Natasha Fa­tah

The thing about ter­ror­ist at­tacks is that they can con­tin­ue to rip­ple and cause dam­age months af­ter hav­ing oc­curred.

Cana­di­ans were re­mind­ed of that painful les­son again this week when we learned that yet an­oth­er young Cana­di­an man had died fight­ing for the Is­lam­ic ji­had in the Mid­dle East. In the past decade, hun­dreds of young men, born and raised in the West, mid­dle class, ed­u­cat­ed, with all the op­por­tu­ni­ty in the world, have de­cid­ed to ded­i­cate their abil­i­ties to­wards hate and death–turn­ing their ef­forts to­wards the glob­al Is­lamist ji­had.

Back in No­vem­ber, a ji­hadist named Abu Ab­dul­lah Al Kho­rasani par­tic­i­pat­ed in a dou­ble sui­cide bomb­ing in Iraq. He died, and took 46 oth­er peo­ple along with him. For this act, he be­lieved he was do­ing God's will and would be re­ward­ed in heav­en.But it turns out, Abu Ab­dul­lah Al Kho­rasani was ac­tu­al­ly Salman Ashrafi, a Cana­di­an raised in Cal­gary–a city known for cow­boys and stam­pedes. He went to uni­ver­si­ty, and held high pay­ing an­a­lyst jobs at pres­ti­gious cor­po­rate firms in the city.

He shared an apart­ment with three Mus­lim friends, at least one of them con­verts. It would lat­er turn out that one his friends would al­so join the ji­had and die in Syr­ia. But Ashrafi gave up every­thing life had to of­fer and chose death. And he gave his life and death to a ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Is­lam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (Isis).

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers