PING!
Posted on 06/05/2006 10:30:46 AM PDT by GMMAC
It was only a matter of time
National Post
Mon 05 Jun 2006
Page: A17 , Section: Issues & Ideas
Byline: Lorne Gunter
It would have been chilling, perhaps even shocking, watching spokesmen for the RCMP, CSIS and four Toronto-area police forces describe the explosives, guns, detonators and assorted jihadi training material they said they seized last week when they arrested 17 terror suspects -- would have been ... if I hadn't suspected such a day would come all along.
It was only a matter of time.
Canada and Canadians are just lucky this massive criminal plot -- if that's what a court finds it to be -- was discovered in advance.
The only shocking thing is that so many Canadians seem to have been so surprised by the arrest of a cell of alleged homegrown terrorists. Did we honestly think this could never happen here? Did we really think the world's jihadis would fall for all our multicultural bumph about Canada being a tolerant society, and not attack us?
Do we really think jihadis want a tolerant, multicultural world? Tolerance is a Western ideal, and the Islamists hate Western ideals.
This radicalized minority within Islam doesn't seek multiculturalism. Their goal is monoculturalism: one world under radical Islam.
They are not at war for tolerance, but at war with tolerance.
The alleged wannabe terrorists swept up in a series of raids around Toronto on Friday don't have their hearts set on us carving out a place for them in Canadian society where they can live and pray and believe as they wish.
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.
They are the new Crusaders; soldiers of their God, operating in hostile lands, whose mission it is to convert as many infidels as possible to their vision of one true faith, at the point of the sword if necessary.
We are their targets not because we have been insufficiently tolerant of Islam, but rather because in their minds we have been far too tolerant of non-Muslims. They are not at war just with Christianity and Judaism. So Canada cannot indemnify itself against attack by expunging its religious roots. Pluralism and secularism upset them just as much because those "isms," too, are an impediment to the creation of a worldwide Islamic empire.
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.
But this would be like trying to combat obesity by dining at an all-you-can-eat buffet three times a day.
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.
Indeed, there is precious little we can do or stop doing that would satisfy such enemies, short of Parliament passing a law declaring a mass conversion of Canadians to Islam.
The best we can do is continue to give the RCMP and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service the money and manpower they need to run the surveillance and sting operations that led to Friday's arrests.
Lorne Gunter Columnist/Editorial Writer, National Post
Columnist, Edmonton Journal
Tele: (780) 916-0719 ~ E-mail: lgunter@shaw.ca
PING!
FReepers have been predicting this for years.
He uses "allegedly" too much for my taste, but other than that, it's a good article.
bump
There is a reason I like the old Hollywood westerns. "The only good injun is a dead injun".
We should just stop a minute and catch our breathes. Is my memory fading me or did the Up North people look down their icicled noses at us southern folk as to how they did not meddle and so on and how life up there was just,well--divine--even though they were secularized and few if any Christians were to be found. Plenty of muslims however. Now the question spoken from those thawing nosed faces appears to be, "How many times have we changed our soiled drawers in the fertilized turn of events this week?"
Well, there's always "Invade their countries, kill their leaders, convert them to Christianity at gunpoint."
"common sense by association"
This radicalized minority within Islam doesn't seek multiculturalism. Their goal is monoculturalism: one world under radical Islam.
They are not at war for tolerance, but at war with tolerance.
BIAS!
I'm sure they've thought to themselves that they've made it abundantly clear to the Islamo-killers that they just want to be friends and live in peace and harmony. And can you believe it?... the Islamo-fascists still want to kill them!!! Oh, the horror.
Good point.
say it again, FRiend!
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