"Support our troops"

Not the ones one might think. Stewart Bell gets the goods:

Naeem Muhammad Khan wants everyone to "Support Our Troops," but he's not talking about the Canadian Forces in Kandahar.

From his apartment in Toronto, Mr. Khan has been posting messages on the Internet calling Osama bin Laden a "hero" and "champion of Islam."

The 23-year-old fundamentalist's on-line logo combines the black Taliban flag and the outline of an AK-47 above the Support Our Troops slogan.

Between sips of iced coffee at Tim Hortons, Mr. Khan explained that he is a supporter of the Taliban, as well as other armed Islamic groups.

"'Support our Troops' means supporting the mujahideen [Muslim soldiers of God] who are fighting for their freedom and rights against illegal occupation in many, many places over the world like Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine and Somalia," he said later in an e-mail.

Views like these are becoming increasingly common in Western countries, Canada included, and they are worrying to governments concerned about radicalism and violence.

Mr. Khan is an Islamist, not a terrorist, but what most disturbs moderate Muslims like Tahir Gora are his harsh comments about those who do not subscribe to fundamentalist beliefs.

In his online postings, Mr. Khan calls Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji and other moderates "apostates" and says that under Islamic law the punishment for apostasy is death. The same goes for those who insult Islam.

"Behead her!!! And make a nice video and post it on YouTube," he writes about one so-called "Islam basher." As for "Jews who support Zionism and Israel...since they are killing Palestinians...killing them is not bad...they deserve to die."

Elsewhere he writes that, "Those who hate Islam and want to destroy is [sic] will have their fates decided by the swords of Muslims Inshallah [God-willing]."

Mr. Khan said he was angry when he wrote these and did not mean anyone harm. He said he meant that those killing Palestinians deserve to die and that under Shariah law the sentence for apostasy and insulting Islam is death.

But Mr. Fatah and Mr. Gora say such expressions go too far, and are becoming all too common in Canada...

Read on, please. Time for a complaint to, gasp, the Ontario Human Rights Commission? Just kidding. But as for needing new laws against inciting terrorism...

Intelligence expert Professor Wesley Wark said Mr. Khan's "odious" views raised the question of whether Canada needed to specifically outlaw the incitement of terrorism.

"They naturally make one wonder about remedies for such grating speech. Our current anti-terrorism legislation does not specifically sanction incitement to acts of terrorism. Should it? At the very least we need a proper debate in this country, similar to the one held recently in the EU Parliament...

A Q&A with Mr Khan is here. Then there's "Islamic Rage Boy" (via Kate McMillan).

Mark C.

Posted by markc at April 27, 2008 04:14 PM