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THE TERROR RAIDS

Hateful chatter behind the veil

Key suspects' wives held radical views, Web postings reveal

OMAR EL AKKAD AND GREG MCARTHUR
The Globe and Mail, Toronto
29/06/06

MISSISSAUGA -- When it came time to write up the premarital agreement
between Zakaria Amara and Nada Farooq, Ms. Farooq briefly considered
adding
a clause that would allow her to ask for a divorce.

She said that Mr. Amara (now accused of being a leader of the alleged
terror
plot that led to the arrests of 17 Muslim men early this month) had to
aspire to take part in jihad.

"[And] if he ever refuses a clear opportunity to leave for jihad, then
i
want the choice of divorce," she wrote in one of more than 6,000
Internet
postings uncovered by The Globe and Mail.

Wives of four of the central figures arrested last month were among the
most
active on the website, sharing, among other things, their passion for
holy
war, disgust at virtually every aspect of non-Muslim society and a
hatred of
Canada. The posts were made on personal blogs belonging to both Mr.
Amara
and Ms. Farooq, as well as a semi-private forum founded by Ms. Farooq
where
dozens of teens in the Meadowvale Secondary School area chatted. The
vast
majority of the posts were made over a period of about 20 months,
mostly in
2004, and the majority of those were made by the group's female
members.

The tightly knit group of women who chatted with each other includes
Mariya
(the wife of alleged leader Fahim Ahmad), Nada (the wife of Mr. Amara,
the
alleged right-hand man) Nada's sister Rana (wife of suspect Ahmad
Ghany), as
well as Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal (the Muslim convert from Cape Breton,
N.S.
who married the oldest suspect, 43-year-old Qayyum Abdul Jamal). The
women's
husbands are part of a core group of seven charged with the most severe
crimes -- plotting to detonate truck bombs against the Toronto Stock
Exchange, a Canadian Forces target, and the Toronto offices of the
Canadian
Security Intelligence Service.

The women were bound by the same social, political and ideological
aims.
They organized "sisters-only" swimming days and held fundraisers for
the
notorious al-Qaeda-linked Khadr family. With the exception of the
occasional
Urdu or Arabic word or phrase, their posts are exclusively in English.

After their husbands were arrested, most of the women refused to tell
their
stories to the media; reached at her home in Mississauga, Ms. Farooq
would
not comment on her posts.

But in the years leading up to the arrests, they shared their stories
with
one another.

She knows it freaks her husband out just thinking about it, but
18-year-old
Nada Farooq doesn't care: She wants a baby. It is mid-April, 2004, and
the
two have been married for less than a year. In the end, the jihad
clause was
not included in a prenuptial agreement.

Like many students at Meadowvale Secondary School, Zakaria Amara is
busy
worrying about final exams and what, if any, university to go to. But
Ms.
Farooq -- the Karachi-born daughter of a pharmacist who now hands out
prescription medicine to soldiers at the Canadian Forces Base in
Wainwright,
Alta. -- has already done a fair bit of daydreaming about what it would
be
like to have a child. She even has a name picked. If she has a boy, she
wants to name him Khattab, after the commander of the mujahedeen in
Chechnya
who battled Moscow until he was assassinated in 2002.

"And i pray to Allah my sons follow his footsteps Ameeen [Amen]," she
writes
at the on-line forum she founded for Muslim teens in Mississauga's
Meadowvale area. Her avatar -- an on-line symbol used to indicate
personality -- is a picture of the Koran and a rifle.

(All postings in this story have been rendered as they appeared
on-line.)

There is nothing casual about Ms. Farooq's interpretation of Islam. She
reiterates the belief that jihad is the "sixth pillar" of the religion,
and
her on-line postings are decidedly interested in the violent kind. In
the
forum titled "Terrorism and killing civilians," she writes a detailed
point-by-point explanation of why the Taliban is destined to emerge
victorious in Afghanistan.

Virtually every other government on the planet, however, she only has
disdain for.

"All muslim politicians are corrupt," she writes. "There's no one out
there
willing to rule the country by the laws of Allah, rather they fight to
rule
the country by the laws of democracy." She criticizes Muslims in places
such
as Dubai for spending money on elaborate buildings while Iraqis are
being
killed.

Ms. Farooq's criticism is often directed first at other Muslims. When
another poster writes about how he finds homosexuality disgusting, Nada
replies by pointing out that there are even gay Muslims. She then posts
a
photo of a rally held by Al-Fatiha, a Canadian support group for gay
Muslims. "Look at these pathetic people," she writes. "They should all
be
sent to Saudi, where these sickos are executed or crushed by a wall, in
public."

The majority of Muslims Ms. Farooq does admire are ones currently at
war,
and she reserves her most vitriolic comments for the people they are at
war
with.

In a thread started by Mr. Fahim's wife, Mariya, marking the death of
Hamas
leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi after an Israeli missile strike, Ms.
Farooq
unleashes her fury: "May Allah crush these jews, bring them down to
their
kneees, humuliate them. Ya Allah make their women widows and their
children
orphans." The statement is so jarring that another poster complains
it's not
right for Muslims to wish such things on other people. Ms. Farooq's
sister
Rana is also in favour of violent resistance, posting often graphic
photos
of female militants and suicide bombers.

But while her heart may be in the battlefields and holy cities, Nada
Farooq
finds herself physically in Canada, a country the Karachi-born teen
moved to
after spending her childhood in Saudi Arabia. Her name is properly
pronounced "Needa," and when she came to Canada as a child, some of the
kids
at her school teased her by calling her "Needa Shower." She'd often
come
home in tears.

The Farooqs, a Pakistani family, came to Canada in 1997 because they
didn't
like the idea of raising their children in the conservative society of
Saudi
Arabia, where foreign-born children don't have access to the same
education
as nationals, said Nada's father, Mohammad Umer Farooq.

When a Globe reporter contacted Nada's father at his home in
Wainwright, and
described some of his daughter's Internet postings, Mr. Farooq said he
was
"curious" and "concerned."

His daughter never expressed such opinions to him, he said, though he
noted
that he's worked in Alberta for the past five years and only makes it
home
to Mississauga a few weeks every year. He headed west because the
pharmacist
training hours required in Alberta were much lower.

His daughter has always been more religious than he and his wife, he
said,
and it was a faith that she developed in Canada, not Saudi Arabia. He
described himself as 30 per cent religious and his daughter as 100 per
cent.

"Occasionally. I pray. She prays five times."

While his daughter has used her Internet forum to lament the end of the
Taliban, Mr. Farooq is a firm supporter of Canada's mission in
Afghanistan.
Many of the soldiers he serves at CFB Wainwright will eventually be
joining
the mission.

"They are there for the betterment of the people. They are there for
the
development of Afghanistan."

While she forms a close circle of Muslim friends, Ms. Farooq is never
comfortable with life in Canada. She posts that her mother is often
lonely
because her father spends large portions of his time at work. She talks
about going to the University of Toronto in Mississauga as fulfilling
her
parents' dreams rather than her own.

Ms. Farooq's hatred for the country is palpable. She hardly ever calls
Canada by its name, rather repeatedly referring to it as "this filthy
country." It's a sentiment shared by many of her friends, one of whom
states
that the laws of the country are irrelevant because they are not the
laws of
God.

In late April of 2004, a poster asks the forum members to share their
impressions of what makes Canada unique. Nada's answer is
straightforward.

"Who cares? We hate Canada."

In Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal's mind, every Muslim is another potential
victim.

As a 44-year-old member of an on-line forum inhabited almost
exclusively by
teenagers, Ms. Jamal fits snugly into the role of maternal figure, and
the
advice she dispenses reflects her firm belief that the forces of evil
are
out to get every member of her adopted religion. She encourages Muslim
youths to learn about herbal medicine and first aid lest they ever find
themselves in a Muslim country under embargo, unable to receive proper
medicine. Even in Canada, she says, one can never become complacent.

"You don't know that the Muslims in Canada will never be rounded up and
put
into internment camps like the Japanese were in WWII!" she writes in
one
2004 post. This is a time when Muslims "are being systematically
cleansed
from the earth," she adds.

If she's looking for an example of such oppression, Ms. Jamal finds it
in
the Khadrs, the Canadian family whose patriarch, Ahmed Said Khadr, was
killed by Pakistani forces and declared a martyr by al-Qaeda. In June,
2004,
Ms. Jamal spearheaded a committee to help Mr. Khadr's widow, Maha. In
Ms.
Jamal's view, Maha Khadr and her family have committed no crime, only
stated
their opinion, and it is the duty of the entire Muslim nation to ensure
the
family's well-being.

Ms. Jamal's zealousness for homegrown Muslim causes is matched only by
her
rejection of just about everything Canadian. As the June, 2004 federal
election draws near, she repeatedly advises Muslim youth to completely
avoid
the process. Voting, she tells them, inherently violates the
sovereignty of
God, making it the most egregious sin against Islam.

"Are you accepting a system that separates religion and state?" she
asks.
"Are you gonna give your pledge of allegiance to a party that puts
secular
laws above the laws of Allah? Are you gonna worship that which they
worship?
Are you going to throw away the most important thing that makes you a
muslim?"

Ms. Jamal's list of forbidden institutions goes beyond politics.
Banking,
membership in the United Nations, women's rights and secular law are
all
aspects of Canadian society she finds unacceptable.

But her deepest outrage, like that of so many Muslims, is time and
again
sparked by the treatment of her brothers and sisters around the world.
In a
May, 2004 post titled "Behold Your Enemy!" she posts multiple articles
describing the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of American
soldiers.

"Know what you will face one day," she warns fellow forum members. "Let
them
call you a terrorist, let them make you look like a savage, but know
that
THIS is the filth of the earth, the uncivilised destroyer of humanity.

"Know from this day that this is not an Iraqi problem, it is not an
Afghani
problem, it is not a Palestinian problem, it is not a Somali problem.
IT IS
YOUR PROBLEM!!!"

Often, the conversation was quite tame. The women post advice on
make-up,
organizing sisters-only events and finding restaurants that offer truly
halal Chinese food. Fahim Ahmad's wife, Mariya, posts a warning to
other
women not to go watch the brothers play soccer, because it makes them
uncomfortable."Yea, and besides, their OUR husbands!" Ms. Jamal
concurs. "Go
get your own to stare at!"

But inevitably, it would come back to Islam, the very purpose for which
Ms.
Farooq created the forum in the first place. When it comes to religion,
the
wives of Mr. Amara, Mr. Jamal, Mr. Ghany and Mr. Ahmad exhibit a
commitment
to hard-line fundamentalism that rivals and often exceeds that of their
husbands.

In May, 2004, the Meadowvale students come across an extremely graphic
video
showing the beheading of a U.S. hostage in Iraq. Mr. Fahim, posting
under
the name "Soldier of ALLAH," praises the killers as mujahedeen who will
be
rewarded in the afterlife. Another poster maintains the beheading was
actually carried out by U.S. forces as a ploy to direct anger at the
Muslim
community. It's this post that inspires Nada to prohibit any further
discussion of similar conspiracy theories.

Three posts later, her husband reprints an article claiming the
Americans
were responsible for the beheading.

But such occasional bickering between newlyweds does not stop Ms. Jamal
from
seeing the bigger picture. In her 40s, she is more than twice as old as
most
of the other Muslims on the forum. But like her husband, she believes
young
Muslims are the only ones capable of standing up against non-Muslim
oppression.

For the most part, the wives of the other suspects do not let her down.
This
is especially true of Ms. Farooq, who deeply believes that education,
financial success and other such goals are relatively frivolous because
they
only help Muslims during their time on Earth, and not in the afterlife.
When
another forum member disagrees with her view, she describes him as
being
"too much in this dunya [world]," and not sufficiently concerned with
what
comes after.

"Those who are sincere in pleasing Allah will go to whatever length to
help
the true believers," Ms. Farooq writes. "Those who fear Allah more than
they
fear the CSIS. Those are the ones who will succeed in the hereafter."
NEXT:
The transformation of

Zakaria Amara

Husbands and wives

CHERYFA AND QAYYUM ABDUL JAMAL

Cheryfa's age: 44

Husband: Qayyum Abdul Jamal, charged with knowingly participating in
the
activities of a terrorist group, receiving training and intent to cause
an
explosion

On-line nickname: UmmTayyab ("Mother of Tayyab")

Quote: "You don't know that the Muslims in Canada will never be rounded
up
and put into internment camps like the Japanese were in WWII!"

RANA AND AHMAD GHANY

Rana's age: 19

Husband: Ahmad Ghany, charged with knowingly participating in the
activities
of a terrorist group and receiving training

On-line nickname: Al-Mujahidah ("The Jihadist")

Quote: "May Allah curse the jews.. Ameen"

NADA FAROOQ AND ZAKARIA AMARA

Nada's age: 20

Husband: Zakaria Amara, charged with knowingly participating in the
activities of a terrorist group, receiving training, providing training
or
recruiting and intent to cause an explosion

On-line nickname: Admin (the website's administrator)

Quote: "Those who fear Allah more than they fear the CSIS. Those are
the
ones who will succeed in the hereafter."

MARIYA AND FAHIM AHMAD

Mariya's age: 19

Husband: Fahim Ahmad, charged with knowingly participating in the
activities
of a terrorist group, importing a firearm, receiving training,
providing
training or recruiting and intent to cause an explosion

On-line nickname: Zawjatu Faheem ("Wife of Faheem")

Quote: "I heard that some sisters were watching the brothers play
soccer
last time...just wanted to let you know the brothers dont feel
comfortable
playing while the sisters are watching, so please, refrain from going
there
inshallaah and find something that will benefit you."

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