Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 19 - Evidence - Meeting of June 8, 2015
OTTAWA, Monday, June 8, 2015
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 1:12 p.m. to study and report on security threats facing Canada.
Senator Daniel Lang (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Colleagues, I'd like to call this meeting to order. Before I welcome our very esteemed guest, I would like to begin by introducing the people around the table. My name is Dan Lang, senator for Yukon. On my immediate left is the clerk of the committee, Adam Thompson. I would like to invite each senator to introduce themselves and state the region they represent, starting with our deputy chair.
Senator Mitchell: Grant Mitchell, senator for Alberta.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Jean-Guy Dagenais from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Stewart Olsen: Carolyn Stewart Olsen, New Brunswick.
Senator Ngo: Thanh Hai Ngo from Ontario.
Senator Day: Joseph Day from the beautiful region of Saint John—Kennebecasis, New Brunswick.
Senator Beyak: Senator Lynn Beyak from Ontario.
The Chair: Thank you.
Colleagues, on June 19, 2014, the Senate agreed that the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence would be authorized to study and report on security threats facing Canada, including, but not limited to, cyberespionage, threats to critical infrastructure, terrorist recruitment and financing, and terrorist operations and prosecutions. The committee would report to the Senate no later than December 31, 2015.
As we move to the end of our hearing, I am pleased to welcome to the committee Ms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ms. Ali is The New York Times bestselling author of Infidel, Nomad and The Caged Virgin, as well as a new book out called Heretic.
Born in Somalia and raised a Muslim, Ms. Ali grew up in Africa and Saudi Arabia before seeking asylum in 1992 in the Netherlands, where she went from cleaning factories to winning a seat in the Dutch Parliament. Ms. Ali was chosen as one of Time's most 100 influential persons in the world. She is presently a fellow at Harvard University's JFK School of Government and is the founder of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation.
Ms. Ali, thank you for joining us today and for being our final witness on our study of threats to Canada, specifically terrorism and radicalization. I understand that you have an opening statement.
I want to let our viewers know that we are on video conference with Ms. Hirsi Ali.
Please begin.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Founder, AHA Foundation, as an individual: Thank you very much. On the subject of radical Islam, I want to ask you all to take a look at an op-ed piece that was published in the Wall Street Journal on January 14, 2015. It was written by Newt Gingrich, a former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Its title is Why We're Losing to Radical Islam.
In that op-ed, Mr. Gingrich asks a number of very important questions. The first is: Why are we losing, 35 years after 1979 when the United States embassy was attacked and Americans were hijacked and then 13 years after 9/11? Do we understand the problem?
My first point to you would be that perhaps we need to start with trying to figure out what it is that we are up against. How big is the problem, and what have we been doing since?
I wholly agree with him. Because he is so articulate and has been a member of Congress himself, he says that we have been using ad hoc measures that just won't do because ad hoc is not a strategy.
I want to add to that because of this ad hoc approach, we have empowered the enemy. They take advantage of our ad hoc responses.
What do our ad hoc responses do for them? They grow. They exploit us, but most important of all, they exploit the most vulnerable people in the world, people who identify themselves as Muslim but do not necessarily condone or even want to participate in violence.
My contribution to all of this is: How can I help to define the problem? After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, after all of these small-scale terrorist attacks and big-scale plots that we have been able to foil, my approach has been how can I help to define the problem? We are at a place where people are saying: Is it Islam? Is it all ever Islam? There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Should we blame them all for what a small minority does?
In my recent book, I think it's not helpful to speak of many different "Islams." I think it's much more helpful to recognize Islam as a doctrine. It is a mix of religious doctrine. It's a civilization. It is a religion in many aspects, and in many ways it's a tradition of 1.6 billion people, nearly a fifth of humanity.
Doctrines, the Quran, the legacy of the prophet Muhammad, jurisprudence — that doesn't just go around jumping around and killing people. It doesn't subjugate women. Doctrine is there for people of all times to exploit to justify their ends. So it's much more helpful to study the people, to acknowledge the diversity of that one fifth of humanity.
As I try to categorize this one fifth of humanity, I come to the conclusion that there are three large, very fluid umbrellas. I would designate one umbrella as "Medina Muslims," any number of people who have been identifying as fundamentalists or radical. Some are violent and some are nonviolent. They will fall under that umbrella of Medina.
The minimum criteria for you to fall under the Medina umbrella is the hope that you want to live under sharia law; that is, to take from the doctrine the body of law that dictates moral behaviour, economic behaviour, military behaviour and social behaviour of a Muslim. If that is your goal, regardless of whether you want to meet that goal by peaceful or non-peaceful means, you fall under that Medina umbrella.
I don't know how big the Medina group is, but I think today it's much bigger than it was after 9/11/2001, but it still is largely a minority: a considerable minority, a vehement minority, a determined minority, but a minority nevertheless.
The second umbrella is what I describe as "Mecca Muslims." These are Muslims who look at the doctrine and who think, "I'll just do the right thing. What the Prophet asks of me, what the Quran asks of me, I don't even have time for that. I will pray five times a day, I will love my neighbor, my children, and I'll go about my business." I think that Mecca umbrella — and, again, I can't give you figures — today is the largest number of Muslims.
Then I have a third umbrella. I call them "reformers" or "modifiers" or whatever else you want to call them. There is no movement yet. These are individuals who recognize that within their own tradition, within their own civilization, there are key problems that they need to understand and adjust.
I will offer a very specific example: They ask questions like, "Should we follow everything that the Prophet Muhammad said? Should we do all the commands in the Quran? Maybe there are things that we need to see in context."
Now, why do I refer to these three umbrellas? I think it is because after having studied and followed this problem for a long time — my colleagues are scholars and some of them former politicians, some of them active politicians — the more we try and break down and get mired in the swamp of names and sub-names and sub-movements, we start to lose the compass of the problem. And the more time it takes us, you and me, to agree on what the problem is, the longer it will take us on coming up with working strategies.
To go back to the Medina umbrella, I think that is what we have a problem with. We have a problem with that umbrella. I choose the term "Medina" deliberately because what they want to do is take the Quran and the example of the Prophet Muhammad as it was rendered in Medina. In Medina the Prophet Muhammad was no longer just preaching a religion. He was a militia man. He went to war and he designed sharia as he went along.
Since Medina, for Islam, there were glorious conquests. Islam established itself then and years and centuries later as an empire, and in the 21st century, there are people who want to replicate that. In order to replicate that, they try and take advantage of the innocence in the beliefs of the Mecca Muslims. As you teach young children not to question the Quran, not to question the Prophet Muhammad, at that point you have no idea that there are people who are going to take advantage of that. They take advantage of that.
For the outsider, for the non-Muslim, especially in the West where we believe in the freedom of religion and the freedom of conscience, when people come here and establish a network of schools, Islamic centres, mosques, it all falls within our freedoms and laws, but we rarely take an interest in the content of what is being preached and disseminated. That is what I'd like to bring to your attention.
I think that we need to focus on the Medina Muslims, not only here in the West but across the world. I don't want us to focus on the Medina Muslims only after they engage in acts of jihad; I would like us to start focusing on them early on through dawah, the proselytizing process, in the weeks, the months and the years that they are preaching, preparing and cultivating the minds of young people who then might do something that the preacher will distance himself from and say, "Oh, I have nothing to do with that." You can be preaching jihad for years, but if you don't commit an act of jihad, you're innocent of it; you're absolved of it. But if members of your congregation do it, then they, as individuals, are the ones that we run after.
Those are my opening remarks and I would be please to take your questions. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Hirsi Ali. We very much appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to share your experiences and your recommendations of how you see the journey forward.
You mentioned the preaching and the doctrine being disseminated perhaps by those in the institutions, perhaps within some of the religious institutions. It could be universities.
The first question I have is on the question of foreign funding. We have had a number of witnesses over the last number of months raise the question of foreign funding coming into Canada either indirectly or directly, and I'm assuming North America, for the purposes of financing radicalization and terrorism in one manner or another. Could you comment on that? Should we be concerned?
Ms. Hirsi Ali: Absolutely. It is an open secret that for generations the country of Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries have been funding jihadist Islam, I would say Medina Muslims, to establish themselves in foreign countries, to embed themselves within the communities of immigrant Muslims, to turn them away from their ethnic or localized practice of Islam to Wahhabi Islam. I don't know if you are familiar with the term "Wahhabi Islam," but it's the form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, but it's not only Saudi Arabia.
On a governmental level, since 9/11 the country of Saudi Arabia has worked along with the United States and other North America countries to combat violent jihad, but they have not worked enough. They have not done enough to work against non-violent dawah, or proselytization, and in fact have continued to finance it. It is an official doctrine of the country of Saudi Arabia to finance dawah, or proselytization.
Besides the government and governments, there are wealthy individuals with very deep pockets who finance that across the world, including, of course, in Canada.
What should you be looking out for? You should be looking out for the sprouting of mosques and Islamic centres. You should be looking out for the establishment of Islamic schools and anything that costs money. Because when it comes to funding, what radical Islamists do is they start to collect money from within the community. But that's obviously not large enough to establish the kind of institutions that they want to establish, so part of it has to come from foreign groups.
If you want to follow funding, you have to look and understand a term called zakat, or charity, which is raising money from the locals, combined with individual, wealthy people from outside who are contributing to that and, of course, governments: the Government of Iran, the Government of Saudi Arabia, the Government of U.A.E., the Government of Kuwait, the Government of Qatar. Today some countries are less inclined to finance than others, countries like the U.A.E. and Egypt, because they feel they are in many ways threatened by radical Islam, as we are, and have rolled back their financing.
In this aspect, I would like to point to the political transition in the country of Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah, at face value, seemed to have understood the problem. He turned his back, for instance, on a movement and an organization like the Islamic Brotherhood, which in my view is the biggest and most problematic of all.
The new King, King Salman, has a more devious relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. It just may be that the categorization of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization might be reversed because of King Salman and his very strong ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. That is my speculation, but it's worth looking into. When it comes to funding, we look at state funding, the funding from private individuals and at funding coming through zakat.
The Chair: Following up on the question of those who advocate the radical jihadist Islamic ideology, we have been told that this is the case with some imams in some areas in Canada. These imams in good part have been educated either in Saudi Arabia or other places outside our country, not unlike I'm sure other parts of Europe and the United States.
In order for us to look forward and help with the vast majority of those that are involved within the Islamic community, what would your thoughts be if we were to encourage the local Muslim communities to create their own theological institution to train imams so that Canadians were teaching Canadians as opposed to this situation we see ourselves in at the present time?
Ms. Hirsi Ali: I think you would have to develop criteria. You would have to develop certain filters. How do you know which imam, which mosque and which congregation is Canadian in the sense of who wants to commit to becoming Canadian citizens and contributing to Canadian life as opposed to those who push their own jihadist agenda?
In my book I point out five key aspects. If an imam, mosque or Muslim centre is teaching that absolutely everything that's in the Quran, particularly in Medina, and absolutely everything that the Prophet Muhammad said and did, particularly in Medina, is what the practice of Islam is, then you should have red flags all over the place. If you find that imams are advocating, either in their speeches or in writing or online, for life after death instead of life before death, you have a flag. That's a second criteria.
If they're preaching sharia law, even though it's Canada where it seems inconceivable to practice sharia law, you have a red flag.
There's a concept that is not as well known to you as it should be called "commanding right and forbidding wrong." Think of every Muslim who comes to Canada. On the day of their immigration, these individuals and families are in search of a better life. They may not have made up their minds to become Canadians, but they just want to improve their living conditions. Let's start with that.
Once they get to Canada, individuals come to them and say, "Listen, forget about your ethnic ties to your country of origin. Forget about whatever loyalty you had. Now you are to become a Canadian. But what are you going to do with your being a Canadian? You are going to practise, obey and observe all the rules of our Islamic faith, and you're going to spread that and convert others or make other Muslims who are not practising to start practising — commanding right and forbidding wrong. It's a form of social control to keep the community of Muslims insulated from the rest of Canadian society but, as they're insulated, to also reinforce what the jihadists want them to believe. Commanding right and forbidding wrong is a red flag that should tell you enough. If you find any of these imams, Muslim centres or Muslim schools preaching jihad as a lifestyle, as an aim unto itself, then you know that you have a problem.
So how can you differentiate? This is the problem we've been struggling with for the last 13 years, maybe the last 20 or 30 years, in Europe, in Canada, and in the United States of America. How can you tell a well-meaning Muslim who is simply observing his religion from someone who has secrets or a hidden agenda? I have come up with five key factors, and I think this is what people should be looking for.
There are contrasting groups. You have Irshad Manji in your country and we have Zuhdi Jasser in our country. These are patriots. These are people who are telling fellow Muslims, "It's absolutely possible to be Canadian or American or European and at the same time practise your religion. You can pray, you can fast, you can have a sense of community, but you don't have to hate the Constitution. You can love the Constitution and be a part of it and thrive on it."
We have to become much more active and wary of what is being said and what is in pamphlets and books. If you go to a mosque and they have copies of Seid Kutub and copies of Youssef al-Qaradawi — I don't have to go down a list of complex names. You have to look at the content and look for these five criteria. You will see that it actually quite possible to filter, to point out and red flag who is telling you what you need to hear versus who is telling you the truth.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Hirsi Ali.
I will now go to the deputy chair, Senator Mitchell.
Senator Mitchell: Thanks, Ms. Hirsi Ali; I appreciated your presentation.
Maybe you've covered the aspects of what you would call a strategy because you started by saying that we've been too ad hoc. Could you summarize for us what you think the strategy should be? Is it beyond identifying these five factors in mosque teachings, or what else would it be? When you say, "Let's have a broad strategy," how does that work?
Ms. Hirsi Ali: To even begin to get to a strategy that works, as a democratic society we need to take one step back and tell our representatives to help us define the problem. What is the problem? Is Islam in general the problem or are Muslims the problem? What are we looking at? I pointed to former Speaker Newt Gingrich's op-ed piece because he asks the right questions, but we haven't settled on the answer.
My first step toward a grand strategy would be to settle that. When our President says in the United States of America that the Islamic State is not Islamic, then we are very far away from the problem. I'm trying to avoid this inner quibbling over what exactly is Islamic and what is not Islamic. In my view, the first stepping stone would be that we don't have a problem with all aspects of Islam. We don't have a problem with the religious dimension of Islam — praying, fasting and religious gatherings. We don't have a problem with that. We do have a problem, however, with the political and social aspects of Islam. Do you and I agree that jihad is a problem, yes or no? Is sharia law a problem, yes or no? Is this investment in life after death instead of life before death a problem, yes or no? Do we then allow people who want to highlight that these three things are goals to come to our preschools, our elementary schools, our middle schools, our high schools and our universities to disseminate an ideology that is determined?
The leaders of this ideology are saying they think that North Americans have lost their way and that their constitutions are wrong because they're man-made and should be replaced with God-made law. What we're having is an ideological confrontation. In that ideological confrontation, some Islamic leaders claim religion, divine law, as their source.
If we get together and say we're going to stand up against this, we have to rethink some of the laws, systems and measures we have in place in order to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for them to embed themselves in our immigrant Muslim communities as a cancer and spread those ideas that ultimately lead to actions that destroy our societies.
Do I have a strategy worked out at this point? No, because we don't seem to get past the definition issue.
Who do we have a problem with? I don't have a problem with Muslims. I don't have a problem with Islamic practice. I have a problem with political Islam, Medina Muslims and with the fact that they're using our constitutional freedoms — the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the freedom of association and the freedom of religion. These religious people seek to destroy these very same religions.
When I say, as Newt Gingrich does, that our responses have been ad hoc, they have been ad hoc and incoherent because we only go after those individuals who we capture while surveilling or listening to them and intercepting their communications, or after they've committed an act of terrorism. But all the time before that, as they indoctrinate our youth and target our Muslim communities, we ignore them and leave them alone.
Senator Mitchell: I'm not sure we do in Canada; I'm not sure we leave them alone, and I'm not sure how widespread it is. I'm not trying to diminish the issue
You said something that really struck me, and that was that the doctrine is there to be exploited by a certain kind of person who is inclined to exploit other people. So there is more than just an ideological feature; it is a psychological, pathological feature. There's a certain kind of person, a pedophile, who exploits and manipulates young children or young adults, youth. It may be that there's a certain kind of person, but it's very difficult to begin to pick on a given religion and say there's something intrinsically wrong with it. It may be exploited inappropriately by certain people, and that's really part of what you were saying. If it weren't for that religion, they would find something else to exploit. In history, people always do. We really need to focus on finding people who are trying to exploit other people.
The Chair: Is that your question?
Senator Mitchell: Is that not as much a policing exercise? Is it not an exercise of good, decent people sitting in these mosques who might hear that and they turn people in? But they do.
Ms. Hirsi Ali: I think we have to make a distinction between the criminal, psychological mind — the universal bad guy — and a coherent ideology that is religious. It is political, religious and social all at once. If you are a Canadian non-Muslim and you happen to want to exploit children sexually, then you know by definition that you're doing something wrong, because society around you tells you that you are wrong and you will end up in prison.
And I want to make this distinction clear: If you can fall back on a religious tradition that allows you to marry a 6-year-old or 9-year-old, and you are surrounded by people who do not think it's a crime and who think it's justified — some of them may be uncomfortable with it, but every time you bring in the great icon, you raise the Prophet Muhammad as your example.
I was serving in the Netherlands as a member of Parliament, and I was approached by adult men who were sane and who represented the Moroccan Muslim community. They wanted and were actively seeking to bring the age of marriage down from 18 to 15. I explained to them that that wouldn't happen in the Netherlands. But their argument was well calculated; it was coherent. It was, "According to our religion, the man whose example we follow, he went actually as young as 9."
When the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran, he lowered the age of marriage to nine. Islamic states everywhere, where those people who want to establish sharia law and to bring part of that doctrine that is Islam into practice as sharia law, do lower the age of marriage to a very young age. They do dust off from history the practice of slavery, where you can take the enemies' children, as young as they may be, and have sex with them. What we call pedophilia, slavery and sexual exploitation, some of these people find a justification or an explanation for them in Islamic jurisprudence.
Now, you and I can say that Islamic jurisprudence must be seen in its context and in history, but that's not what they're doing. They're putting it into practice.
Your role as a legislator for the Canadian people is to see if this sort of practice is taking shape in Canada. Initially, most of the victims will be Muslim. What is your job? Is it an academic approach where you say it can happen to this religion and that religion, or is your job to protect the citizens who you have pledged to protect? As a member of Parliament back then, I understood my job to be that we had to protect our citizens. That's why I started to highlight this.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Thank you so much for being with us today. I appreciate that.
My question is going to be about women and ensuring that they are treated with equality; that they are as equal as any other young Canadian woman. I will actually stick to Canada, because that's what I'm most concerned with.
How can we try to ensure that young women growing up in Muslim families are being treated equally? Do you think there's a place for government in this?
Ms. Hirsi Ali: Absolutely. Let me begin by saying there is a place for government in this because when you come to Canada from a country where sharia applies or a country where sharia applies as family law, you hope and expect that you will be equal before the law to all Canadians. If a White non-Muslim Canadian girl is sexually exploited or if her school career is cut short by her parents to force her into something she doesn't want, what happens in Canada? What do the media do? What do politicians do? It becomes a case of outrage. I've seen this over and over again in Europe, in the U.S. and, of course, in Canada.
When you put religion into the mix and you have a radical Islamic movement exploiting immigrant communities and telling immigrant fathers, brothers and cousins that they can carry on in Canada the practices against women as they did in their countries of origin, those little girls and young women are left alone; they're abandoned by the law in Canada and by law enforcement.
You must know of the Shafia case about a wealthy, well-to-do Afghani gentleman who very much adhered to his own laws and traditions. He and his family were able to kill four women under the noses of child protection, law enforcement, social workers and all of the other institutions that protect children and women. So of course it is a government function to protect these women.
As more and more people come from very many different countries, it is incredibly important for legislators to inform themselves of these various traditions. The Quran is not a very big book. The Hadith is also not that big. I would advise and urge all Canadian legislators who have to deal with any of this directly to educate themselves on the narrative of what the radical Islamic movement is trying to accomplish in Canada. Read their pamphlets, books and listen to their sermons. You will see constantly that they reference the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad.
Ultimately, you have to educate yourself on that and develop a local Canadian counter-narrative that says, "We understand this is what you want to bring into Canada. This is what you want to establish, but here are our values. We believe that girls and women are equal before the law; they're protected before the law. If you violate that in any way, you will be faced with this or that punishment." This is what we feel about it. That's the first thing.
Second, it's important that Muslim girls in Canada finish school, proper schools, so that they in turn are educated about their own rights in Canada and can fight back.
I know in Canada, and I have been there, that there are already organizations of Muslim women or ex-Muslim women who are trying to fight in their own way to be Canadian and not to give up their families, but they are fighting this tradition of theirs. Those are the girls and women we need to empower. Is that a government thing to do? Probably, but of course they need civil help from that.
In the 21st century, when we talk about a civil rights movement, this is the sort of thing we're talking about. We're talking about girls and women from cultures and traditions that practise harmful traditions. We're talking about communities, such as the gay communities. If you're a gay Muslim, you're forced to marry. So forced marriage is not only about girls; it's also about boys. We have to be able to give them a platform where they can come out and discuss these problems without soliciting more problems, such as a risk to their lives.
So, yes, if the key role of government is to protect the life and limb of citizens, then that is the challenge you are faced with today.
Senator Stewart Olsen: If I may, I agree with you. That's very helpful.
I have one short question on the aspect of some international leaders who are blaming the violence of the jihadist movements on social and economic inequality. Where do you stand on that?
Ms. Hirsi Ali: With what we are seeing now, social and economic issues make communities vulnerable.
Listen, the Middle East is on fire. A lot of countries in Africa are unstable. A lot of countries in South Asia are unstable. These happen to be Muslim-majority countries. When things go wrong, the instinct for human beings is to go, if they can, and seek a better life somewhere else.
So the people you're seeing in Canada are people who are coming to you in search of a better life — at least most of them are. They're driven by social economic challenges: bad economies, lower education. Some of them just want a better education and a better life for their children and grandchildren. It's social economics in that sense; it counts.
At the same time, we can't close our eyes to this age-old radical Islamic movement that pretends to have an answer to social problems, economic problems, political problems, military problems, all sorts of problems. They say Islam is the answer.
Now, when you have immigrants in Canada faced between trying to assimilate into a very modern and, for many of them, a very foreign society, versus what might seem familiar, at face value it has the silent song that maybe you shouldn't assimilate into Canadian values. Maybe you should come to the mosque and Muslim centre, turn your back on the Canadian values, be a part of this Islamic movement and maybe even try to Islamize Canada. The population is caught. Again, that's the umbrella that I call the Mecca Muslims. There is that confusion, that dissonance.
To go back to your question: Is having too little money or facing social economic adversity the key problem that drives people into the arms of jihadists? I don't buy that. Why don't I buy it? Because we're seeing over and over again, not only in Canada but across the world, people who are born into wealth and privilege and are highly educated, subscribing to the doctrine of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
I started my opening remarks by pointing you to countries like Saudi Arabia and the oil-wealthy Gulf countries that have absolutely everything money can buy, yet many of them choose, for their philanthropy, radical Islamic goals, institutions, activities, jihad. I think it would be naive to assume that jihadism is caused by poverty or humiliation or subjugation. For the leaders who believe in caliphate, who want to get there through jihad and who want to establish sharia, these are variables that they exploit. But poverty, adversity in childhood and alienation is not the cause of the desire for a caliphate, the desire to participate in jihad or the desire to establish sharia law. As long as we get into this, we'll never be able to get ourselves out of this quagmire.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: I have two questions. There are 318 radicalized young people in Canada. In Montreal — where I am from — 21 individuals have attempted to join the Islamic State forces. Could you explain why joining the jihadist movement is such an attractive idea for youth from Canada, especially those living in large cities like Montreal?
[English]
Ms. Hirsi Ali: I think there are a number of explanations, but the strongest explanation is that the youth who are subscribing to this have been exposed to the invitation that life, if you are a believer, has a purpose. If you believe in Allah — praise be to him — then you have to do as he demands. The people who are preaching to them are preaching to them from the Quran in its Medina rendition. They are preaching to them for Muhammed's actions in Medina. They are explicitly saying to them: Whatever happened in Mecca is abrogated by what happened in Medina.
As you know, I was a member and I joined the Muslim Brotherhood. These people showed up in my life at a time when I was young and impressionable. I was trying to understand the difference between right and wrong. I was seeking answers to why we have been created. Is it only to eat, sleep and cohabitate, and do that over and over again? Is there no larger purpose to life? We have youth today who are asking those questions. The only people reaching out to them are these people with an agenda, telling them, "Join the caliphate; fight for it."
Through accounts of their interviews of those who joined them, we hear this: They drop everything in Canada to go and join the Islamic State, saying, "I'm not fighting for this or that. I'm not fighting for a material improvement to my conditions. I'm going to fight for the sake of Allah. If in the process I die, I'll be a martyr." That is a narrative. It's very simplistic. It's utopian. It's devastating.
Canada is not alone. In the rest of the world, we have not yet developed a counter-narrative that directly targets the groups of vulnerable youth and communities that the Medina Muslims or the Islamists, as we've come to call them, target. We're not giving them a counter-narrative. Part of the reason in Western nations is through this political correctness — self-imposed — that selling the ideas and the values of life, freedom and equality is arrogant. It is Eurocentric or it is Western imperialism. Therefore, we have to stand back and respect as things go along. These radical Islamists take advantage of this vacuum. They are the only ones actively disseminating a narrative or morality that alarms us and shocks us, but that we don't respond to.
We have been challenged by Communism. We have been challenged by national social — which bad ideas and bad ideologues do by giving radical Islamists a pass that we should not be giving.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Thank you for such a clear answer. Why did the European counter-attack against the influence of radical jihadism fail? Some say that racism in Europe is the reason young people are supporting the Islamic State's radical ideas. Could you share with us your experience in that regard?
[English]
Ms. Hirsi Ali: I know that we are short for time, so I will say, yes, there is the inhibition of racism. Many of the European countries are former imperialists — France, the U.K., Spain, even the Netherlands — so there is this stigma of we want to be fair-minded and respect the cultures, religions and traditions of Third World communities, individuals, cultures. That's part of the story. That is what I would say is part of the vacuum of moral and cultural relativism and political correctness. We touched on it on the former question.
Alongside that and at the same time was an aggressive move from the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia Wahhabi doctrine that was promoted across the world with a lot of oil money. Before ISIS, Saudi Arabia was really not serious about stopping that, and with the new king, I doubt if anything will change.
I want to bring to your attention how the term "Islamophobia" was invented, cultivated and promoted to a degree where it is a recognized condition in our lexicon. It is very amusing, you might think, because I can see the smile on your face, but it is not at all amusing because it is extremely effective.
There is this woman, Asra Nomani, an American practising Muslim. She wrote an essay about it in the Washington Post on January 16, and she called it "the honour brigade." The Organization of the Islamic Conference has established this body that they call the Islamophobia Observatory. They have put a lot of money into it and hired the best lawyers, PR people, activists and activist organizations here in the West to promote that.
Two forces come together. One is the apathetic force of the West, particularly in Europe, where people are feeling, decades afterwards, sorry for imperialism. As they back off promoting not imperialism but the ideals of freedom and human rights, they back off and are inhibited in many ways. This Wahhabism, the jihadist and Muslim Brotherhood movement, they move into the void and establish new institutions, schools, Muslim centres or mosques, or they take over existing institutions. They hire PR people to deal with the media. They hire people that can help them navigate through the political interest groups' infrastructure. I have to say that they have been successful to this point because those of us who believe in humanity, in liberalism, in the equality of men and women and in the respect and tolerance of anyone who doesn't think like you, we are the ones who are on the defensive now.
Senator Beyak: I had the privilege of working with Speaker Gingrich in 2012 on his bid for the presidential nomination. Thank you very much for your courage and brilliance. I agree with everything you've said today. You've answered all of my questions. I just have a couple for you personally.
Within the Muslim community here, the reform Muslims that you speak of, how can we find a religious political leader to pull them together in Canada? We know they're here; we've spoken with them. We have probably been speaking to the wrong Medina Muslims for a long time. What would you suggest we do?
Ms. Hirsi Ali: Thank you so much for your compliments and your question. Ultimately this is the group I want to highlight, these individuals who really appreciate what it is to be in a free country and live life before death, who want to invest in that and devote part of their time to help their particular free societies forward.
I know of one individual in Canada, Tarek Fatah; I know of Irshad Manji. I know of a woman, whose name escapes me now, who invited me in 2015 to fight against the implementation of family sharia law into the Canadian arbitration system. These are all individual Muslims who have been asking the right questions, who have been saying that when it comes to a confrontation between what the Quran says and what Muhammad decrees and my conscience, and it starts with simple examples like, "If I love my non-Muslim friends because they have helped me, should I give them up?" A radical Muslim will say, "Yes, you have to give them up because in all cases you have to submit to Allah instead of your conscience. If you submit to your conscience, you are being arrogant; you are being the Satan."
I don't know how big the group is in Canada, but you already have individuals, and hopefully those individuals can get together. They need resources; they need organizational skills; they need support. But they should be the partners that you should be talking to.
I'll give you one sign of optimism: No Muslim family, no vulnerable Muslim wife or child, comes to Canada seeking to promote radical Islam. I would say 99 per cent of immigrant Muslims come in search of a better life.
The big mistake that Canadians and most Westerners have been making is they were outsourcing the process of their integration unwittingly to the Muslim Brotherhood branches, like the Muslim Students' Association and the Islamic centres of North America. These are the organizations whose representatives wear suits, speak perfect English, have the money and tell you what you want to hear. Therefore, you've been outsourcing the integration process through them.
In most Western countries, because we've been lazy, we've outsourced the integration process to radical Muslims. That is why we're faced with these problems.
There is the integration process of immigrant Muslims who are vulnerable this way or the other, but there are also other vulnerable communities. I do not know about the Canadian situation, but in America we have the African-American community. The African-American community here is largely infiltrated by these various Sunni brotherhood types, and they have been converting and then radicalizing these individuals. I think it's very tragic. The African-American community needs to stand up to this and say that they do not want to go from the frying pan to the fire. Our communities were already challenged. On top of the challenges we already have, we don't want to add jihadism and sharia to that.
Senator Day: Thank you very much for your comments. My first question goes to the Shiite-Sunni rivalry that we're seeing, and I have two parts to that question. First, do we find the three umbrellas in the Sunnis and the Shiites? To what extent has that helped to develop the radical groups and the radicalism that we see?
Ms. Hirsi Ali: I think that's a very good question, senator. When I was thinking of developing these umbrellas — Medina, Mecca, reformers — the Shia and Sunni are under each umbrella. For instance, there are Sunni Muslims who are devoted to re-establishing a caliphate, and in my view they fall under the Medina category.
Ayatollah Khomeini is Shia, and the regime he left behind, which also spends tons of money across the world trying to promote the idea of Islamic supremacy, is Shia and falls under the Medina Muslims.
Regarding the Mecca Muslims, there are a lot of Shias who also just go about their business and are in this distress about whether they should obey the Prophet and do everything in the Quran. But on the other hand, they also want to integrate, and then, obviously, Shia reformers.
If you look at the umbrella of reformers, what I find striking is the overrepresentation of the Shia. In fact, if you look at Iran, there is this enormous distinction now between the regime, which is very Islamist and theocratic in its outlook and in its practice, and the population. I want to bet that a majority of Iranians are, in fact, not as religious as we assume them to be. They are not, because they have been forced for 35 years to live under sharia law. They happen not to like it, which doesn't surprise me, but they are Shia.
A lot of the Iraqi Shia seem to be far more interested in the reform umbrella in saying, "Perhaps it is better for Iraq to be a secular government and for all of us to be just Iraqis instead of Sunnis and Shia and Kurds and others." The voices of unity are coming from the Shia.
The Ismailis are considered to be Shia. The Alawites are considered to be Shia. That doesn't say that the Shia are completely innocent of radicalism, but it just says that in proportion to the population, only 15 per cent of Muslims are Shia, while 85 per cent of Muslims are Sunni; in proportion to that, there seems to be a majority of Shias who are prepared to move forward or establish secular societies instead of theocracies.
Today, the biggest problem we face is coming from Sunnis. In saying that, I absolutely do not want to underestimate the designs of the Government of Iran on establishing nuclear power status and what they could do with that. That's a different story.
I just wanted to elaborate on my Mecca, Medina and reformer groups.
Senator Day: That's a good image for us to keep in mind. I made a little sketch, as you were talking, of little umbrellas with the names. I thank you for that.
My other question would be a bit of a personal one. I was wondering if you could share with us your journey from being a young Muslim looking and searching for meaning in life that led you to become an atheist. Could you tell us if it was geographical? Were you influenced by some people? What happened?
Ms. Hirsi Ali: Thank you for that question.
I think the part of my personal journey that is relevant to the problem we are facing today is the fact that I started out as a Mecca Muslim. I was raised by two women, my mother and my grandmother. Neither of them could read or write, so they couldn't read or write what was in the Quran, let alone the Hadith. They were not theologians. But both of them were incredibly loyal to what they thought was in the Quran or the Hadith. They instilled into me that I must at all times obey what is in the Quran. In fact, we used to lift the Quran and put it on a higher surface and kiss it. As a child, I wasn't allowed to touch it unless I washed my hands and I looked suitable for the part. We were taught to respect it.
Now, I grew up in a political family. My father was fighting Mohamed Siad Barre, the first dictator of Somalia. He was very political, but his politics did not involve religion in the least. This was late 1970s, early 1980s. It is not that we practised a different Islam; it was just that people prayed, fasted and supplicated, and that was what led me to describe them as Mecca Muslims. You believed in one God and you believed that you were united under that. Somalia is a country that's divided into clan systems. So every time people were seeking unity, they would appeal to religion to say, "Let's overcome our clan differences; we're all equal before God."
I was born in Somalia. We lived in Saudi Arabia, moved to Ethiopia, and now, at age 10, I'm in Kenya, a country where I first learned English. Five years into my stay there, this young woman enters my class and is teaching the Islamic religious education class — IRE class — and she was different than anything I had ever seen. I think she would be the first Medina individual I encountered. She was covered from head to toe. She has us, who volunteered to come to the IRE class because it wasn't mandatory, to say, "Are you really Muslims?" We giggled and said, "What do you mean by that because you don't go to the IRE class if you are not a Muslim?" She said: "But what is it about you that tells me you're a Muslim?" In other words, as girls, we were not covered. We neglected to pray, and we had Christian classmates as friends. In fact, we were also cozy with the girls who were not practising as much.
By the end of two years, she has us all covered from head to toe. We are denouncing our Christian friends. We are much more observant. We are praying that may Allah destroy the Jews. We have become aware that Islam is under siege, that we have enemies, and the bigger enemy is the Jews — she didn't even mention Israel. It was just the Jews, and then it was the Americans. And she has us commanding right and forbidding wrong. We're telling those other Muslim girls in school who are not observant to be observant, and we are trying to convert the Christian girls to come to Islam.
When I look back, in hindsight, I'm amazed at how effective that was. We have Muslim scholars in the neighbourhood doing the same. First of all, for me, by the time my father came back in 1992, I had lived in Kenya for 11 years, with a short break when we went to Somalia. When he comes back and decides that it's time for me to marry and he forces me to marry someone I don't like, by then radical Islam has lost its shine for me.
I witnessed Somalia's civil war, and of course I was asking the questions that still circle in my head: If we are so united and if Islam is the answer to all questions, what is happening? Why are my relatives dying? Why are they killing one another? Why are we completely and utterly incapable of cooperating with one other on something as small as surviving 100 kilometres from here, let alone establish nations?
In any case, by the time I got to the Netherlands, my head was reeling with these questions. I took political science at Leiden University, and I have learned to think critically.
One of your senators earlier on asked me: What is the strategy? I think one of the strategies would be for young people who come to Canada, young people who are in the Muslim immigrant community, to learn as early on as possible to think critically, because when these wolves in sheep's clothing come to you and try to convert you to jihad and sharia, you should be inoculated with that by simply asking the right questions. If sharia is a better answer, why is Saudi Arabia the way it is? Why is Iran the way it is? What about Boko Haram? What about the Islamic State? Why do they kill? What about the subjugation of women?
By the time you are confronted with a sister, Aziza, or a man who fasts 100 years, when the indoctrinators, or as I call them, the teachers-preachers, come into your reality, you should be able to ask the right questions. You should be able to have a network of adults you can talk to, confide in and say, "This person has come into my life and he is making us go in this direction. What shall we say?" That is the answer.
The answer is not moral enforcement; it's not more drones; it's not more violence. The answer is to teach young hearts and minds, especially Muslim ones, how to ask questions and not be satisfied with lazy answers.
Senator Day: Thank you very much. That was very helpful.
The Chair: Ms. Hirsi Ali, we're coming to the end of our time. I want to thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule, and I hope one day we, as a committee, can meet you in person. We admire your courage. As far as our Senate committee is concerned, the ability to have people such as you come into a public forum to tell your story and give some very constructive recommendations of what should be done going forward is very important.
To conclude, we know that this will be an ongoing question for us in Canada for many years to come, and this is just the start of the public conversation that's going to be required.
Once again, Ms. Hirsi Ali, thank you very much. I hope we will speak again.
Ms. Hirsi Ali: Senator, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. I'm honoured. I am glad I was of service.
(The committee continued in camera.)