Oh Canada: Canadian Minister Brings Common Sense to CVE Summit

Even in Washington D.C., there’s sometimes at least one person willing to attend an international summit and speak plainly. In the case of the Countering Violent Extremism Summit promoted by President Barack Obama, the common sense came express-delivered from our allies to the North. In his public announcement, Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness The Honorable Steven Blaney said:

The international jihadist movement has declared war on Canada and its allies. Individuals returning home after travelling abroad to take part in terrorist activities present a serious security threat to Canada with newly-acquired abilities to carry out domestic attacks, as well as to recruit and radicalize others. As we all have seen, Canadians are being targeted by jihadi terrorists simply because these terrorists hate our society and the values it represents. That is why our Government has put forward measures that protect Canadians against all forms of terrorism.

Unlike the President who is at pains to explain in convoluted terms how “we are not at war with Islam”, and how ISIS and its fellow travelers are “perverting” their religion (something that IS leader and so-called Caliph AbuBakr Al-Baghdadi, a doctor in Islamic Studies, appears to disagrees with) labeling the threat as the International Jihadist Movement, as Min. Blaney did, speaks volumes. While some have portrayed this merely as a fight over semantics, the phrase “Global Jihadist Movement” is pregnant with vital information that is intentionally obscured by the phrase “violent extremism.”  Min. Blaney’s simple identification of the threat tell us that:

1. The threat is global: Unlike President Obama, whose Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS seeks to limit U.S. options to just Iraq and Syria, we must recognize  the global element of the threat is vital. Jihadists from Somalia to France and from Mali to Norway are all looking to harm the U.S. and their allies wherever they can. Unless our response is equally global, it can not succeed.

2. The threat is jihad: Our enemies say they are called to wage jihad, a term which is defined by Islamic law. Reliance of the Traveller (a reputable book of Shafi’i Islamic law) establishes that, “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion.” That many individuals who identify as Muslim may not subscribe to this doctrinal requirement is a positive, but nonetheless the preference of individuals does impede the significance of a doctrinal requirement that motivates a large segment of a population..

3. The threat is a movement. It is not merely ISIS which has declared war against us and must be combated. Rather our fight is with all those who subscribe to the movement’s ideology which obliges them to wage war in order to “establish the religion.” Individual groups and leaders may morph, change or evolve, but the ideological heart of the movement remains the same, and until that is addressed, we will not prove victorious. And as a movement, those responsible for spreading and indoctrinating the ideology are as important (if not more so) than the frontline jihadists who engage in fighting or acts of terror.

It is on this last point that the Canadians have once again shined, having recently launched a series of raids targeting the Muslim Association of Canada, a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, which had openly touted its support for the Brotherhood’s ideology, as espoused by founder Hassan Al-Banna and leading jihadist ideologue Sayid Qutb. In addition to having funneled almost $300,000 to banned Canadian charity IRFAN, which contributed some $15 million to groups linked to Hamas in a 5 year period, MAC was principally in the business of ideology, running 20 Islamic schools and 15 mosques.

While Canada has initiated raids targeting groups linked to indoctrination and jihad, the Obama Administration and it’s Countering Violent Extremism effort continues to conduct outreach with them. This was most notable in the case of the Islamic Society of Boston, a mosque founded by a convicted AL Qaeda financier and Muslim Brother, which has been linked to a dozen individuals with terror ties, ranging from the chief jurist of the Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf Al Qaradawi, to the Boston Marathon bombers, to a major Pakistani terror leader whose brother orchestrated the Mumbai massacre. And yet Boston was one of the cities cited as a model for the rest of the country by the CVE summit.

As Canada’s government is considering the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2015, seeking to target those who conducted indoctrination, propaganda and support for terrorism, the President’s outreach partners, like Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslims Public Affairs Council, are looking for ways to hamper policing efforts, such as preventing law enforcement from using informants and targeting terror recruiters in mosques.

Canada has successfully turned the corner in their approach to combating global jihad, and they have done so in part by having made the conscious decision to call things by their rightful name, exactly as called for in the Center for Security Policy’s Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan For Victory over the Global Jihad Movement. 

It’s time for the U.S. to do likewise.