August 22, 2014: A 28 year old Canadian (Mohamed Hersi) was recently sentenced to ten years in prison for trying to go to Somalia and join Islamic terrorist group al Shabaab. This was the first conviction under a 2013 change in the law that provides harsher punishments for those who seek to participate in foreign wars, especially when that involves joining a terrorist group. The objective of the new law was to discourage others from going off join terrorist groups. Such “terror tourists” are increasingly common in the West, especially among Moslems who have received asylum in the West after escaping Islamic terrorists in their homeland. Typically it is the children of those refugees, or those who were young children when they fled to the West. In the Hersi case the wannabe Islamic terrorist was taken from Somalia by his parents when he was only four years old. Hersi was raised in Canada and got a college education there. Yet even as an adult he accepted the idea that as a Moslem he had to go make war to defend Islam. Most

Canadians are fed up with this sort of thing. Canada spends a lot of time, money and effort to absorb refugees from these disaster areas and now finds that some of these refugees turn into Islamic terrorists and eventually threaten Canada. Worse, this is not an isolated event but a growing trend. The new law is meant to give potential Islamic terrorists something to think about and a taste of the reality of consequences for bad behavior.

Hersi’s defense was that he was just mouthing off. This is something that many young Moslem males in the West do, but a growing number of these potential terrorists do become Islamic terrorists overseas and return to their adopted homelands with murder and mayhem in mind. For a long time this seemed inconceivable to many Western governments. But with thousands of such terror tourists already confirmed and a growing number of them surviving and returning home with evil intent more Western nations are enacting laws against participating in foreign wars, or enforcing existing laws against the practice.

It has also become clear, to anyone paying attention, that al Qaeda existed mainly because so many Moslems believed that the non-Moslem nations, especially the West, were out to get them. If you stood back and looked at the situations in Moslem countries with non-Moslem minorities it became clear that it was the Moslems who were tormenting and attacking non-Moslems, not the other way around. But one thing Moslem radicals had become adept at was playing Western media. First, there was the use of a few attacks to terrorize most Westerners. Second, Moslems persuaded a lot of Western journalists and politicians to believe that the Moslem world was under attack, even though the facts on the ground showed just the opposite.

What no one on either side wanted to admit was that Islam was unique among major world religions in that it was always aggressive in gaining ground and converts, and those periods (centuries ago) of great conquests are still fondly remembered. Moslems believe that it is their right, and duty, to rule the world and that anyone getting in their way is culturally insensitive. Unless or until this attitude changes to something less aggressive and absolute, there will always be young (and usually dumb) Moslems willing to kill for the cause. Better educated Moslems tend to avoid terrorism. But there is still that cultural emphasis on entitlement and persecution, and the use of terror and mass murder to solve the problem. Even Moslems who migrated to the West admit, in opinion polls, that many approve of Islamic terrorism. Not all of these Moslems approve, but even in the West a few percent do. Back home, the percentage of terrorism supporters is much higher.