In a recent article, analyst Jonathan Halevi published a useful recap about 30 young Muslims or so who planned jihad attacks in Canada or went abroad to wage it since 2012. As Halevi indicates, this important number demonstrates that “the likelihood of terrorism within Canada has increased in the past year due to external radical influences, particularly al Qaida and its affiliates.”
Three weeks ago, security analyst David B. Harris went along the same lines when he predicted that it is only a matter of time before suicide bombers start detonating in Canada.
Over the years, when they were asked to explain the cause of this radicalization, Shahina Siddiqui, Munir El-Kassem and other Islamist leaders who are involved in outreach programs with the RCMP and other police organizations have remained evasive and refused to point out the obvious. In 2006, when Hussein Hamdani blamed the influence of petro-dollars to explain the radicalization of young Muslims, he was right but he omitted to reveal one key information. Just a few years before, Hamdani launched the Reviving the Islamic Spirit conventions with the sponsorship of the Saudi World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), an organization submerged with petro-dollars whose charitable status was revoked in 2012 for its ties with Al-Qaeda.
Shahina Siddiqui
In 2010, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) made public that Ferid Imam, the former president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of Manitoba (UM-MSA) and two other former leaders had left Winnipeg to go wage jihad in Pakistan.
Ferid Imam was charged in a US court for having instructed al-Qaeda recruits involved in a plot to bomb the New York City subway in 2008-2009.
After the announcement, the Winnipeg-based Director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), Shahina Siddiqui, told the Winnipeg Free Press that “They’re adults, they have their passports. […] These are young men who decided to go, we don’t know where, we don’t know why.”
In the case of Ferid Imam, his radicalization coincided with his time at the UM-MSA. The Muslim Students Association was established by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1963. It has branches in most North American universities and it aims at mobilizing Muslim students towards its goal of gradually implementing sharia in North America. A New York Police report (p. 68) has described the MSA as an “incubator” for radicalism.
In their pledge of allegiance, MSA members declare that “Jihad is my spirit” and that “I will die to establish Islam.”
Shahina Siddiqui’s explanation (or lack of) is particularly disingenuous, given the fact that she, herself, has been actively involved in the radicalization of Muslim student leaders. In the summer of 1997, for example, she was on the organizational committee of a 1-month long “Islamic retreat” sponsored by MSA National, ISNA-Canada and other Muslim Brotherhood-linked entities in Winnipeg. Siraj Wahhaj was the director of the retreat and one of its main speakers.
Siraj Wahhaj has endorsed violent jihad on numerous occasions in the past. In 1992 for example, shortly after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, he gave a sermon in which he advocated harnessing the street violence in the United States for the benefit of Islam. He pleaded that, one day, after having converted to Islam, young Americans who feel excluded will be given weapons to fight jihad in U.S. streets.
Part I and Part II of his sermon entitled Stand up for justice were still available on islamweb.net in August 2014. The quality of the audio is very poor.
The following quotes concerning jihad have been archived by Point de Bascule. They come from the conclusion in Part II:
00:34 — We don’t need to arm the people with 9mms and Uzis. You need to arm them with righteousness first. And once you arm them with righteousness first, then you can arm them [with weapons].”
01:02 — Even if we go to war, brothers and sisters — one day we will, believe me — that’s why you’re commanded [to fight in] jihad.”
01:49 — They [Youth who feel excluded] need to get out of the street and get into the masjid [mosque], learn Islam and then get [back] in the street. Because these people got guts and courage a lot of Muslims don’t have…
The book Muslim Mafia (pp. 136-137) presents more quotes from this sermon given by Siraj Wahhaj in 1992.
In that 1997 retreat organized by Shahina Siddiqui, another key speaker was Taha Jabir Al-Awani. In December 1990, on behalf of two prestigious Islamic organizations, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (the main Muslim Brotherhood think-tank in North America) and the Jedda-based Islamic Fiqh Academy (a centre for the study of Islam created by a decision of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation), Al-Awani endorsed (p. xviii) the English translation of an important manual of sharia entitled Reliance of the traveller.
Contrary to what Islamists involved in outreach activities have led their counterparts in police services to believe, here is how this manual of sharia defines the concept of jihad (p. 599):
o9.0 JIHAD – Jihad means to war against non-Muslims and is etymologically derived from the mujahada, signifying warfare to establish religion.
*** According to her profile on the NCCM’s website, “Shahina [Siddiqui] is active in the community as a member of the RCMP Commissioner’s National Advisory Committee on Diversity as well as the RCMP Commanding Officers’ Diversity Committee, D-Division in Manitoba.” ***
Munir El-Kassem
After the media revealed that two Muslim young men from London (Ontario) had been involved in the attack of a gas plant in Algeria in January 2013, El-Kassem declared in a press conference that “terrorism has no religious identity” (VIDEO – 05:33).
Nobody challenged El-Kassem by pointing out, that he, himself, had been a leader of a religious organization involved in the radicalization of Muslims, the Libyan World Islamic Call Society.
In 2004, US-based Muslim Brotherhood leader “Abdurahman M. Alamoudi, admitted in [a] plea agreement with a U.S. court that he was ordered by Gadhafi to help orchestrate [an] assassination and was provided by the Libyan leader with $340,000 toward that end.” Alamoudi also admitted that WICS’ religious leaders transferred funds to Hamas on behalf of the Libyan government. (Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, Matthew Levitt, Dennis Ross, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 187)
In 2011, WICS Canadian branch’s charitable status was revoked by the Canada Revenue Agency after it found out that it transferred money to a radical group involved in a coup in Trinidad and Tobago in 1990 and in a plot to bomb New York Kennedy Airport in 2007.
Point de Bascule (April 19, 2013): Imam Munir el-Kassem – A leader of a terror-funding organization and a Chaplain of the London Ontario Police Service
*** The London Link announced Munir El-Kassem’s appointment as a Chaplain of the
London Police Service in May 2011 ***
Hussein Hamdani
In 2006, after the arrest of the Toronto 18, Hussein Hamdani asked then newly appointed Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to fund “moderate and moderating voices” within the Muslim community to compete with radical influences. Hamdani said: “These [moderate] voices exist, but the community doesn’t have the money to bring them forward. Petro-dollars are hard to compete with.”
What seemed to be a reasonable proposition at first was proved to be a deception. Far from being hostile to Saudi Arabia and other petro-monarchies influence, Hussein Hamdani counted on it to launch the Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention in 2003. The 1st Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention was organized by his own Ihya Foundation and sponsored by the Saudi World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), an organization submerged with petro-dollars. In 2012, the Canada Revenue Agency revoked WAMY-Canada’s charitable status because it funded Al-Qaeda in the past.
According to a report published shortly after RIS 2003, the opening speech at the event was given by the Saudi Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Aal ash-Shaikh, the main religious leader of Saudi Arabia and the personification of petro-dollar-funded Saudi Wahhabism. In 2012, CBN reported that the same Saudi Grand Mufti called for all churches to be demolished in the Arabian Peninsula. This area comprises Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
Point de Bascule (December 12, 2013): Reviving the Islamic Spirit – In 2003, the launch of the RIS conventions in Toronto was sponsored by an organization tied to Al-Qaida
*** Hussein Hamdani stands in front of an RCMP display. Since 2005, he sits at the Cross-Cultural Roundtable that “provides advice and perspectives to the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Justice, concerning matters of national security.” ***
Further reading
Claire Brownell (The Ottawa Citizen – October 29, 2010): Iranian pair no-shows at meeting (Public Safety Minister Vic Toews had to ask the RCMP to pull its ethnic liaison officer from the event featuring Islamist Zijad Delic.)