Edmonton terror attacks a reminder that we must take hateful ideology seriously

We can all be grateful that no one died in the Edmonton terror attacks on Saturday, September 30.

Details are now beginning to emerge about a past police investigation of the lone suspect in the attack, Abdulahi Hasan Sharif.

The police duly conducted the 2015 investigation after receiving a tip from the public that he espoused radical views. One officer said he expressed genocidal beliefs and Sharif’s co-workers stated that he also expressed hateful views about Shia Muslims.

After the investigation, police saw no evidence that the suspect was recruiting others to his cause -- no signs of any other communication — and decided that he was no threat to the public.

But he was.

He rammed a truck into pedestrians with the same ISIS-inspired brutality pioneered in that horrific attack in Nice, France, last year.

Time and again in Western countries some legal loophole has let loose the scourge of terror.

It would be unfair to blame the police. They conducted their investigation only within the confines of existing laws, which stipulate that a person cannot be apprehended unless he or she has committed a crime.

But terror, the most devastating of modern crimes, is wreaking such havoc that perhaps the boundaries of acceptable investigation need to be redrawn.

It is disconcerting to note that the suspect is a refugee. Of course we are all aware that there is an entrenched animosity that some in the Islamic world feel toward the West, but this was an individual to whom Canada gave a safe home, as it has to so many other refugees from Islamic nations. Yet he harbored hatred for Canada’s citizens.

He also expressed hatred for fellow Muslims who do not adhere to his own brand of Islam.

This incident is tied to another issue, vetting refugees properly before letting them in. Obviously the vetting process failed here.

Moreover, details are emerging that the man was asked to leave the U.S. in 2011. Why was the deportation process not started here? And why is he not being charged for terror-related offences?

It is obvious that much needs to be changed in the way Canada deals with the terrorism threat. We have largely kept Canadians safe from its horrors, and even in this situation were able to thwart a far worse attack by conducting a safety maneuver that caused the truck to tip over on its side.

But even these injuries were senseless and could have been prevented had the police had greater powers of monitoring and restricting the activities of someone who was known to them as a potential genocidal maniac.

Let this be a lesson for future investigations of this nature.

Sharif’s alleged crime is an example of how potential terrorists are known to act, sometimes on the spur of the moment, in line with their hateful agenda.

They need not have prior criminal records, be associated with any other group or actively pursue a recruitment agenda with their peers.

These are ideological criminals who are governed only by hatred for the other. The ideology itself must be taken seriously as it contains within it the seeds of mass destruction and murder.

And in order to take these matters seriously, the Trudeau government must review its open border policy, as it may potentially make Canada more unsafe.

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