Giving Their All For Islam

"Ten years after the invasion of Afghanistan by Western forces, we now have people with even greater access to the details of what's going on, and have easier travel access to a conflict hot spot. And, frankly, because of the nature of this conflict, which will likely run for years, we'll see a lot of 'veterans' likely return, just like the Afghan conflict. It simply has a lot of 'ugly' that will cause repercussions in the years to come, at home and abroad."
Ray Boisvert, former counter-terror chief, Canadian Security Intelligence Service

"The benefit for myself in terms of the wordly life is most certainly back in Canda where I could see my family, indulge in fornication and infidelity legally and limitlessly and stagger around poisoned on intoxicants and then lie to myself and the world about 'Freedom' and how fantastic it is.
"After all that is what we were conditioned to believe since our school days, was it not? Challenging those learned assumptions, questioning them and actually being willing to change yourself is always much harder to do. My doing so caused a search for truth and ended in a conclusion that Islam was the answer. With that came Islam's concept of working for an afterlife that never ends. ... An eternity in Paradise cannot be traded for 7 years (if that) of this place."
"Sure, Canada -- like this life -- is a place where you can allow yourself to believe you have figured things out. Among the simplest ways to do so is to forget that anyone or anything else exists beyond it, or that you have any responsibility to anyone or anything other than it."
Canadian-born Damian Clairmont/Mustafa Al-Gharib, 22, Syria

Now known as Mustafa Al-Gharib, Damian Clairmont of Calgary converted to Islam following a suicide attempt at age 17. After he left Canada last November, CSIS officers told his mother he had gone to Syria and was part of an extremist group they had been monitoring for two years.

Damian Clairmont, now a Muslim convert by the name of Mustafa Al-Gharib is one of an estimated dozens of Canadians now in Syria, taking part in the protracted agony of its civil war. Syria is now being recognized in many quarters as "the new Afghanistan", the "epicentre of jihad". Jihadists are streaming into the country from Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. And from Europe and North America as well.

Among them was Ali Dirie, a Canadian of Somali extraction, a former member of the infamous Toronto 18 terrorist group whose plot to bomb downtown Toronto, storm the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, bomb CSIS headquarters and behead Members of Parliament -- just the way they saw it done through videos and the dreadful screening of the death of Daniel Pearl -- to avenge the perceived assaults upon and insults toward Islam and Muslims.

Alie Diri once spoke of Caucasians as the "number one filthiest people on the face of the planet". When he was sentenced for his part in the Toronto plots he declared himself to have  departed from the Islamist fold; no longer subscribing to terrorism or violence. On his release from prison, however, he departed for Syria and reportedly joined the Al Nusra Front. Recent rumours that he was recently killed were unverified.

Canada's government is uncertain how many Canadans may be involved in the Syrian conflict. There is no exit control leading to a difficulty in tracking citizens abroad. Reports of Canadian rebels killed in conflict are difficult to verify, although the RCMP did dispatch an investigative team to Algeria after two Canadians were said to have died in the joint venture Ain Amenas gas plant attack in the remotely-located desert area. Just as they've done with the aftermath of the al-Shabab mall attack in Kenya.


Mubin Shaikh, a paid informer who infiltrated the Toronto 18 for the RCMP and whose testimony during their trial was vital to the trial outcome, claims to have heard that Dirie's death had been announced at Toronto's Salaheddin mosque. Syria now represents the largest jihadist attraction for Muslim youth looking for an opportunity to pay their dues to Islam through violent jihad.

The London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalization estimates 2,000 to 5,500 foreign fighters had joined the Syrian opposition forces since 2011. And of that number 7% to 11% were considered to be of European or North American origin. Suffering a mass delusion that they are instructed by Islam to "do something" about the responsibilities they owe to their faith.

For Muslim convert Damian Clairmont it is a pious rejection of what he terms the Western-based degradation of "fornication, infidelity, intoxicants". For the destroyers of American life who pursued instruction in the United States on their entry visas in flying, but never landing, large aircraft, the promise of the easy availability of wine, women and song in the United States was an attraction.

One taken appreciative advantage of before they gave their all for Islam.

Miguel Medina / AFP / Getty Images files A Syrian rebel walks past a destroyed building in Salma in the coastal province of Latakia on April 26, 2013.