Stating The Obvious

"If we do not want to jail one terrorist only to release three, we need to take pre-emptive action based on the experience of our friends and allies. If we take the problem seriously and do our homework, Canadians can get ahead of prison radicalization before it becomes a major security concern." Alex Wilner, author of a new report by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, public policy think-tank.

He is but stating the obvious. There is nothing particularly new about the growing understanding of the realities that exist within the country, where dedicated jihadists have revealed themselves and their dangerous intentions to attack symbols of authority and the general population. Canada's security agencies have caught up with them, and they have stood trial for their violent ideological-religious convictions and establishment of plans to wreak havoc in society in the name of fundamentalist Islam.

Momim Khawaja, the first convicted home-grown terrorist in Canada, was known for his 'work' in seducing other prisoners to Islam while he was incarcerated awaiting trial. The verdict in his trial of guilty as charged and the time allotted to him to serve out his sentence, gives him ample additional opportunity within the penal system to continue that work on behalf of spreading the message of Islamism. He will, no doubt, successfully convert other men to the glory of radical violent jihad. Appealing to the sense of pious adventure residing deep in the psyches of the mentally unbalanced and the social misfits.

It is well enough known that prisons in Europe are busily breeding future jihadists at an unprecedented rate. Out of proportion in numbers to those being recruited through other means; social Internet networks, within mosques and community centres, and through covert word-of-mouth in indoctrinating susceptible people. Invitations to radical Islamic speakers whose values and concerns are obviously deleterious to those of Canada, result in foreign Islamist sympathizers and jihadis speaking freely on Canadian soil to impressionable young Muslims.

The report just issued considers the threat within this country to be as yet "much less severe" in scale than what presents currently as a growing threat in the United States, Britain, France and Spain and Germany. As more aspiring jihadists are being apprehended and incarcerated, the incidence of spreading the extremist pathology of fascist Islamism increases exponentially. And Mr. Wilner, author of the report, has some recommendations for Canadian authorities interested in stemming the tide of home-grown terrorists.

Chief among them to cut off access by extremist Muslims to other prison inmates, which would of necessity mean isolating them from the general prison population. An effort to be made to screen the Muslim clerics who visit prisoners to clear them of radical intention. And any such conversations should be monitored (although if discussions take place in languages unfamiliar to the screeners/monitors, an additional problem arises). Within the Correctional Service of Canada, a unit should be tasked with monitoring radicalization trends.

The idea is to produce a state of apprehended violent jihad, cutting it off from spreading the appeal of violence in dedication to fundamentalist Islam. And without a shadow of doubt that's past time to occur.