Sri Lankans watch as soldiers clear the debris from inside of the damaged St. Anthony’s Church after it was targeted in a series of Islamic State-claimed suicide bombings that killed hundreds of people during Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Saturday, April 27, 2019. Manish Swarup / AP |
Riyas Aboobacker and Mark Steven Domingo do not know each other.
The two have never met and live on the opposite sides of the globe. Aboobacker lives in Kerala, India, while Domingo calls Los Angeles his home.
Yet these two men share a common worldwide supremacist ideology that has adherents willing to give up their own lives in exchange for eternal bliss in Paradise where the wine and women that they seem to so despise on earth will flow freely in unending orgies.
Both were arrested this weekend, and both were charged with planning a terrorist attack on non-Muslims.
Mark Steven Domingo, an Army veteran and convert to Islam, with combat experience in Afghanistan in 2012-13, was taken into custody Friday on domestic terrorism charges. Officials said he was plotting to detonate an improvised explosive device, or IED, “for the purpose of causing mass casualties.”
As American security officials arrested Domingo before he could carry out his attack in the name of Islam, across the world in India, the country’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Riyas Aboobacker, who reportedly confessed that he wanted to carry out a suicide attack against non-Muslims in Kerala.
Elsewhere this past week, four suspected Islamists were arrested in France after police say they foiled an “extremely violent” planned attack on security forces. The Paris prosecutor’s office said the attack was due to be carried out ‘in the coming days’ as the city braces for May Day yellow vest protests that will leave forces stretched.
The death cult Domingo and Aboobacker and their fellow French, Pakistani, Nigerian, Somali, Filipino and Arab jihadis follow is the ideology of Islamism — the use of Islam as a political tool to further a fascist and supremacist dogma in which Muslims are the prime target, but the goal is to destroy democracy, the nation state and Western civilization itself that gave rise to these institutions.
Ordinarily the leaders of the world would and should unequivocally denounce and defeat this ideology. But for reasons of cowardice and the phenomenon of vote-bank politics, while everyone in politics is willing to denounce white nationalism and its supremacist ideas, nary a lawmaker anywhere on earth is willing to denounce Islamism, Islamic extremism, let alone utter those words.
Just read Public Safety Canada’s annual report on the terror threats to Canada.
Though it mentions the fact that “the principal terrorist threat to Canada and Canadian interests continues to be that posed by individuals or groups who are inspired by violent ideologies and terrorist groups, such as Daesh or al-Qaida (AQ),” it dare not mention the religion that drives the Islamic State and al-Qaida.
In fact, it tries to conceal the word “Islamic State” by referring to it as “Daesh.”
One exception to the rule is Manitoba MP Candice Bergen, who did not hold back in the House of Commons. Referring to the slaughter of Christians in Sri Lanka by Islamic terrorists, she said: “Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world. They are targeted by Islamic extremists in Pakistan, Iran and Nigeria.”
The words “Islamic extremists” should have come from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and also opposition leader Andrew Scheer, as well NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. But the Islamist infiltration and influence on our political discourse is a done deal, except in Quebec.
Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
