Martin Couture-Rouleau, shown here in an undated Facebook photo, was shot to death after running his car into two Canadian Forces soldiers. |
A year ago, when the words ISIS and ISIL had not yet entered our vocabulary, writing in this space I asked the question, “Have Islamist jihadis declared world war?”
Well, now it seems this war has come to the shores of Canada with an attack by a follower of Islamic State.
On Monday, Martin Ahmad Couture-Rouleau, a Caucasian convert to Islam, deliberately drove into two Canadian Forces soldiers in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, near Montreal, before he was shot dead after a police chase.
One of the soldiers died Tuesday in hospital while the second is now considered out of danger.
The jihadist who committed this act of terrorism was known on Twitter as “Abu Ibrahim AlCanadi,” where he used the ISIL flag as his picture.
Among the 53 people he followed were supporters of ISIL, who propagate jihadist ideology and believe in imposing Sharia law as the supreme law on earth.
If there was any doubt about Couture-Rouleau’s motives, it ended when Quebec’s TVA Nouvelles reported Couture-Rouleau called a 911 dispatcher and explained he was “acting in the name of Allah.”
Lost in the horror of these murders that some are still referring to as a “possible” terrorist attack, was the news on Saturday that three Muslim girls of Somali heritage, who wanted to travel to the Mideast and join ISIS in Syria as wives of jihadis, were back home and free.
The Toronto Star reported the teenage girls’ parents had tipped off the RCMP, who arranged to apprehend the teens in Turkey and return them to Toronto.
What was particularly disturbing was that instead of arresting and charging these three ISIS recruits, the RCMP simply sent them back into the community, under the care of their parents.
The Star quoted their families’ lawyer saying, “The parents felt comfortable in contacting police to prevent the young girls from ruining their lives.”
He said Somali community leaders are happy the RCMP has not prosecuted them and hopes, instead, to glean intelligence from the case which will stop others.
In my view, this is multiculturalism taken to its worst extreme.
Twenty years ago, would the RCMP have released teenage IRA recruits back into the care of their parents?
We now have three teenage girls who apparently believe in the ISIS doctrine of armed jihad and who flew out of the country to join it, walking freely about our city, while the rest of us have no information as to who they are or what to look out for.
As someone who has received death threats from Islamists as late as two weeks ago, and who in 2011 received a threat from a teenage Somali girl when I was hospitalized, perhaps I am a bit paranoid.
However, after Couture-Rouleau used a car as his weapon to kill his conception of the “infidel”, I have every reason to be.
After all, I have been called an “apostate” in the past by Islamists, an offence punishable by death in Islam.
What is also worrisome is that no other newspaper, TV or radio host (other than myself) has followed up on the story of the three ISIS recruits.
I asked the three major Toronto mayoral candidates if they were aware the RCMP had not charged or arrested these three young ISIS recruits living in their city.
Not one has answered the question.
Tarek S. Fatah is a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, a columnist at the Toronto Sun, host of a Sunday afternoon talk show on Toronto’s NewsTalk1010 AM Radio, and a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is the author of two award-winning books: Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State and The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism.
