Posted on 06/08/2006 7:47:04 AM PDT by fanfan
The wife of a man charged with plotting terror strikes in Ontario grew up in Halifax as a "pretty wild child" but turned her life around when she found Islam, a close friend says.
Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal, 44, was named Sherry MacAulay when she attended Cornwallis Junior High School and Queen Elizabeth High School before dropping out in Grade 10, said Wendi Petersen, her former classmate.
"Islam was just the most amazing thing for her; it really turned her around," Ms. Petersen said.
"She had a disastrous first marriage, she had problems with drugs and alcohol, and Islam was the thing that saved her life, basically."
The two were close friends in school and reconnected about two years ago.
"We’ve been e-mailing back and forth and I’ve been in pretty regular contact with her," said Ms. Petersen, adding that Ms. Jamal "is really incredibly devout."
"She’s been horrified by . . . the violence that has been associated with Islam. She thinks it’s really awful. She’s constantly telling me that, ‘This is not what Islam is about. Islam does not support violence in any way. It’s all about peace.’ And she appears to truly believe that."
Ms. Jamal is "a peacenik Muslim," she said.
That wasn’t always the case, Ms. Petersen said.
"She dropped out of school and joined the army," the friend said.
"I’m sure she never served anywhere. But she was in the military and that’s where she met her first husband."
Ms. Jamal has two children from her first marriage and another four from her present union, Ms. Petersen said.
After her first marriage failed, she wed Qayyum Jamal, the 43-year-old Mississauga, Ont., man accused of plotting to blow up sites in southern Ontario.
"I’m sure that if there’s any truth in her husband’s involvement, this was completely beyond her knowledge," Ms. Petersen said. "I would really be surprised if she knew. I would think that he had completely hidden this whole thing from her because . . . of the deep outrage that she had when we talked about these acts of violence perpetrated by Muslims supposedly in the name of Islam."
She even changed her name from Sherry to Cheryfa because the former represents a type of alcohol, something Muslims aren’t supposed to touch, Ms. Petersen said.
"She’s someone who has found the joy in her life through dedication to this religion and who has become very kind of serene and peaceful — an incredibly cheerful woman — through motherhood and faith," Ms. Petersen said. "None of us in high school would ever have guessed that, never in a million years. She was a pretty wild child."
As a teenager, Ms. Jamal didn’t show much respect for authority and often wound up in trouble with her mother, her friend said.
"She’s changed so much from a person who was really scattered and looking for a good time, fast, to someone who . . . has gone back to university. She’s so articulate now and she’s so together. And what she’s said to me is, ‘It’s all because of the amazing power of my faith.’ "
In her youth, Sherry "was never one to do a stitch of schoolwork," Ms. Petersen said.Her parents broke up and she lived with a grandmother in Cape Breton for a while before attending Cornwallis Junior High, her friend said.
She has two older brothers, Todd and Dana, and her mother still lives in Halifax, Ms. Petersen said.
"This has just been like a bombshell," said a Cape Breton relative who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Even though we haven’t seen each other in years, it’s still the same blood. We’re very close to her family."
The family "has no idea why this happened," the relative said.
Ms. Jamal wears a burka in public.
Six years ago, she spoke to the Toronto district school board and demanded that teachers give parents notice before teaching anything that promoted "homosexual or bisexual lifestyles or sexual promiscuity," according to an Internet version of her presentation.
In an Internet posting last year on a Muslim discussion forum, she railed against "women who go on radio and broadcast music, women who appear beautified and uncovered on television beside men."
On the same site, Ms. Jamal discussed women’s conversion to Islam as an act that removed "the veil from our eyes, ears and hearts."
Before converting, she said, she felt "helpless, having struggled for so long trying to find peace and happiness, security and stability, the correct method of how to live and behave. I remember feeling embarrassed to get on my knees to pray to God, how degrading, how juvenile I thought it was."
But in January 1994, she said, she received a wedding gift: "a translation of The Noble Qur’an."
By March of that year, "I was bugging my (first) husband to witness" the prayers a person must recite to convert to Islam, she said on the website.
Ms. Jamal added that she has "seen so much light and truth, so much logic and so many ‘Eurekas!’ while reading the Qur’an."
But life hasn’t been "a bed of roses," she said.
"Though we pray for peace and happiness, we don’t really understand yet that life is not about ease, but trial and perseverance. Most converts have so many difficulties, so many divorces, that it truly is a (withdrawal) away from our homelands, even if we only moved across the street from our families. We deny our family, our old religion, our culture, our friends, our careers, our ethnicity, our status, our image. All of it is gone when we become Muslim."
On another website, Ms. Jamal said: "I am not a Canadian first. I am a MUSLIM first, and then a Scottish descendant, seventh-generation Canadian."
Ms. Jamal went on to say she "once pinned a rose on the lapel of the then-newly elected prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and I once represented the Canadian military in a NATO Tattoo in Stuttgart, Germany, as a drummer (in a mass band)."
Those aren’t her only claims to fame.
"My grandmother co-designed the first official Canadian tartan, the Nova Scotia tartan," she said.
( clambie@herald.ca)
With Jocelyn Bethune
Well whatever her troubles were or are, anorexia ain't one of 'em
I'm feeling cranky right now, so I calls 'em as I sees 'em.
This bio is pretty sparse, but it's
enough to see that she was doing
nothing posiitive from grade 10 on
until she entered the military.
She did some heavy work there!
Then on to marriage, two kids, a
divorce, another marriage. With
that background, she would be a
pushover for any guy willing to
marry her with her two children AND
a plus for him...she was a legal
citizen of Canada, which would
buck up his own political legality.
Yes, I can believe she knew nothing
of her husband's jihadi plans. If she
never worked in all those years and
simply stayed hidden under the burka
being brain-washed, why should she
do anything to rock the boat? She
was being provided with the security
she never had as a kid. All she had
to do was keep the family fed,
the kids clean and clothed, obey
her husband's every command, and
NEVER question her his absence
when he left the house or had HIS
friends in for meetings.
Dog bites man....
Islam provides lots of rules to follow with a promise of paradise after death. Christianity provides equality, allows for thought and reason, but requires an acknowledgment of original sin and the lordship of Jesus. It also promises eternal life. But most people: a) refuse to see that they are sinful beings; 2) refuse to live with Jesus as their lord; 3) can't handle the freedom that Christianity provides. In a way, I can see the attraction of Islam. That is, if I refuse to see what it has become in the world today. Then, it all falls apart. Admittedly, this is an over simplification, but I've seen too many "troubled" folks come under the sway of Islam.
That is a good answer and a distinct possibility!
I guess I was thinking about it not so much as Islam vs. Christianity as in terms of her looking for a belief system that tells her what to do at all times. For a way of living, IOW, that means she doesn't need to engage in any introspection - just ask the imam what the Koran says to do and then obey.
Looks like she's gained quite a bit of weight. The burkha will help.
Interesting angle, and you're very likely right.
Nobody wears a mask to court in the U.S. -- not that I've ever seen or heard of.
By March of that year, "I was bugging my (first) husband to witness" the prayers a person must recite to convert to Islam, she said on the website.
Hmm... I was wondering whether her first two children were being dragged into Islam as well, but it sounds as though her first husband was Muslim, too. Why else would she get such a wedding gift?
Ms. Jamal added that she has "seen so much light and truth, so much logic and so many ‘Eurekas!’ while reading the Qur’an."
In all the years before she converted to Islam, I'll bet she never cracked open a Bible.
How can you trust men who send their wives out in public dressed as walking-tents?
Because they all had hairstyles like their mommies?
If you go back even further in time - pre-WWII - people look even older. Back then, there wasn't the clear distinction between adult clothing and children's/teenage clothing as there is now. Children's clothing was basically smaller versions of adult clothing. So everybody looked older than they were, by today's standards. Also, people were more well-spoken then, especially in movies, so people sounded older and more mature.
Fixed it.
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