Islamist ideology that’s taught in Canadian mosques and Islamic schools is the biggest challenge facing investigators, a security expert tells QMI Agency.
Former CSIS manager Michel Juneau-Katsuya said police don’t have resources to deal with “the sheer number of young minds being radicalized.”
He was reacting to QMI Agency’s investigation into the expanding national real-estate footprint of the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC).
QMI obtained an RCMP document indicating MAC donated nearly $300,000 to a Hamas-linked group before the federal government revoked its charity status.
Juneau-Katsuya, without naming any specific groups, says law enforcement must always remain vigilant, adding such organizations “capable to deploy a phenomenal amount of resources and influence, needs to demonstrate to the authorities that they do not represent a risk.”
He said anti-terror investigators need help from Muslim leaders, such as the unnamed Toronto imam who reportedly tipped off police in 2013 to an alleged Via Rail bombing plot that led to two arrests.
A noted critic of Islamic extremism says not everyone is so willing co-operate.
Tarek Fatah, a regular columnist for Sun Media, said youths are being influenced by the writings of Abul A’la Maududi, an Indian journalist who, before he died in 1979, called for Muslims to wage war on non-Muslims.
“Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam,” Maududi wrote in one of his small books. “Islam requires the earth — not just a portion — but the whole planet.”
The book was available at Toronto’s Islamic Circle of North America bookstore, a group to which the Muslim Association of Canada donated $4,425 between 2010 and 2012.
Tarek Fatah wrote about MAC’s alleged ties to foreign Islamist organizations in his 2008 book: Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State.
“They know what the limits are,” said Fatah. “You plant the seed. You know that if you grow a thousand ... ten are bound to go towards the next stage, which is from being an Islamist to being a jihadist.”
Fatah agreed with Juneau-Katsuya that the war on homegrown extremism is best waged from within.
“The best people to fight that will be Muslims.”