Since August 2014, the Islamic State has released several videos allegedly showing the murders of British and American citizens at the hands of a masked man who came to be known as “Jihadi John.” Recently, the identity of the executioner, thought to have been known to intelligence services for some time, was publicly revealed as Kuwait-born Mohammed Emwazi of Britain, born in 1988.
The revelation of Emwazi’s true identity alters our perception of him. In addition to being a murderer, he now also has a degree in computer programming. Instead of being a mysterious masked figure holding a knife, his name will now forever conjure the image of an ordinary young man wearing an awkwardly-fitting Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap. There’s no longer anything extraordinary or even frightening about him other than the tragic choices he has made since travelling to Syria in 2013.
This revelation should teach us something about the nature of alienation and radicalization.
Emwazi is said to have resented the British MI5 for making him feel like a “prisoner” in London, for detaining him several times without grounds for charging him, and for having prevented him from moving back to Kuwait to pursue a job and a marriage.
Emwazi is not alone in his frustration. Six young people from Quebec were recently reported to have secretly fled to Syria, adding to the thousands of young Muslims from around the world who have gone to join the Islamic State. One of the girls in question cited her frustration with the Quebec government’s 2013 proposal to ban religious symbols from the public sector, and with last summer’s “genocide” in Gaza by Israeli forces.
Terrorists have had similar motivating factors for the last two decades. We voters, and our government, need to do a better job understanding those motivations rather than contributing to them.
Steven Blaney, the minister of public safety, used the exodus of the young Quebecers as an opportunity to promote Bill C-51, the highly controversial anti-terrorism legislation currently being debated in Parliament.
While it’s true that measures must be taken to prevent terrorism in Canada, our intelligence and law enforcement services have so far prevailed with flying colours in the absence of the new legislation the government claims is desperately needed.
It’s no coincidence C-51 was introduced in the wake of the Oct. 22 incident on Parliament Hill, an isolated act carried out by a lone and self-radicalized individual. The level of surveillance that would have been needed to prevent that attack is impractical and most likely unethical. There is certainly a place for surveillance of suspected persons, but a balance must be struck. According to many legal experts Bill C-51 goes too far in its present form.
By increasing surveillance and heavy-handed treatment of suspects we run the high risk of inadvertently driving others to become new Jihadi Johns. The government has long eschewed the use of reasoned sociology in its approach to public safety and counter-terrorism, and the consequences of such a shallow approach continue to compound Canada’s security dilemma.
There are no excuses for Emwazi’s murders, but there are explanations available for the anger that led him to that point. There is also no excuse for our government’s myopic refusal to recognize such explanations and act accordingly.
Let us draw an important lesson from Emwazi’s path to radicalization: the choices that led him there were his own, but his government is not without blame. We must learn from those mistakes.
