Secular values charter pushed some into ISIL, study suggests
Researchers look at what made young Muslims decide to leave their homes
The intense debate generated a few years ago by Quebec’s proposed Charter of Values was one of the main reasons dozens of young Muslims decided to leave the province and join ISIL in its battle in Syria and Iraq, a new study suggests.
The study, published by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based counter-extremism organization, selected 27 men and three women from around the world and examined why they decided to leave their home countries and join ISIL’s efforts to create an Islamic state within the borders of Syria and Iraq. The study was authored by Amarnath Amarasingam, the co-director of a study of western foreign fighters based at the University of Waterloo and Lorne Dawson, a professor at the same school.
According to their research, “around 100 men and women have travelled to Syria and Iraq from Canada to fight with a wide variety of rebel and jihadist groups” and a third of those were from Quebec.
The study is partly based on interviews with the friends and relatives of the people who left to fight, including Imad Rafai and Shayma Senouci, both students at Collège de Maisonneuve, and former Laval resident Mohamed Rifaat. All three left Canada in January 2015.
“The charter was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many young people whom we spoke to (who knew the trio). It was the moment in which everything they were feeling and everything they suspected about wider Quebec society was confirmed,” the study notes. “The friends of the young foreign fighters are careful to point out that it wasn’t just the charter — they were thinking and feeling these things beforehand. But the charter made them believe that their rather fuzzy sense of marginalization was in fact accurate and — even more importantly — it wasn’t something that was going to change in their lifetime.”
Rafai in particular was described by friends as having been upset at the Parti Québécois’s proposed bill to prohibit public sector employees from wearing or displaying religious symbols.
“At first, like everybody else, (Rafai) didn’t see Islam as something important. Later, he started to find meaning in it and slowly got radicalized. Then the charter came to make everything worse. From that moment, we noticed a change in the way he was talking,” a friend of Rafia told the researchers.
The study also quotes from emails Senouci sent home to her friends, in which she attempted to explain her reasons for leaving.
“First, I left because it is impossible for a Muslim to live in a country of infidels. It is an obligation for (a Muslim) to immigrate to a Muslim country, a country where Allah’s laws are applied. I left to be closer to Allah,” Senouci wrote.
“Second, I left because I felt imprisoned in this country. I felt dirty and deadly, an accomplice for the killings and the humiliations for Muslims worldwide. If you look again, you will notice that all these taxes and ‘fees’ you pay are for the financing of armaments and for sending bombs here or in other Muslim countries to kill women and children (and) civilians (I live here and I am witnessing it).”
Rifaat, who was jokingly referred to as “Sheik Rifaat” by one of his friends, is described as having led a form of rebellion among his friends as they began to question why they should have to hide their religion in Quebec. He convinced them to pray in their school gymnasium without permission.
“We were being rebellious by showing off how religious we were. I know all those guys and girls who challenged the school administration about the issue of praying. Most of them were not religious. We were all looking for a collective identity, I think. When Sheik Rifaat left, the movement died with him,” one friend is quoted as saying.
The same friend also noted that Rifaat’s views began to change, around 2013, and became more radical.
For example, when the Parti Québécois’ Pauline Marois was elected as Quebec’s premier, in 2012, Rifaat took to Facebook and posted a statement saying: “Every community lead by a female will eventually become unsuccessful.”