Terrorism plot: Nonsense from Canadian officials

Lorne Gunter dismisses the hooey that tries to explain the Ontario plotters' motivation.

We could let Muslims practise sharia law within their own community and guarantee Muslim students and employees set-aside space at schools and work for their five-times-daily prayers, and still the jihadis among us would conspire to buy explosives and plot to blow up Canadian targets until we all agreed to live under sharia law and worship Allah at dawn, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon and dusk.

Radical Muslims are not interested in what we will let them do. "You do your thing and I'll do mine" is a Western notion. Jihadis are motivated by a desire to make everyone else in the world bow to Muhammad, too...

The response of too much of officialdom to last week's revelations will be to call for redoubled efforts on behalf of pluralism: new anti-racism ad campaigns, more money for multicultural groups and festivals, new curricula in schools, more cultural sensitivity training for judges, politicians and bureaucrats...

Meanwhile, others will call for the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan. They will argue the presence of our soldiers doing war in a Muslim nation is behind the uncovered plot.

According to police and intelligence sources, though, the alleged terror cell began its scheming and planning more than two years ago, when our only presence in Afghanistan was a 700-strong contingent patrolling the relatively peaceful capital, Kabul, as part of a NATO peacekeeping force. In other words, this cell allegedly began scoping out Canadian targets, training and assembling its materials long before our current combat-oriented mission in Kandahar against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Does our current mission upset jihadis? Undoubtedly. But they allegedly were mad enough to blow up innocent Canadian civilians even before our mission changed. If our troops were not at war with Muslims, something else would be the provocation. It doesn't take much...

Mark C.

Posted by markc at June 5, 2006 10:45 AM