Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians. Chapter 29, Part Two: the Jihadi That Never was by Dave Jaffe.

    The Jihadi That Never Was: Part Two.


    Khalid tuned into the chat line that he'd found on the Internet. He grew his brown beard longer and started to wear a long robe.He joined  a local mosque where people had scrawled things on the outside walls like "A Bas Les Arabes" or "Down With Arabs." He prayed to Allah five times a day. The mosque didn't support Salafi Islam but it kept Khalid in touch with Islamic precepts or rules.
     The world one day said the Salafis would be ruled according to Sharia law. All Jews and Christians can be killed. Also on the targets of jihadis were Shiites and Sunni Moslems who co-operated with western countries. The black flag of Islam would fly everywhere. All wars would end and injustice would vanish. Of course some people would have to be killed especially those who stood in the way of what the Salafis called 'The Project' or the victory of Salafi Islam. This creed in some ways resembles so many utopian projects of the past. "Innumerable millions of human beings were killed in the 20th century in the name of utopia," wrote the Polish essayist and poet Czeslaw Milosz. Milosz lived for a time in communist ruled Poland and his book 'The Captive Mind' is an invaluable guide to what communist rule was like. Communism too tried to establish a utopia but in the end millions died under communist rule.
      "The Christians hate us too," Moslems on the chat line told Khalid. Khalid didn't check with others to find out whether this was true. Yet he did notice that when he wore a long robe and grew his beard longer, some people seemed to bump into him on purpose, while others swore at him in the street.
    Soon the people on the chat line asked Khalid whether he thought of going to Syria to fight the Assad regime. Khalid started to wonder whether he should go there. He learned that in that country young jihadis and others were trying to overthrow the government of Bashir al-Assad. Of course the odds of coming back alive from such a project weren't too high. For Assad's government is backed by Russian and Iranian troops. Assad and his allies have wiped out hundreds of jihadis.
      So though Khalid admitted that he wanted to go to Syria, he never did get there. He knew or learned that many young warriors for Islam or the Salafi brand of Islam had died there. "It would have been dangerous for me," he notes. Yet though Khalid never did get to Syria, he was visited at his parents' home by the R.C.M.P. He says now that he's under constant R.C.M.P. surveillance and he can't rravel more than 10 kilometres from his parents' house without notifying the police. This may or may not be true. For this writer met Khalid in Vancouver which is a long way from Montreal. So maybe he did tell the police he was going to take a trip across Canada. Or maybe he wasn't under surveillance at all.
     In any case all over the world there are millions of young men who like Khalid are jobless and poor. Some of them find their destiny or future in crime or war. Khalid was lucky. He's still alive. Yet his future remains doubtful for he has no money and no job. Still, as he says, "I won't be violent that's for sure." He remains a Moslem but not a violent one.