While certain voices in America spent the last week calling for restricting immigration for Muslims or even their deaths, Canadian authorities working in concert with American authorities uncovered a terrorist plot with the help of the local Muslim community in Toronto.
via ThinkProgress
News broke on Monday that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials — had foiled a plot targeting a railway between Toronto and New York. According to the RCMP, there was never an imminent danger from the plot, but the alleged perpetrators did have the desire and ability to follow through with their plans, which would target a passenger line between the two cities.
That plot, however, was only discovered thanks to a timely intervention from an imam based in Toronto. Worried that one of the suspects, Raed Jaser, was promoting extremist propaganda in his community, the imam — who remains anonymous — sounded an alarm with the Canadian Canadian Security Intelligence Service and RCMP over a year ago.
No, I don’t expect anyone who called for the death of all Muslims will repent because of this, but the rest of us can give thanks to a community that, if we’re being honest, has little reason to help us given the virulence of Islamophobia in America.
Several people were assaulted over the last week after local residents were enraged by bogus media reports that the primary suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was a Saudi man.
The rantings of the Right do not help anyone. If anything, they may make it less likely that those with information will come forward.