Michael Z-B: Jihadi, Son of a Jihadi?

He's being called "a recent convert" to Islam, but it seems that, "pre-conversion,  jihad wasn't exactly a foreign concept to him:

Zehaf-Bibeau grew up in Ottawa and Montreal, and had spent time in Libya before moving to Western Canada to become a miner and laborer, said [his friend, Dave] Bathurst, who met the gunman in a Vancouver-area mosque about three years ago. 

Bathurst said Zehaf-Bibeau told him six weeks ago at a British Columbia mosque that he wanted to go to Libya to study Islam and Arabic. But reports from Canada say  Zehaf-Bibeau was blocked from traveling by government officials who have been monitoring extremists to prevent them from joining the Islamic State. 

Had Zehaf-Bibeau taken his apparent jihad plans abroad, he would have been following in the footsteps of his father, believed to be Belgasem Zahef, who was quoted by the Washington Times in 2011, speaking from the Libya, where he had travelled to join the rebellion against Col. Moammar Qaddafi.

The "rebellion": That would be the one conducted by the jihadis.

Like father, like son, no?

Update: Z-B's mother, Susan Bibeau, is "the deputy chairperson of a division of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board."

You know, the body that lets lots and lots of refugees from Islamic lands into the country?

I wonder if that's how Belgasem Zahef--she divorced him in 1999--got in.

Commenting on the Bibeau-Zahef union, Daniel Greenfield writes:

The irony of that marriage is obvious. And its product is the story of the death of the West.

Update: Blogger Sweetness & Light speculates that Belgasem could have been one of the jihadis who attacked the American consulate in Benghazi.