was a sting operation
2006-06-05
The three tonnes of ammonium nitrate found with the Totonto terrorism suspects was planted by the police in an elaborate sting operation. According to Toronto Star, “Sources say investigators who had learned of the group’s alleged plan to build a bomb were controlling the sale and transport of the massive amount of fertiliser, a key component in creating explosives. Once the deal was done, the RCMP-led anti-terrorism task force moved in for the arrests.”

At the news conference held by the police, there was no mention of the sting operation. Among the intended targets of the group, one report said, was the Parliament in Ottawa and the headquarters of Canada’s premier spy agency.

The 12 adults charged are: Fahim Ahmad, 21; Jahmaal James, 23; Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19; and Steven Vikash Chand, 25, all of Toronto; Zakaria Amara, 20; Asad Ansari, 21; Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30; Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21; Saad Khalid, 19; and Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, all of Mississauga; and Mohammed Dirie, 22 and Yasin Abdi Mohamed, 24. Six of the 12 suspects lived in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, four came from Toronto and two from the town of Kingston in Ontario. The last two are already in custody on a gun smuggling charge.

The police also arrested five youngsters but their identities or names have not bee made public. At a court hearing in Toronto on Saturday, all the suspects were produced and Canadian newspapers published photographs of head-to-toe, black burqa clad group of women said to belong to the one or more of the families of the men arrested. One whose face was visible looked like a Pakistani. Several of the men, photographed as they were being brought in police cars, were bearded.

The charges include participating in or contributing to the activity of a terrorist group, including training and recruitment; providing or making available property for terrorist purposes; and the commission of indictable offences, including firearms and explosives offences for the benefit of or in association with a terrorist group.

According to the Toronto Star report, “Anser Farooq, a lawyer who represents five of the accused, pointed at snipers on the roof of the courthouse and said, “This is ridiculous. They’ve got soldiers here with guns. This is going to completely change the atmosphere. I think the police cast their net far too wide,” he said.

According to the Globe and Mail, defence lawyer Rocco Galati, who was representing some of the suspects, protested the intense security measures at the court. Galati later scoffed at the allegations. “I’ve seen fertiliser for the last eight years,” he said.

Aly Hindy, a Toronto imam, said he knew several of the accused because they prayed at his mosque but said they were not terrorists. “The charges are to keep George Bush happy, that’s all,” he added sardonically. The Globe and Mail did not mention that all incriminating evidence had been planted on the suspects.

AP adds: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there was no indication that the arrested were trying to plan an attack in the United States. “We certainly don’t believe that there’s any link to the United States, but obviously we will follow up,” said Rice. “I think we will get whatever information we need,” she said. “But it’s obviously a great success for the Canadians. They’re to be congratulated for it.”
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