I think what was meant by broad strata is that this group perhaps included mass murdering Sunnis and Shia Muslims.......How's that for diversity eh??
Ha ha ha ha..........
Given that the title of your post appears a little later in the same article, the author is hardly trying to avoid describing those arrested as Muslim.
Get a grip.
Traditional male beard, huh? I've been in some places where the way one told the men from the women was easy... the men were clean-shaven. (Don't ask.)
Posted at 2006-06-04 17:09:01 [PermaLink]Mike K.: It's not the author of the story, it's the public authorities.
Mark
Ottawa
Mike K, Mark was pointing out that the first reflex of both the Police and the Press was the "broad stata" euphemism... A patently false one, at that.
Posted at 2006-06-04 17:18:20 [PermaLink]Direct quote from today's Star, p. 3:
"'They represent the broad strata of our community,' the RCMP says. 'Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed.' Aside from the fact that all are young men, it's hard to find a common denominator."
Common denominator? Hmm...let's look at the list. Mohammed Dirie...Yasin Abdi Mohammed...Amin Mohammed Durrani...Ahmad Mustafa Ghany...Qayyum Abdul Jamal...Abdul Shakur... Nope, can't think of a single thing all these guys have in common.
You're not paying attention Ran, "Nope, can't think of a single thing all these guys have in common."
They all had beards...;)
I'm Ellie. ;) But you're right about the beards. Must be that radical new facial-hair front, the Brotherhood of Beards For a Better Tomorrow.
Posted at 2006-06-04 19:47:54 [PermaLink]Sorry Ellie; I'm typing on my daughter's computer (MS Internet Explorer) and the 'comments' window opens up as a small window rather than full page.
Can't see more than a few lines of text and I can't figure out how to change it; the f.p. icon is greyed out.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it (I use Netscape, at home)
Ellie:
Well, one guy is called Steven. ;-)
Sorry, I wrongly assumed that Mark was taking a jab at the author of the Globe and Mail article (the article's title includes the bolded words).
Despite that error, my point still stands. While no one is explicitly saying, "We've arrested a bunch of Muslims," no officials seem to be unwilling to acknowledge that the men arrested all share a common faith.
The phrase "represent a “broad strata” of Canadian society" is not simply an evasion—although it is a bit of an overstatement.
The intent of that statement is highlight the fact that these guys weren't all swayed by a particular radical cleric, they don't share a common ethnic background, and they aren't all chronically unemployed youth living together in government housing projects, unintegrated into broader society.
Instead, they each seem to have become radicalized in their own way despite the fact that some of them are fairly successful, and came together to organize terrorist attacks in Canada. That's important to recognize because it indicates that the Islamist 'community' in Canada is diverse and decentralized and thus extremely hard to combat.
Give the terrorists what they want - a chance to see Allah(pig be upon him). Execute them.
Posted at 2006-06-04 23:33:01 [PermaLink]"The phrase "represent a “broad strata” of Canadian society" is not simply an evasion—although it is a bit of an overstatement."
Hilarious bullshit!!!
It is pure, dishonest evasion Mike K. Infinitely overstated - because of it's total falsehood. All of these gents share RELEVANT and SIGNIFICANT and OBVIOUS factors that derive from a VERY narrow stratum. Simply because these men are not all freakin' clones does not mean that the vast array of differences between them are relevant.
They don't share common ethnic backgrounds, huh? Since when is employment status a standard for jihad? Since when is "societal integration" a standard in jihad? Why not, then, state that they come from a wide variety of blood types?
And since when is income a factor in jihad? Ask Usama... He, like Ché, came from a very wealthy background with nary a care in the world. This leftist notion that somehow 'grinding poverty' is the prime motivation for religious insanity... Please, spare us.