Has Islamist terrorism ceased to be an issue in Canada?
When Islamist terrorists flew two planes into New York’s World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon 20 years ago, Mubin Shaikh had an epiphany.
The 26-year-old had spent the previous five years as a would-be jihadist in the Toronto area but suddenly began to question the dark turn his young life had taken.
Soon enough, he was on the other side, working undercover for security services and helping prosecute more than a dozen young men planning a spectacular bombing campaign.
The “Toronto 18” case turned out to be the most dramatic in a string of arrests and incidents that for years made Muslim-extremist violence seem to be a clear and present danger in Canada, not merely a distant foreign menace.
But on the two-decade anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Islamist terrorism now appears more like an
afterthought in this country. Barely any high-profile arrests or attacks have taken place in five years, as farright, Islamophobic and misogynistic violence dominates the terrorism conversation.
“There has been a big drop since the peak in 2015 or 2016,” says Amar Amarasingam, a Queen’s University professor and radicalization expert.
As recently as 2019, a Public Safety Canada report still
suggested individuals inspired by groups like ISIS and al Qaeda were among the principal threats.
But what the government now calls ideologically motivated violent extremism — including far-right and misogynistic attacks — has killed 21 Canadians since 2014, more than any other form of terror, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) said in April.
It is “our most deadly extremist threat,” Vincent Rigby, the prime minister’s national security and intelligence advisor, stressed in a recent speech.
Analysts note that Islamist militants — who espouse a harsh brand of the religion rejected by the large majority of Muslims — remain highly active around the world and just took over a country of 38 million people. Last year, an avowed ISIS supporter bludgeoned to death a random bystander in Toronto.
But they suggest Canada has been somewhat immune to jihadism lately because of various factors, from better policing to weeding out of online propaganda and the end of the war against ISIS.
With his unique undercover experience, Shaikh cites a more intangible dynamic: Canada’s relative embrace of diversity.
In countries like France and the U.K. — where Islamist terrorists continue to periodically wreak havoc — resentment lingers over a colonial past in Muslim lands, he noted.