Two shootings, one at the Canadian National War Memorial and the other at the Centre Block Parliament Building, shook Ottawa and the public at large early last week.
Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier, was gunned down in the National War Memorial by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian convert to Islam. At this time, Zehaf-Bibeau is believed to be linked with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).
Soon after he breached the Parliament Building’s long and narrow lobby, Zehaf-Bibeau was shot and killed. Responders to the shooting have yet to identify a purpose in Zehaf-Bibeau’s actions.
This comes after news of another ISIS-affiliated shooting in Quebec two days prior.
Though terrorist affiliation has yet to be confirmed, an ISIS media Twitter account recently tweeted a picture of a man holding a rifle, believed to be Zehaf-Bibeau.
Drew Best is a junior in psychology who says “Some people become fanatics and they push away from normal human values to do something that they feel is right.”
So what would prompt such an extreme act? “There has to be some conclusion in his head that this was the right thing to do,” Best says. “He seemed to be passionate about [ISIS] and was able to justify his actions.”
What would prompt Angela Guy-Lee is a sociology instructor at Ferris who discusses conflict theory and isolation in her classes.
“It’s a danger to every society when you have people that feel like they are outsiders,” Guy-Lee says. “If people feel outside of themselves and isolated, often they’ll do things that are horrible.”
Zehaf-Bibeau, it has been reported, was a drug addict and former criminal. His parents, including mother and Canadian immigration worker Susan Bibeau, had lost contact with him long before the shooting.
Canadian officials and the media have done little to sensationalize what has happened. Prime Minister “We are a proud democracy, a welcoming and peaceful nation, and a country of open arms and open hearts,” says Justin Trudeau, member of the Canadian House of Commons.
Arafat • Nov 7, 2014 at 7:00 pm
A beheading in Woolwich, a suicide bomb in Beijing, a blown-up marathon in
Boston, a shooting in the head of a young Pakistani girl seeking education, a
destroyed shopping mall in Nairobi – and so it continues, in the name of Islam,
from south London to Timbuktu. It is time to take stock, especially on the
left, since these things are part of the world’s daily round.
Leave aside the parrot-cry of “Islamophobia” for a moment. I will return to
it. Leave aside, too, the pretences that it is all beyond comprehension.
“Progressives” might ask instead: what do Kabul, Karachi, Kashmir, Kunming and
a Kansas airport have in common? Is it that they all begin with “K”? Yes. But
all of them have been sites of recent Islamist or, in the case of Kansas, of
wannabe-Islamist, attacks; at Wichita Airport planned by a Muslim convert ready
to blow himself up, and others, “in support of al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula”. “We cannot stop lone wolves,” a British counterterrorism expert
told us after Woolwich. Are they “lone”? Of course not.
A gas facility in southern Algeria, a hospital in Yemen, an Egyptian police
convoy in the Sinai – it’s complex all right – a New Year’s party in the
southern Philippines, a railway station in the Caucasus, a bus terminal in
Nigeria’s capital, and on and on, have all been hit by jihadis, with hostages
taken, suicide belts detonated, cars and trucks exploded, and bodies blown to
bits. And Flight MH370? Perhaps. In other places – in Red Square and Times
Square, in Jakarta and New Delhi, in Amman and who-knows-where in Britain – attacks
have been thwarted. But in 2013 some 18 countries got it in the neck (so
to speak) from Islam’s holy warriors….
Arafat • Nov 7, 2014 at 7:00 pm
A beheading in Woolwich, a suicide bomb in Beijing, a blown-up marathon in
Boston, a shooting in the head of a young Pakistani girl seeking education, a
destroyed shopping mall in Nairobi – and so it continues, in the name of Islam,
from south London to Timbuktu. It is time to take stock, especially on the
left, since these things are part of the world’s daily round.
Leave aside the parrot-cry of “Islamophobia” for a moment. I will return to
it. Leave aside, too, the pretences that it is all beyond comprehension.
“Progressives” might ask instead: what do Kabul, Karachi, Kashmir, Kunming and
a Kansas airport have in common? Is it that they all begin with “K”? Yes. But
all of them have been sites of recent Islamist or, in the case of Kansas, of
wannabe-Islamist, attacks; at Wichita Airport planned by a Muslim convert ready
to blow himself up, and others, “in support of al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula”. “We cannot stop lone wolves,” a British counterterrorism expert
told us after Woolwich. Are they “lone”? Of course not.
A gas facility in southern Algeria, a hospital in Yemen, an Egyptian police
convoy in the Sinai – it’s complex all right – a New Year’s party in the
southern Philippines, a railway station in the Caucasus, a bus terminal in
Nigeria’s capital, and on and on, have all been hit by jihadis, with hostages
taken, suicide belts detonated, cars and trucks exploded, and bodies blown to
bits. And Flight MH370? Perhaps. In other places – in Red Square and Times
Square, in Jakarta and New Delhi, in Amman and who-knows-where in Britain – attacks
have been thwarted. But in 2013 some 18 countries got it in the neck (so
to speak) from Islam’s holy warriors….