The Toronto Star Plays the Poverty Card

The story under the masthead of today's Toronto Star is all about how the arrest of Somali-Canadian Mohamed Hersi "alarms Toronto Somalis."

Hey, it alarms me too, and I'm not even Somali.

The link to the piece by staff reporters Isabel Teotonio, Curtis Rush and Bob Mitchell has yet to appear on the Star's site, so allow me to quote from the paper version which has been showing up free of charge on my porch for the past week in an effort to entice me to spring for a subscription (fat chance):

...The 25-year-old who was born in Somalia but moved to Canada as a child was trying to turn his life around. Despite having a science degree and a job as a security guard, Hersi had grown frustrated with life.

He was tired of living in a dilapitated public housing unit near Markham Rd. abd Eglinton Ave. E. and of watching his mother, a widow who had raised four children alone, struggling to make ends meet.

And, as he told a cousin, Hersi wanted to go to Egypt to "get the morals I've lost."

The above vignette about says it all re the knee-jerk assesssments of clueless, squish-brain lefties and the enduring appeal of jihad. The Star would have you believe it's all about "poverty" and tugs from your heartstings about the poor, struggling widow and her plight. Her son, who despite the deprivations, managed to get a university degree and had gainful employment, makes it clear that it was not about money or his poor mom the struggling widder lady at all. It was about feeling adrift in a place, in a land, that lacked "morals"--i.e. that was not Islamic.

How dense can lefties be? And more to the point, how stupid do they think we are?