Lil' Red Riding Hood and The Lone Wolf

           Justin Trudeau has the good looks of his mother and her genes evidently dominate also in setting limits to his cranial capacity.  In the best imitation of his dad’s stern face with which he announced the War Measures Act in Quebec 1970, Justin attempted to give vent to his outrage at the murders of the two soldiers that shook Canada last week.  Problem is Pierre Elliott’s anger was not staged; his contempt for the miscreants oozed through the pores of his skin. You did not want to get on the wrong side of this guy. His defiant resolve spoke loud and clear.  This was terror and intimidation and the democratic society which his government represented would defend itself with all that was at its disposal. The speech is a classic and though I was not always on side with Trudeau’s politics, I admired his guts and the ability to inspire.  In contrast, the most charitable way to describe Justin's speech is that he was simply lost in the word-salad handed to him. 

         The circumstances of Justin’s speech as the leader of the Liberals were similar, not the same as in his dad's speech, but enough to draw significant parallels. Like the October 1970 kidnapping of Pierre Laporte (who was later murdered) and James Cross, the killings this month were a deliberate assault on the country’s sovereign powers and symbols.  The political source of the action was known.  State functionaries and the base principles on which the country operates were attacked.  Unlike 1970, where the aim of domestic terrorism was simply to force a showdown in a constituent part of the Confederation, the command structure behind the attackers last week is obscured. However, there cannot be a reasonable doubt about the motive of the actions in both instances, and their aim, in which they succeeded, to hit in a random fashion the symbols of Canadian state and thereby strike terror into the hearts of Canadians.  

(If you do not agree that the attacks had the desired effect, consider the order for the military in the wake of the incidents to restrict wearing of military uniforms, which of course means, the military has been intimidated by the attacks and believes that "hiding" the military men and women in civilian garb reduces the chances they would be attacked. This is as silly and demeaning as would be a recommendation that women wear hijabs and ankle-length dresses in response to a sexual assault on a couple of teenagers by Muslim fanatics enraged by their immodest attire).   
        
        The first thing to note about Justin’s speech is that the word “terror” or “terrorism”, let alone “Islamic terror(ism)” are missing in action.  Trudeau speaks of “intimidation” by the killers who are described as “criminals” and “perpetrators”. Evidently, and this is where the strange part begins, Trudeau believes and considers important to tell us that they want to “shake us” and “want us to forget ourselves”.  Forget what ?  Selon Justin, the reason for the attacks was to make us forget that:  We are a proud democracy, a welcoming and peaceful nation, and a country of open arms and open hearts. We are a nation of fairness, justice, and the rule of law. Really?  Could fooled me!  Silly old fool, I thought that the idea was to intimidate Canada into withdrawing its support of the US in an airborne military assault on a bunch of degenrate killers calling themselves Islamic State.  Isn’t that why the targets were specifically uniformed soldiers, Mr. Trudeau?  Apparently we cannot say Islamic State and it could not have been on account of our planes in Kuwait because the Liberal Party does not support whipping out our CF-18’s in response to depraved slaughter and enslavement of whole populations on a territory larger than Great Britain.  We only do humanitarian things.  So, it cannot be that they want to intimidate the Conservative government into changing its policy of support of the US military action.  Or can it? Well, if Mr. Trudeau wanted to say that he botched it completely.  But I don’t think the leader of the Liberals wanted to go there.    

       The thrust of his ideas, insofar as they have any coherence at all, seems to be that the Grits will not be “intimidated” into changing their view of the Muslim communities in Canada and on immigration.   Again, one has to question the sanity of the remarks. If anything is obvious about the motive of the assailants then it is that they would be only too happy with Mr. Trudeau who does not know (or pretends not to know) what Wahhabism is. (Watch this excellent documentary on Wahhabism in Britain from 2007 !)  The last thing they would want to do is to intimidate him and the likes of him into changing their view of the mosques they visit and where they make their political alliances. 

       This is the gist of the matter: most people who have actually looked into the problem of the radicalization of Muslim youth (and who are not part of that problem) tell us that it does not happen in isolation.  It’s not just internet but a clandestine network of contacts made typically through mosques.  The Big Bad Lone Wolf narrative is essentially false. It denies that there are vital elements in the process which are formed, as a rule, through personal, face-to-face, contacts and these contacts are made mostly at mosques. It is foolish to believe that people ready to sacrifice themselves in the name of a death cult would not make themselves known to other members of the cult and seek their approval.  This narrative is simply designed to provide blanket protection of mosques, regardless of their true colour with respect to radicalism.  It promotes the myth of “self-radicalization” No-one self-radicalizes, says Andrew McCarthy. We need to address the problem of mosques financed by foreign donations or ones which have foreign-trained imams, and ones who have known hostile disposition to the basic civil make-up of the country.  Often they like to present themselves as agents of de-radicalization. But that too is often simply a smoke-screen to win exemption from scrutiny of our National Security agencies. Surveillance of mosques with known or suspected tie to radical Islamist ideas is of utmost importance. The kerfuffle with the RCMP withdrawing its support from the anti-terror booklet by an Islamist group with ties to Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood is a case in point. We cannot have foxes in charge of the henhouse if we don't want to lose chickens.  

 As I have written previously, it is not difficult to detect Islamist ideology in presentations and communications by Muslim groups and organizations. The test of moderate Muslim faith (or any other faith FTM), acceptable to the community at large in a country like Canada is very simple.  What we cannot afford here are naïve, foolhardy leaders having a bloodthirsty beast staring them in the face and their response to manifest evil is making poses and saying things that make no sense at all.