Islam and multiculturalism in Canada

Lorne Gunter:

It would have been chilling, perhaps even shocking, watching spokesmen for the RCMP, CSIS and four Toronto-area police forces describe the explosives, guns, detonators and assorted jihadi training material they said they seized last week when they arrested 17 terror suspects -- would have been ... if I hadn't suspected such a day would come all along.

It was only a matter of time.

Canada and Canadians are just lucky this massive criminal plot -- if that's what a court finds it to be -- was discovered in advance.

The only shocking thing is that so many Canadians seem to have been so surprised by the arrest of a cell of alleged homegrown terrorists. Did we honestly think this could never happen here? Did we really think the world's jihadis would fall for all our multicultural bumph about Canada being a tolerant society, and not attack us?

Do we really think jihadis want a tolerant, multicultural world? Tolerance is a Western ideal, and the Islamists hate Western ideals. This radicalized minority within Islam doesn't seek multiculturalism. Their goal is monoculturalism: one world under radical Islam.

They are not at war for tolerance, but at war with tolerance.

The alleged wannabe terrorists swept up in a series of raids around Toronto on Friday don't have their hearts set on us carving out a place for them in Canadian society where they can live and pray and believe as they wish.

We could let Muslims practise sharia law within their own community and guarantee Muslim students and employees set-aside space at schools and work for their five-times-daily prayers, and still the jihadis among us would conspire to buy explosives and plot to blow up Canadian targets until we all agreed to live under sharia law and worship Allah at dawn, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon and dusk.

Radical Muslims are not interested in what we will let them do. "You do your thing and I'll do mine" is a Western notion. Jihadis are motivated by a desire to make everyone else in the world bow to Muhammad, too.

They are the new Crusaders; soldiers of their God, operating in hostile lands, whose mission it is to convert as many infidels as possible to their vision of one true faith, at the point of the sword if necessary.

Terror in Toronto

Bomb-plot figure was mosque regular

After escaping war in Somalia, terror suspects grew up in Toronto

3 Canadian suspects were arrested at Peace Bridge in 2005

Multinational Inquiry Led to Canada Terror Arrests

MISTAKEN IDENTITY