Alleged Calgary jihadist tracked down
RISE OF RADICALISM ‘I have anger against my government for entering Muslim countries on false pretences’
CALGARY — A Calgarian spotted fighting abroad with the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) appears to have been interviewed through an online messaging service.
Vice magazine’s online news site, Motherboard, published an interview Monday morning with a man claiming to be the person seen burning his passport and issuing threats to Canada and the U.S. in a recent YouTube video.
Media reports identify the man in the video as Farah Mohamed Shirdon, a Calgarian in his 20s reportedly fighting with ISIL.
“I have no other identity other than Muslim and yes, I’m the guy that ripped my passport in the video,” wrote a user on the app Kik, who goes by the name Abu Usamah.
Abu Usamah says he’s among “hundreds” of westerners in Syria who have gone to fulfil a religious duty, adding that he crossed the Turkish border easily. His location has not been known in previous reports.
The user says he decided to join ISIL to help it build an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
“I have anger against my government for entering Muslim countries on false pretences,” he says. “When we see our brothers getting slaughtered, it is mandatory for us to go support them.”
He also says a female Canadian Security Intelligence Service official interviewed him days before he left for Syria.
“CSIS are idiots, I had a meeting face to face with an agent five days before I left and they let me walk outta the country,” the user wrote. Vice says CSIS did not respond to its requests for comment.
The Vice journalist says he’s messaged Abu Usamah through Kik since May. Postmedia News reached out Wednesday to the user on Kik and has not received a reply.
Reports of Calgarians travelling abroad to fight with extremist groups have not surprised one reli- gious studies professor in Calgary.
Aaron Hughes, a prolific author on religion who holds a PhD in Islamic studies, recalled returning to his classroom at the University of Calgary one day several years ago, where he found a message scrawled in Arabic across the chalkboard endorsing Islamic Jihad and Hamas, widely considered as terrorist groups by western countries.
The message was among several encounters Hughes said he had with students professing radical views while he taught at the university. He said he resigned from his tenured position after officials refused to respond to his concerns.
The student responsible for the chalkboard message turned out to be a skinhead, who offered what the professor considered a half-hearted apology. Hughes, who is Jewish, believed the message was antiSemitic, but he said the university declined to remove the young man from his class.
“I would have to go teach this class as a victim staring my aggressor in the face,” he said.
Hughes, who now teaches at the University of Rochester, in New York, wondered whether influences on university campuses are helping to fuel this movement of young men waging jihad in Syria and Iraq.
He said he also saw a young Muslim stand up during a University of Calgary memorial service for the 9/11 terrorist attacks to say, “Islam will always stand up for those who are dispossessed.” Later, he saw a student wearing a Hamas headband.
Hughes’s comments have again highlighted fears of homegrown radicalization in Calgary and raised questions about the line that divides freedom of expression from hate speech.
While a local Muslim leader denounced radical calls for violence against other religions, the University of Calgary said it promotes free and open debate of ideas and provides a safe environment for students, faculty and staff on campus.