Faisal Kutty.com » RCMP, Muslims build bridges, break barriers – Six-week program rare opportunity for community to ask who defines terrorist group, freedom fighter

RCMP, Muslims build bridges, break barriers – Six-week program rare opportunity for community to ask who defines terrorist group, freedom fighter

Submitted by Editor on December 7, 2009 – 5:13 amNo Comment

They sat through more than 12 hours of lectures. They learned how the Mounties got their name, the perils of cyberspace and the extent of Canada’s underground drug trade.

But for the dozen or so people in the basement of Anatolia mosque in Mississauga, the six-week long Citizen’s Academy course comes down to this – a friendly neighbourhood visit from your local CSIS agent and national security RCMP officer.

If there is any purpose to the Mounties’ novel community outreach program, aimed at giving the RCMP and Muslim community a way to build bridges, this is it. The two-hour heart-to-heart in which the community gets a chance to vent and officials try to explain, or more often, defend the actions that have made them so mistrusted within the community.

During the past few weeks, the crowd has whittled down from 20 or so to an intimate group of 12. On this night, the intimacy is advantageous. There are more questions than there is time. After a short introduction by Konrad Shourie, an RCMP officer and member of the national security enforcement team, hands immediately go up.

“How do you define a terrorist group, a political party or a freedom fighter? Who decides this?” one person asks.

The nature of the questions tends to reflect the political climate and headlines, says Shourie. At academies staged earlier, he took questions on the Toronto-18 list of alleged would-be terrorists, the no-fly list, and the security certificate. This night, the questions are more general.

“Once you collect information on a person, how do you verify it?,” asks Mahamed Khan, a Mississauga-based real estate agent who joined the course so he could understand the world from the “other” perspective. “How can you be sure it’s correct?”

Shourie takes on many of the difficult questions and is forthcoming with answers. Despite those efforts, some in the class clearly are not convinced by the relationship-building exercise.

“There are wars being waged (in) Muslim countries and all of it has to do with politics. How can we work together, when the system itself is against Muslims?” another asks.

Some questions Shourie doesn’t even attempt to answer.

. . . Click Here to read the complete article .

Tags: Citizen's Academy Course, CSIS, Konrad Shourie, Mississauga, Muslim Community, Muslims, RCMP, Toronto 18