Blatchford: Maybe he really is a moderate Muslim — that’s the scary thing

There are two possibilities that naturally emerge from the sentencing hearing for Mohamed Hersi, the first Canadian to be convicted for attempting to participate in terrorist activity abroad, in his case in his native Somalia, and for counselling someone else to do it too.

The hearing was held Wednesday before Ontario Superior Court Judge Deena Baltman, who reserved her decision until July 24.

The first possibility was raised by Hersi’s lawyer, Paul Slansky, the character letters he submitted on his client’s behalf and to some degree by Hersi’s testimony in his own defence at trial.

This scenario has him as a peaceable blowhard who had been, as Hersi put it once on the witness stand, talking “out of my ass” when he told an undercover police agent that he was going to join the Al-Shabab terror group and who simply couldn’t have hidden his purported fanatical character from family and friends.

As Slansky told the judge, “You can’t hide that (extremist ideology)” from those who have known you so intimately for so long.

Really? He must imagine Judge Deena Baltman was born yesterday.

Exactly this is the familiar, familial cry of many criminal cases, a recent example coming in the stories of the alleged Moncton, N.B., RCMP shooter Justin Bourque, who was always described in the days afterwards as the proud product of a close and loving Christian family.

Another classic example is the convicted killer, rapist and underwear thief Russell Williams, the former air force colonel who for years was considered, by wife and colleagues and all who knew him, as a pillar of all that was good and shining.

Truth is, there’s barely a criminal worth his salt about whom relatives say afterwards, “Indeed, I knew he would one day murder the innocent.”

But the second possibility, and the one that raises a more ominous spectre, is this: What if Hersi really is just the regular, middle-of-the-road Muslim his family and friends say to this very day that he is?

The 28-year-old was arrested on March 29, 2011, at Toronto’s Pearson Airport. He was about to board a flight for Cairo — en route, he told the UC (the undercover agent he considered a fellow traveller), to the Somalian motherland to join the notorious Al-Shabab.

Of the 18 letters Slansky submitted on Hersi’s behalf — most from relatives, and, of those that are dated, all dated after his conviction last month — “They all universally say he was not an extremist.

“It is not necessary to be extremist to want to join Al-Shabab,” the lawyer said, adding, “Terrorist activities are just one of its (Al-Shabab’s) objectives.”

(As an aside, surely joining Al-Shabab for something other than terrorist purposes would be akin to joining a bowling league not to bowl. But I digress.)

Hersi’s mother said her son “would never be a Muslim extremist because he knew that was not the morals he was raised upon … .” A brother said confidently, “Mohamed is considered a moderate Muslim.” A sister said he enjoyed many of the things extremists forbid, such as “interaction with the opposite gender.” An uncle wrote that Hersi was “distraught that he was labelled as a terrorist.” Yet another cited his “respect for his Canadian upbringing.” Etc., etc.

But in the excerpts of wiretap recordings that were played for the jurors, though the focus was on Hersi’s interest in Al-Shabab, he also talked at length about his unhappiness with Canada and his longing to live as a real Muslim.

“But you know I … long-term I wanna live in the Muslim land and never come back, right?” he told the UC once. “I wanna live in a Muslim country where I can be … practise my religion and be a good person right?”

His scorn for non-Muslims was evident.

“But talking to a non-Muslim about morality and shit, they don’t even know what morality is, Christians. You know what I mean?” he said. “Talk to a Christian about morality and they believe Jesus died for all their sins, oh man. That’s (lunacy) right there,” he said.

In that same conversation, he said flatly, “I realize this country has no future for me in it.” In another, he recalled warmly the month he spent in Saudi Arabia, and how “the life is very peaceful, I felt very at home, my heart was content, you know?”

On one occasion, he told the agent, “Living in Somalia today is much better than living in Toronto ’cause when you live in a place where there’s Islamic law, there’s harmony, there’s no more raping or murder.

“In Toronto, there is rape and murder happening right now, every day, every minute… .”

Once, he talked to the agent about a Tunisian girl he’d read about online who was critical of the hijab.

“See how secular her mind is,” he said. “She’s against the hijab, this is something that’s from Islam, right?

“She’s against it, you know. Allah tells the believing woman to cover up, right? And she’s against it ’cause she does … she lost her religion altogether, right. Very tyrannical.”

In other excerpts, Hersi talked admiringly about some of the sermons he’d heard at his mosque and how the imam there liked to slip in things he believed might pique the attention of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. As he put it once, though Canadians want mosques to talk faith and faith only, “politics is a part of Islam, right?”

Hersi came to Canada as a refugee when his mother fled the civil war there. Though raised in public housing, he managed to get a degree from the University of Toronto.

As prosecutor Jim Clark said, arguing that Hersi should receive the maximum five-year sentence for both offences for a total of 10 years, and that he should serve half before being eligible for parole, “What we have in Mr. Hersi is a smart, educated guy who knew full well what Al-Shabab was all about …”

Even if Mohamed Hersi is that rarest of birds, the man who really did want to join a bowling league precisely so he could not bowl, it’s a shattering prospect that he might also be what those who love him claim — a typical, middle-of-the-road Muslim.