Police secure the courthouse in Brampton, Ontario where the Toronto 18
are accused of being terrorists.
On the evening of June 2, 2006, southern Ontario came face-to-face with
the news that is was the target of home-grown terrorism.
Eventually, eighteen Muslim men and youths would stand accused of belonging
to a terrorist group, plotting
terrorist acts, including plans to blow up buildings in downtown Toronto,
storming Parliament Hill and murdering politicians. The common thread among
the accused is that they grew up in middle-class suburbia and are Muslim.
Whether the plot was an exercise in juvenile fantasy or a genuine jihadi
enterprise, the courts will ultimately decide. But, the case has already
revealed aspects of an alarming modern phenomenon: a merging of youthful
idealism and advanced technology with extremist ideology that has transplanted
a global security crisis into the quiet streets of North America.
Mubin Shaikh, police informant, explains why western Muslim youth would plan
terrorist attacks in their own countries.
Mubin Shaikh: Police informant
Among The Believers takes you inside the alleged Toronto terror
cell with CSIS mole and police informant Mubin Shaikh.
In an exclusive interview with
the fifth estate's Linden
MacIntyre, he explains his own unique
stance on this phenomenon of self-radicalized Muslim youth and reveals
how he infiltrated the group and discovered it's inner workings on
behalf of Canadian authorities.
The fifth estate undertakes the analysis of why young Muslims
living in western, democratic societies would plot to commit murder in their
own backyards whether in the suburbs of Toronto or Atlanta, Georgia or The
Netherlands. Among the Believers explores the phenomenon
of self-radicalizing violent extremism growing among young Muslims around
the world.
The Atlanta Connection
In Atlanta, we meet the quintessential suburban and moderate family whose
son is connected with the Toronto 18. In the end, the Toronto terror plot
came to nothing, in large part because of help from inside the Muslim community.
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