Are you afraid?  Are you very, very afraid?  Or is this something to do about nothing.  Last week’s terror arrests have sent shockwaves throughout the Greater Toronto Area.  For the rest of us, it was a reminder of what may lurk within.

Those 12 accused were charged with a series of offences ranging from conspiracy to carry out a terrorist activity, bomb making and importing and illegally importing guns and ammunition.  There were also charges with regarding to training for terror purposes.  What was shocking to many was that this is a “homegrown affair”.  All 12 charged were Canadians.

I first learned of it by looking at an email from my East West sidekick, Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque.  It simply said, “Fertilizer bombs”, what’s up with that?  I didn’t have a clue what he meant.  Flipping on the TV, I soon found out the fertilizer referred to Ammonium Nitrate, something I’ve used many times.

I use it to make my wheat grow.  In fact Ammonium Nitrate has fallen out of vogue even for doing that.  After the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, many agricultural suppliers at the distributor level stopped selling Ammonium Nitrate on liability fears.  Many local farmers switched their nitrogen source over to urea or calcium ammonium nitrate.  One is cheaper and one isn’t.  However, both sources don’t explode.

So when I heard the 12 accused had sourced 3 metric tones of the ammonium nitrate I wasn’t very surprised.  When I heard it was in bags I was quite surprised.  When I learned the RCMP might have sourced this material, I thought there must be a lot more to the story.

The 12 adults are Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Qayyum Abdul Jamal. Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Jahmaal James, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid.  There are also five young offenders accused. (Source: Globe and Mail)

That fact alone is very troubling for the Canadian Muslim community.  Why are the 12 accused only Muslim?  For whatever reason this is an issue for the Canadian Muslim community.  Within that community they need to come to grips with that.

I have many friends within the Muslim Canadian community.  To a person they make great contributions to Canadian society.  “Terrorism” or the violence, which is associated with it, has nothing in common with them.  That’s the tragic part.  Our greater Canadian society will tend to paint everybody with the same brush.  They need to listen to the many Canadian Muslim leaders who have condemned any of scent of “terrorism” within their community.

Still, are you afraid?  Is it at least a little bit unnerving?  Myself I don’t feel so nervous.  I work in a very rural environment and typically don’t see anybody during my workday.  However, working in a big urban area, I think I would find this very unnerving.  In Canada, this is not supposed to happen.  The last time anything was on the radar like this was the FLQ crisis in 1971.

The bottom line is regardless of whether I feel safe or not, is our government doing the right things to head off any of these bizarre terrorist threats?  The answer is clearly yes.  This latest episode should serve as a shining example of what security agencies funded through government can do.

Of course you can make the counter argument.  Right at this time, all of this is still just a theory.  We still don’t know all the details of what the defendants are accused of.  In this society we are all innocent until proven guilty.  There is no law in this society about using Ammonium Nitrate.  There is no law about gathering in the woods to do whatever.  Let’s just hope the authorities have this one right.  It just shows how difficult fighting terrorism must be.  For the most part you are wrestling shadows.

Earlier this year, I lectured at the University of Windsor on the topic of Terrorism, Politics and Poverty.  It was a great evening but the meat of the issue was all spent on “terrorism” overseas.  I brought up the FLQ terrorism of the 1960’s and 1970’s, but the class really couldn’t imagine it.  Typically Canadian, at least for that night, all the bad stuff happened far overseas.

However, the events of last week should shatter that paradigm.  As the weeks go on we should learn more about what was planned and why.  The challenge for government is to work to keep us safe.  The challenge for individual Canadians is to take stock.  Being afraid in Canada shouldn’t be part of anybody’s thought process.