This Just In--Our Security 'Experts' are Mega-Stupid

Stewart Bell has an alarming report in the National Post about a previously undisclosed report detailing Islamists' desire for "a parallel society" in Canada that would answer to sharia law. And the most alarming thing about it is not such info--which anyone who knows anything about outfits like Hizb-ut-Tahrir and others would hardly find surprising. No, the most shocking, distressing aspect of this story is who wrote the report and the conclusions it drew:

...The report was written by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, which monitors threats to Canada's national security and is composed of representatives of CSIS, the RCMP, Foreign Affairs, National Defence and other agencies.

It was circulated internally last year after Hizb-ut-Tahrir invited Muslims to a conference in Mississauga, Ont., to discuss the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. A copy of the document was recently released under the Access to Information Act.

"While the issue of violence by Islamist groups has continued to be a counter-terrorism priority for Western governments and particularly security services for many years, Islamist social ideology appears to have gone unstudied, precisely because the use of violence is either unsupported or understated," it says. "Nevertheless, several Islamist movements advocate a rejection of Western society and mores, and encourage self-imposed isolation of Muslims in the West."

It says Islamists believe that Islam should govern all aspects of society and that Sharia law and state law should be "synchronized." Extremists forced to flee Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt now preach these beliefs in the West, it says, adding, "By definition, their world views clash with secular ones. A competition for the hearts and minds of the diaspora Muslims has hence begun."

That competition has surfaced in the United Kingdom, where the outlawed Al Muhajiroun told Muslims not to submit to any "man-made law," while in Denmark some Muslims are administering their own form of justice, it says.

"Some Islamists advocate isolationism and the establishment of a parallel society," it says. "Isolationism can lead to conditions where extreme messages can incubate and eventually become the catalyst for violence. At a minimum, isolationism undermines a multicultural and democratic society."

The report notes that Mennonites and Doukhobors have also sought to isolate themselves form the mainstream. "Why then, should Canadians be worried about Islamist extremists who reject democracy or isolate themselves from non-Muslims?" it asks.

To which "hardened, secular Muslim" (i.e. a practising Muslim who prefers not to live under sharia law) Tarek Fatah responds

You can talk about the Mennonites but the Mennonites' aim in life is not to destroy Western civilization, it is seclusion.

Quite so. The Mennonites were--are--into peace in the biblical thou-shall-beat-thy-swords-into-plowshares sense. Whereas the HuTites are into "jihad is the way; sharia is the goal" in the Allahu Akbar sense. Conflating jihadis with Mennonites, for heaven's sake, is such a maladroit and bone-headed comparison that one cannot help but be gobsmacked by it--and terrified for our future if such thinking exemplifies the mindset of those charged with keeping us safe.

If the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre wanted to know about HuT, it didn't have to commission a time-consuming and probably quite expensive report. All it had to do was read my Hizb-ut-Tahrir poem:

In assessing Hizb-ut-Tahrir,
One thing should be perfectly clear:
Their old time religion
Has made us the pigeon.
And who's going to get plucked? We're.