RADICALIZATION OF WESTERN YOUTH

Rob Farrow
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read

These days when we hear of our youth being ‘radicalized’ we automatically think of muslim fundamentalists and jihadis. However 100 years ago my father’s family began a process of radicalization that culminated with him leaving home, and working in the Yukon in the 1930s so he could afford to go to university — against their wishes.

In Canada the opposition conservatives recently elected Andrew Scheer — a self-described ‘so-con’ (aka ‘social conservative’). Mr. Scheer’s predecessor — Stephen Harper — also a self-described ‘social conservative’, tried to win the last election by vilifying the muslim faith and the wearing of hijabs. Thankfully Canadians rejected Mr. Harper’s brand of conservatism at the polls.

A few weeks ago it was announced that a 30 year old Omar Khadr was to be paid a $10.5 million dollar settlement for the role that Canadian security agencies played in his torture and illegal incarceration at Guantanamo Bay in the US.

Andrew Scheer took this story up as his first big attack on Trudeau’s liberals. At first blush the optics were bad: ‘convicted terrorist gets $10.5 million in taxpayer money for killing US soldier’. It is easy to see how this would resonate with Scheer’s social conservative base.

Mr. Khadr was a 14-year old who was radicalized by his father and taken to Afghanistan to fight. At 15 years of age he was involved in a fire fight in which he allegedly killed an American soldier and wounded another. I say ‘allegedly’ since Mr. Khadr’s confession was obtained under torture.

However, even if he was responsible for the death of the US soldier, he was at the time merely 15 years old and a combatant. Since when has it been appropriate to incarcerate and torture combatants who were captured in battle? When the Nazis and Japanese did that during the second world war, those actions were called ‘war crimes’.

It is time that we stripped away the veneer of ‘political correctness’ that Canadian ‘so-cons’ hide behind. Their ideology smells an awful lot like fascism.

Recently an article in La Civilta Cattolica laid out a scathing critique of American ‘evangelical fundamentalism’:

The article contained a photograph of evangelical leaders ‘laying hands’ on US President Donald Trump. The picture made me cringe.

While all of us decry the radicalization of young muslims by jihadists, old stock Canadian so-cons, and evangelical fundamentalists in the US are doing precisely the same thing to impressionable young Christians.

While my grandmother died believing that she, and other members of her congregation would be the only ones ‘raptured up’ to meet with God on death, my father’s younger brothers and sisters followed his example and left that nonsense behind. My uncle eventually taught agriculture at Northern Lights College and my mother earned a Masters Degree at McGill while she was in her forties.

If you have the chance, listen to the words of a surprisingly well-spoken 30 year old Omar Khadr. Perhaps his can be the voice of reason that young muslims need to hear.

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