CANADA: Muslim students can’t seem to understand why Canadian Spy Agency has singled them out for enhanced surveillance and questioning

Members of many Muslim Brotherhood-linked students’ associations across Canada have described disturbing encounters with CSIS and the RCMP in recent years.

Vice A member of the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) at the University of Regina said a friend told him to avoid the club, as it was common for members to be contacted by the national spy agency.

The student, who wishes to remain anonymous, dismissed his friend as paranoid—until the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) called him over the summer, asking to meet up at a coffee shop to chat. The agent wouldn’t tell him why, he said, and when he declined, the agent became frustrated and hung up.

“I was like, what if I say something, or rub him the wrong way? Would that have a detrimental effect on me for the future?” the student wondered. “Getting a call from Canada’s spy agency, that’s not something you take lightly,” he said.

The coffee shop invitation is a common tactic used by CSIS, according to Leila Nasr, the communications coordinator for the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), to get information out of young Muslims on their friends or other MSA members they suspect might be radicalized.

Muslim students are targeted by national law enforcement “all the time,” Nasr said. In the last four years the NCCM has dealt with cases at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, York University, Dalhousie University and Carleton University.

As The Varsity originally reported, CSIS and the RCMP have been dropping by the U of T Muslim Students’ Association without warning for the past three years—sometimes to executives’ homes.

CSIS said it emphasizes that discussions are voluntary and ensures their approach is “lawful, ethical, necessary, and proportionate.” Any CSIS investigation into an academic or religious institution “is subject to additional safeguards and requirements including review by the Security Intelligence Review Committee,” the agency said.

Some of the questions they are asked include: “W what are your thoughts on Sharia law, and what do you think about Abu Omar al-Baghdadi,” (ISIS leader) he said. “It was … obviously odd, and not sincere.”

U of S MSA Secretary Iqra Khan said it’s unfortunate how often police target Muslim students when Muslims themselves are often targets of violence in Saskatchewan.(Yeah, yeah, always the victim) “Muslims are scared too in Saskatoon, in our community. They’re coming after students when they should really be asking us how they can make us feel safer,” she said. (No, it’s Canadians who need protection from Muslims)

MSAs are “sanctuaries” for Muslim students who face so-called Islamophobia every day, said Dr. Ayesha Chaudhry, an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of British Columbia—and disrupting them can easily backfire for law enforcement, leading to “precisely the kind of feelings of alienation that might lead to radicalization.”

The effects of discrimination and surveillance can eventually transform how marginalized people view themselves, according to Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, a researcher on immigration and race at McMaster University who has interviewed dozens of Muslims, many of whom are students. (DING DING DING! Here it comes: “Canadian security practices inspire Islamic terrorism)

If law enforcement wanted to engage effectively with Muslim communities, Chaudhry said, they could start by engaging more with white supremacist organizations. (Deflect much? Must be those White Nationalists who are behind Islamic terror attacks in Canada).

“The onus is on the agencies to prove to us that they’re trustworthy. And the kind of behaviour that they’re engaging in does not create trust for me,”said Chaudry.

CBN Canada is today the happy home of thousands of radical Islamists, ex-ISIS fighters and the Muslim Brotherhood. Their numbers continue to grow, with Islamists infiltrating the Canadian government on several levels.   

Many Americans assume that all is peaceful and well with their northern neighbor. But security experts here warn that by welcoming radical Islamists, Canada now presents a danger to the United States.

Terrorism expert David Harris, who worked for Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told us a major attack on the United States by Muslim extremists based in Canada is “only a matter of time.” “Many years ago I suggested that many of the Islamist extremists might regard Canada as an aircraft carrier from which to maintain operations against the United States,” Harris said.

“[Prime Minister Trudeau’s] actually said in our Parliament that if you are opposed to ISIS fighters returning to Canada it is because you’re Islamophobic,” Quiggin said. “In other words, it’s not them that’s the issue. It’s your opposing their return that makes you Islamophobic. It makes you racist.”