The news that a prominent member of Toronto's Muslim community was a police informant in a bomb-plot conspiracy case has provoked surprise and some debate among activists and community figures.

In an exclusive interview with Linden McIntyre of CBC's The Fifth Estate, 29-year-old Mubin Shaikh said he had approached the authorities and offered to become an informer. He said he had infiltrated the group of 17 suspects arrested last month and accused of plotting bomb attacks across southern Ontario.

Mubin Shaikh spoke exclusively to Linden McIntyre of CBC's The Fifth Estate.
(CBC)

At Friday prayers in Toronto mosques and at the offices of Islamic organizations, there were mixed opinions about Shaikh's actions.

Zain Khan of the Islamic Foundation of Toronto spoke approvingly to CBC News about Shaikh becoming an informant for CSIS and for the RCMP.

"We would always support the government of Canada and work with the government of Canada. We're not talking about for money, but voluntarily in terms of apprehending, reporting issues that would be against the safety of any Canadian," Khan said.

But Tarek Fatah of the Canadian Muslim Congress expressed some unease with Shaikh's position on religious issues within the community. Shaikh describes himself as a very observant Muslim and until now he was best known as a proponent of the now-failed proposal to make Islamic Sharia law part of the family code in Ontario.

"He [Shaikh] could have been trying to put a stop to the plot," Fatah said. "But the idea that gave rise to the plot are still there and they came from him. So even today if he's against those people doing anything physically, he still believes in the destruction of the modern nation state as an institution."

Controversial cleric Aly Hindy of the Salahuddin Islamic Centre said Shaikh had done his own community a disservice by his work as an informant.

"Those young people, they need guidance and instead of guiding them, he is actually inciting them. After that, [he is] causing them to be arrested," Hindy said.

Lawyers defending the 12 men and five youths charged in connection with the alleged conspiracy have also been discussing Shaikh's revelations about how he came to be an informant, and the impact of the news on their clients' cases.

Lawyer Rocco Galati, who represents suspect Ahmed Ghany, says the presence of informants in the prosecution's case shows that police didn't have any evidence against the alleged plotters, so they relied on an informant "to set everything up."

Talks about his past

Meanwhile, more details have emerged about Shaikh's background and how he became a very devout Muslim after a period of drug use and dissolute behaviour in his youth.

Speaking to McIntyre, he said his parents raised him to be a Muslim but he found there wasn't time to pray at the mosque with so many distractions, "girls...clubs...drugs I've done it all."

Then he became interested in comparing the world's religions and came back to Islam in the end. 

"It was Islam that stood out," he said, "that met the criteria and could not be dislodged as the others could."

He said he went to India and Pakistan for religious studies, and when he returned he found himself as a community leader for Muslim youth in Toronto. Previously, his drug use and permissive behaviour had led the devout to shun him.

"The instruction to the youth of the community regarding me was...'Don't hang around with that guy.' And they were right. But after I got religious, and they saw the change, then they said, 'See that guy...make sure you hang around with him more.'"

With files from the Canadian Press