Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Spot the Radical (Because Apparently the RCMP Can't)

In an article by Stewart Bell about a Calgary young'un who ran off to join ISIS, Bell solicits input from Amaranth Amarasingam, a scholar affiliated with something called the Dalhousie University Resilience Centre. According to Mr. A.,
“To understand the appeal of ISIS to young Canadians, you have to understand it as a religious sect within Islam, one made up of conservative Salafism, mixed with the more violent ideology of thinkers like Sayed Qutb... 
“ISIS follows the thinking and writing of early 20th century thinkers like Maulana Maududi and Qutb, both of whom argued that the establishment of an Islamic state was a necessary prerequisite for the fulfillment of a Muslim’s faith."
ISIS jihadis aren't the only ones who follow Maududi and Qutb. Dr. Ingrid Mattson, one of the Islamic authorities endorsed by the new anti-radicalization handbook (the one the RCMP helped write and then backed away from), does too. See, for example, this paragraph from an '08 Campus Watch piece about Mattson:
Whereas policy analysts and intelligence programs focus on the writings of Muslim fundamentalist thinkers, such as Sayyid Qutb and Abul ‘Ala Mawdudi, to learn the dangers of radical Islam, Mattson teaches their writings as examples of "ways in which the Quran functions as sacred scripture in Muslim history and contemporary life." By way of background, Qutb's writings inspired many of today's radical Islamist groups, including al Qaeda, while Mawdudi inspired other Islamist leaders, such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Given that, how on earth is she supposed to de-radicalize the radicals? More to the point, how could the RCMP have gotten behind such a problematic handbook in the first place--and why was the Mounties' repudiation so gosh-darned tepid? Security expert David Harris has some thoughts on the subject:
The day after the handbook's roll-out, a blushed-out RCMP, getting desperate enquiries from Canada's now-mortified Office of the Minister of Public Safety, scrambled out a news release. It said that the force was responsible for only one (benign) section of the handbook, and claimed improbably that the "tone" of some of the publication had caused the RCMP to pull out of the project at the last minute. Awfully "last minute," considering it was the day after launch that the RCMP news release emerged. 
Thus, Mountie supremos regard bad "tone" as the actionable offense, rather than content prescribing self-hobbling wartime censorship and jihad-happy fire-breathers as counter-radical consultants. And no explanation why, days later, the handbook still bears the horsemen's name and logo. Or why the force hadn't publicly threatened legal action to have their name removed from it. Nor was there a commitment that RCMP HQ would at long last heed warnings, quit self-defeating, hardline-Islamist outreach, and publicly condemn the NCCM and its ilk – in the same way the Canadian prime minister's own director of communications had condemned NCCM for alleged Hamas-type connections, in January. 
Especially in light of the contretemps between the prime minister's office and NCCM, there is floating over the handbook the unmistakable odor of a settling of accounts, an odor that might make the RCMP commissioner and his boss, the Public Safety minister, queasy about their continuing government employability. It was, after all, their diligence-free outreach that gave NCCM and ISSA the chance to make a fool out of the Prime Minister of Canada. For deep within the little handbook (p.34), comes a warning that law enforcement should never use the term "Islamicism." In Canada, this ungainly word – never in common use elsewhere, "Islamism" instead prevailing – is almost exclusively associated with a remark by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, one that was condemned by Islamists. "[T]he major threat," said Harper, in a headline-making 2011 CBC television interview, "is still Islamicism." The Islamists were riled up by Harper's effrontery, at the time, and so seem to have incorporated a touch of revenge in the handbook. This would not be the first RCMP outreach-driven embarrassment for a Canadian government, including a mess-up that may have involved an Iranian government operative
In any event, the more nasty of observers looked at the RCMP's follow-on news release and wondered. Why, given the embarrassment and damage – and knuckle-rapping insult to their prime minister – did the release pull so many punches? Could this restraint mean that certain senior officials, compromised by outrĂ© outreach, were now scared to bear down? Was there a belief that Islamist "partners" should not be alienated, lest they be tempted to expose details of years of misguided interaction upon which certain RCMP executives had built careers?  
The answer remains a mystery. But skeptical interpretations became more plausible to some, when the force's non-condemnatory news release came out more or less simultaneously with an NCCM release saluting RCMP cooperation with the Islamist group. Had all the loose liaising achieved the ultimate inversion, with the RCMP – and through it, the government – being turned into strange victims in a counter-radicalization Stockholm syndrome? Why, for that matter, are reliably moderate Canadian Muslim organizations like Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Muslim Canadian Congress, enjoying hardly a fraction of the reinforcing, and capacity-building attentions splashed all over Islamists? 
So, did the RCMP realize that it would be taken to the cleaners, and wind up helping NCCM and ISSA launder language and radicals via a counter-radicalization handbook? Maybe. But perhaps self-stifling in national security is now so internalized in the United States and Canada that it never occurs to some that certain people are radicals, and that radicals are not always our friends. Or the best guides to counter radicalization.
If we can't tell the radicals from the non-radicals, and if we continually fall for the claim that radicals can somehow deprogram other radicals, then we may as well admit to feeling chastened and officially start paying the jizya right now.

Update: BCF made me a purty picture:

canadian-mounties

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