The Jordan Harbinger Show - 261: Mubin Shaikh | Up Close with an Undercover Jihadi

Episode Date: October 8, 2019

Mubin Shaikh (@MrMubinShaikh) is a former Islamic extremist who became an undercover counter-terrorism operative instrumental in exposing a plot to hold Canada's Parliament hostage and behead the Prime Minister. He is the co-author of Undercover Jihadi: Inside the Toronto 18 -- Al Qaeda Inspired, Homegrown Terrorism in the West. What We Discuss with Mubin Shaikh: What does "radicalization" mean to someone who's experienced it firsthand, and how can it convert a teenaged Canadian metalhead into a true believer of a cause that uses terrorism to accomplish its goals? What did it take for this true believer to change course and start working for his government's counter-terrorist agency? The differences between Sufi and Wahhabi Islam, and what makes the latter a more suitable creed for extremists. Why "terrorism is the atom bomb of the poor man." How Mubin's undercover work exposed a massive terrorist plot, and what the aftermath of this operation looked like. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/261 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to checkout is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant and interesting people

and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Mubin Sheikh is a Canadian intelligence or a CIS agent who infiltrated and successfully foiled a crazy terror plot in Canada where a group known as the Toronto

Anto 18, planned to hold Parliament hostage and behead the Prime Minister. Before foiling Canada's September 11th, he was a bit of a radical himself, even traveling to Syria to do a deep dive into hardline Islam. Today on the show, we'll follow Mubin on his journey from an average Canadian teenager to radical Islamic militant, all the way to undercover counter-terror agent and get a glimpse into the world of online terror recruiting and radical extremism. This is a fascinating trip and something we rarely get to examine up close. and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

By the way, I met Mubene through my network, in fact, a CIA agent introduced us, so that was kind of cool. I would love to teach you how to create and maintain networks like mine. I want to do it for free, because the more people that know this stuff, the better.

I've got a course on how to do this. Six-minute networking is what it's called, and it's free for you at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show actually subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us. You'll be in great company.

All right, here's Mubin Sheik. So the term radicalization is, unfortunately, it's trending. And I want to know what that means from somebody who's kind of been in there, because I feel like it gets thrown around a lot. It's in danger of maybe losing a lot of the meaning that it has. Yeah, that's good to start with, actually. Radicalization is the normal, human psychological process whereby people become increasingly extreme in their views. So it is a process. and the end of that process is that you become an extremist.

You accept that violence or violent acts in the public space are acceptable. And if you act on that, then you're a violent extremist. You could have a process of radicalization which does not end in violence, and then you could have what is called violent radicalization, or you could have gone through a process of violent radicalization, which does end in violence. Yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense. Process whereby people become increasingly extreme in their views.

I can agree with that. I mean, not that I would disagree with your definition anyway, but it does make sense because you see nonviolent and you don't think of radicals as nonviolent. We only kind of really hear about them in the news. But yeah, when I go on not Reddit, but like if I ever look at 4chan or whatever over a French shoulder, if you know what that is, it's like one of those dark white-type places. You see people on there and you're like, oh, this person is a toxic mess or this group of people is horrible and toxic. That I guess is radicalization. They're just not doing anything about it, thankfully. Yeah, and we don't want to make the implication that radicalization equals violent, just like radicals that we know even in our popular culture, you know, Martin Luther King Jr., he was radicalized. He was a radical in that sense. He wasn't violent. And then you'll have others who have crazy ideas and they'll just promote those ideas, but they won't actually act on them. Right. Yeah, that's probably fortunate for a lot of people. That's what we prefer. Yeah. Were you a recruiter for one of these organizations or was that just something that somebody said? No, no, I gave Da'a to, so I gave invitation towards, and that's what we would call recruiting, towards supporting this global jihadi culture, not necessarily a specific group, because that global jihadi culture incorporates within it all the groups, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and so on. Okay. Okay, so you were kind of just like, that was a supporter of that. I support this. Join somebody. Right.

I don't have any particular recommendations. Right. Why didn't you pick one group? Not that I'm criticizing your... I did. I actually did because in 1996, because my radicalization period really ran from 95 to let's say 2001, but I was kind of on my way off that ramp by 1998 after I got married. But in 1996 is when the war in Chechnya kicked off. And that was the spot that I would always think about wanting to go to as a foreign fighter. I did focus on one. And that was Chechnya. but there were other arenas that were being promoted just the same. So you met your wife in like 98 or something like that?

No, I met her in high school in 92. What? Ninety two, 93. So this radicalization thing was like a big parabolic phase in your life. Because your wife is like very, she's Polish, right? And very do not look directly at her because she's so white. Right? Glow in the dark white.

And so in high school, you must have been able to relate to women like that. And then now you're able to relate to women like that. But during this phase where you're like, okay, super Muslim, she wasn't. So it's so weird how it happened because I met her in high school and, you know, we were metalhead. So everyone, like our friend circles crossed. And then in 95, I have this house party. It gets raided by my uncle. And then I go away to India and Pakistan to get super religious.

Then when I come back is when she realizes, wait a second, what made this guy go from this all the way to this? And so that sparked more interest. And then we were just talking, you know, really. Like, we weren't dating. We didn't even like, I didn't even make up with her, man. Yeah. You know, like, we were just kind of hanging out. And then she was wondering, like, why, what is this guy hanging out with me for?

Like, what does he want? Yeah. And I'm like, oh, man, like, how can I get this girl? Like, how can I fit her into my worldview where I'm supposed to be married and she has to be Muslim? Like, how do I do that? So somehow I did. I convinced her or she accepted to marry me. and then, you know, that was 20 years ago.

Wow. Five kids. So something's working. Something's definitely working. Okay. So let's back up a little because I know you went to public high school, but you also went to this like kind of strict Islamic school. So you had two lives as a kid.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, like being, you know, growing up in Canada, obviously you're going to public school. That's the expectation. And by evening in the evening time, so from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. I'll never forget. You went to Koran school. Every day?

Every day. Every day. Seven days a week. Seven days a week? Seven days a week? Yeah. It's horrible. You know, so I mean, they say even God rested on the seventh, not us.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, keep going, man. Keep going. Get some catching up to do. Yeah. So it was two hours a day, seven days a week, and it was a complete contrast to the caring, nurturing environment of public school. This was the hard, austere, stereotypical madrasa, which just, I mean, in Arabic just

means school, but it's connotation. is, you know, this India or Pakistan or Afghanistan, you know, boys, you know, sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth, reading the Quran, not understanding what they're reading. So you're just reading it in Arabic, I guess? And just reading it in Arabic. It's so weird the way they do it because they basically teach you how to read it in transliteration, right? So if I was to, you know, write out English letters to sound out, you know, the Arabic, right?

So like Allah is A-L-L-L-A. Oh, so you're reading like Roman? So we're actually reading Arabic, but we're only being taught how to recite. We're not being taught what it means. So it's road memorization. And that's a big problem across the Muslim world even today. Yeah, we'll get to that in a little bit. We kind of talked about that outside, actually.

So this house party, it sounds like you were more or less a normal teenager. Got some metal, some rock and roll. The devil's music. Yeah, the devil's music. Yeah, I was last year of high school. You know, I had already grown up going to house parties, so I kind of got the hang of it. Yeah. So I just invited everyone over.

And, you know, this is before social media, right? So it's like, it spreads by word. Yeah. And it spreads fast, right? Like, it's not as fast as social media, but still, when you hear there's a house party happening, you go, right? My parents were out of town. I had the house party. It was so rocking.

Yeah. So until. Until that, you know, stereotypical, meany, scowling. Muslim dude who happened to be my father's older brother first through the door like a SWAT team. Like the door flew open, slamming against the wall. And like everybody just like, you know, just the color just drained from their faces in that split second as they also run out. Jet out the side doors. People were literally jumping off the second floor balcony onto the, yeah, it was.

Oh, that's super. Does he wear traditional like? Yeah. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You can imagine the long. What's going on? Dude.

He matches the long white robe, you know, flapping back and forth. And it's like, oh, crap. And he's yelling, obviously, the whole time. Oh, he's losing it. Oh, no. So, okay. Because I have defiled the house, right? Oh, you're not allowed to have.

You know, Kufar, these non-Muslim, these infidel kids were, you know, defiling the place with their very presence. Yeah. And also with the beer bottles and the joints. Yeah, sure. And that didn't help. And so it was a huge crime in his eyes. You must have felt horrible. I mean, I assume that you got it from everybody in the family for the next month and a half or more.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, he got on the phone. He's calling for backup. You know, he's trying to get the other uncles to come by. And I'd be honest, like, there was a stolen car in the garage. No. You know, it was a wild house party, all right? And these guys, man, they just jacked his car and they put it in the garage. And I took off that night because like I was, you know, I did, I panicked. And then, like, I had these guys basically trying to get in touch and saying, yo, dude, like, we got a car in the garage. And so later I learned that they went to the house. My uncles were all there. And the uncles didn't want anything to do with it. So they're just like, take the car and get out. Wow.

They're like, excuse me, we have to get our car. And they're like, no. And they're like, all right, fine. That's exactly what happened. Oh, man. They did say, no, it's a stolen car. They're like, okay, take it up. In that case, get it out of my house.

Do it now. Yeah. Oh, wow. What, okay. So then you'd mention, okay, you decided to get more religious. Because I can see your logic here. It's the guilt trip. The guilt trip really made me feel so bad about what I had done that the only way for me

to salvage this is to, quote unquote, get religious. Yeah, I can totally understand the thought process. Like, okay, if I want them to stop yelling at me, I need to double down on everything they want, which is be super religious and conservative because I'll feel better about myself and they'll get off my case. Right. Like, I completely follow that. Logic.

But I follow that logic. I understand that. I get it. Right. Okay. So what is your first step then? You go study Quran more with your uncles and you're just like, show me the ways. And then dot, dot, dot, what happened?

You end up in a different place. Yeah. So I ended up joining a group, it's like a proselytizing fundamentalist group. They don't try to convert other people. They try to encourage other Muslims to become more observant. Okay. So it's a little different. And they offer this training, if you will, like any, let's call it an immersive.

program where it's for four months, two months in India, two months in Pakistan. And it's even more austere than backpacking because you're literally staying in the mosque, you're cooking your own food, you're just like really living very, very basic. And all you're doing is just self-indectinating in these ways. And it's praying and it's reading Quran. But none of it is actually studious in the sense. Like you're still not learning what the Arabic actually says. So I would have to go to an English translation to kind of understand what I was reading, let's say. So it was less intellectual and more behavioral, like more devotional. Sure, I could, yeah, that makes sense. You're almost programming yourself. You're not learning to like think critically about this

stuff you're reading and ask questions. Just blind following. Yeah, that's, so that's what they consider to be more observant, not to learn it, but to memorize it, basically. To go through the motions, right? To play the part, to look the part. That makes sense. I mean, we see that in other religions too. You know, you see it with that, what's that crazy church where they protest soldiers, funerals and stuff? Oh, yes, yes, yes. The Westboro Baptist. Clearly, those people haven't like looked at a Bible and gone, oh, you know what? This is clearly the interpretation. They're just like, I'm going to memorize whatever our crazy grandpa or whatever, that guy, whoever's the leader of that is saying. So how did you end up starting to get radicalized?

Because there's a difference between memorizing things and going to the worst backpacker, hostile ever in Pakistan with a bunch of other people and then being like, I got to take action in this completely violent and unreasonable way. That's a good distinction to make because, again, most people who do get radicalized don't become violent. And for me, what had happened is now that I am in Pakistan, we were sent to a city called Kuwaita. And for those who do know in the mid-90s, Kuwaita was the stronghold of this newly formed Taliban movement. So, you know, if you remember, 79 to 89, the Soviets were in Afghanistan. They fought it out. The Mujahideen, quote, unquote, they were the good guys at this time. Then there was a five-year civil war after that. And then by 95,

the Taliban have come to power in Afghanistan. So I literally ended up walking into one of their areas. And it was a total chance encounter. It's not like I went and I joined the Taliban in Pakistan. That's not what happened. I went and with this group who happened to be in the same city with the Taliban and then I went around just, you know, walking around like part of our thing is to encourage other Muslims to be more observant. Oh, so you're like looking for somebody smoking a cigarette and or hanging out. Yeah. Yep. And we would say, brother, you know, we've come from Canada and blah, blah, blah. I came from Canada here to Pakistan. Let me teach you something about right, right, right, right. Yeah. Exactly. You know how many people said that to us. They said, why are you

here? We're already Muslim, like, beat it. It's new for you. Yeah. That's not new for me. Right, right. We've been here a while, a little while. Yeah. But of course, there were also these Taliban members were around and I kind of chanced upon them. They were just kind of sitting around there. And the spiel that we would kind of give is, you know, to be successful in this life and the next life, you must follow the commandments of God as shown by the way the prophet. Alayis Salam. And they said, look, one guy said, well, he goes, if you want to be successful in this life and the next, you do it with this. And he picked up the AK-47. And that's kind of badass at that age, right? That was the moment because this Muslim kid who's seeking this new identity, who's kind of, you know, especially this identity of following the pure religious ways of however they perceive it, it all came together for me. This was an identity that I could buy into.

And that's what happened to me is when I realized, yeah, you know what, militancy is the way forward because it's strength. It's strength. And especially me, you know, this young Muslim kid coming from what I thought was a position of. powerlessness, now I belong to something much greater. Now I am more powerful. Yeah, I can understand that. How old were you at this point? 18. 18. So 100% get it. I can totally see myself falling into something like that, especially at that age. Because you lack purpose at that age. And you're kind of being treated as a kid by your parents, maybe society, but you're biologically an adult, but you've got nothing really going on. You're like maybe still in high school. So then it's September

11, 2001, or September 10, 2001. You said that was your last day as an extremist. What happened? Yeah, and I mean, 9-11 happened. It was Tuesday morning. I was driving to work. I heard a plane hit the building. I was like, oh my God, you know, I actually said, Allah-Aqabbar, you know, which, contrary to what people think doesn't mean I'm about to blow myself up, you know, a lot of times it does also mean, oh my God. And then just the events of that day, watching it on TV, everybody kind of sharing in that collective trauma. And then later that day, going to see the bad friends that I was hanging out with because I had left the group that I was initially with and then kind of came back and

joined up with more extreme, more politically vocal, what they call Salafists or Wahhabis. They were just a lot more in tune with the geopolitical situation. And so he just, I remember one friend of mine. And my friend asked, you know, I was like, yeah, but I understand fighting the cause and, you know, in combat. how do you justify flying planes into buildings? These are not combatants. These are not military targets.

And there was a pause, right? And it's never just one moment, okay? But that was a moment that really struck me because, you know, the guy paused, trying to come up with an answer and then ended up saying, well, they're all infidels anyway, so it doesn't matter. And then both of my friend and I,

we turned to each other with that, mm, that don't, that doesn't jive. And so that's when I realized that I didn't know Arabic. I needed to study it properly and formally, and then I would decide to undertake a trip to Syria in 2002 to do just that. Yeah, I can understand this. I mean, your friends and family were already telling you things like extremism is toxic, right? Like, your parents and uncles, even though the guy who probably kicked down the door of your house party

was probably like, whoa, man, calm down. Yeah. So I wonder what he fell. He was probably like, man, this is partly my fault. Well, it's funny because a lot of these people didn't know that I had this change of heart. They didn't. And it's when I started to make known my intention that I'm going to Syria, everybody was like, oh, crap, oh boy, you know, we've heard of this. But it wasn't like that, right? And I mean, and even though when I got there, one of the first things I actually did was

register with the Canadian embassy, right? Just in case something happens. Just in case, right? Which worked out a little bit later. I'm sure we'll get into that. But it ended up working in my favor. anyway. Then the war in Iraq kicked off in 2003, and I watched as the Syrian regime sent students in air-conditioned buses to go and join the fight against Americans. I was invited to go, of course. You know, thank God I didn't go. They just sent over like people studying anthropology or whatever. Not quite anthropology. It was an Islamic university. Definitely Islamic University. I could see there were some really shady people. They're like, quite a few of them did end up going and none of them came back yeah i can imagine that iraq isn't like well we better save these

foreign fighters for later they're like oh you're going to show up here go ahead that's right save our own boys for that's right wave two well kill the americans that was uh as far as the syrians were concerned they didn't care yeah oh yuck you don't hear about too many people going to syria to get de-radicalized though not today no obviously not since 2010 when the civil war began and the atrocities by the asad regime you know are now nobody in their right mind would go there for this sort of stuff. No. But Syria is more with the under aside is mostly secular, right?

Or kind of, not secular, but not. Yeah, I would call it authoritarian secularism. Yeah. Yeah. So they are that, yes, but they're just incredibly authoritarian, which. I heard you mention that you'd said something like, yeah, we're all online complaining about how Canada is turning into a police state. But then you went to Syria and you're like, oh, this is what a police state is really like.

Yeah. Yeah. So what are you talking about when you say that? Yeah, it was really just the disillusionment I felt while I was there in Syria, like studying and being this westerner and really being this kid who was trying to like force this costume onto himself. And I'm referring to myself in the third person. That's five. Yeah, no problem.

But that's basically what happened. You know, they just kind of, it didn't work because I was still in a very idealized state, especially coming out of the West, Canada in particular, where you can wear whatever you want. and you have a right to do that. And if anyone questions, you'd stand them, you'd tell him you're right. But in Syria, it's not like that. You don't do that. And people didn't look like me, right?

Like giant beards were frowned upon, right? The government would actually tell people to come and trim your beard if it was too long. Really? Because they consider that a sign of extremism. But I was a foreigner, so nobody was going to tell me that. In fact, I was told that, but by the Islamic school teacher. Oh, wow. Which really made me like, I thought to myself, how dare he?

You know, this is like the beard, like the prophet had a beard, so I got to have a beard. And it's like, you know, later on people ended up telling me, it's like, well, you know, the prophet also wrote a camel. So where's yours, buddy? Yeah. You know, so. I guess they probably tell you to do that because they don't want to be on the radar of the police either. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, that whole back to that police state concept, you know, everybody is, you know, if they're not passively informing on you, they're actively informing on you.

But I wasn't up to anything nefarious while I was there. And, I mean, that was an open book. And they could see what I was doing. And everything was fine. But of course, I'll never forget walking by the Mukhavarat, which is the secret police. And I just waved to the guy. And he replies to me, w'alikam, Abu Mujahid. Oh, he knew your name.

I was like, what? He knew my name. Wow. Was he just standing outside the building? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was just standing there and he was like, hey, Abu Mujahid. Wow.

I know you. How many? Well, there wasn't, there wasn't. Like, I was living in a little town outside of Damascus, and it was just my wife and I. Okay. And so, yeah, they've never seen people like us. Your wife lived in Syria, too. Oh, yeah.

Oh, I didn't think about that. Oh, yeah. That makes sense, of course. Yeah, we had two kids at the time. Wow. She must have been like, what did I get myself into? She's gung-ho. She's like, because when we got married in 98, we went on this crazy honeymoon trip, like,

we went to Israel slash Palestine and did the Holy Land tour there. and India and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, like Mecca and Medina, like the religious sites. So she's very adventurous and she, you know, she's cool with that. Mecca and Medina must be interesting. I will never experience firsthand, probably, but they look really interesting. Yeah, it's unfortunate. It's so, you know, literalist, I guess literalist readings that people have where, because in the ancient context, it was polytheists who kind of ran that area and then they were basically

taken over, if you will. I mean, the Muslims became powerful and dominant. And so the edict basically was don't let non-Muslims into these holy cities. Now, you know, 1,500 years later, you know, where we have global transportation and you have business people coming there to Jeddah, which is just like 30 minutes from Mecca. I mean, you can get that close, I guess. But they've taken it really literally. And so they don't, they say it like on the highway, it'll say.

say Makkah this way, non-Muslims that way. Yeah, and it's got an arrow. But it's like, I don't know why. I don't know why they need to do that. I think they should open it up to people and just experience it because people want to, right? I would check it out. Yeah, I had a friend invite me to Jedda. I was like, oh, it's really close to, is it Mecca or Medina?

Yeah, to Mecca. Yeah, and I was like, that would be so cool. And he goes, no, you need a special visa. And I go, well, how do I get it? And he goes, well, at first you convert to Islam. And I was like, that sounds like it's going to take a lot longer than waiting in line at the embassy. Maybe we won't do that. Yeah.

with like a certificate, a fake certificate. That sounds like a terrible idea. But you could get in with, you would be able to get in with it. And I'd have to learn. You wouldn't, no, no, I would. I give you that whatever. Yeah. But it's funny.

Some people are like, you know, don't turn it into a, like a tourist haven. Yeah. But it's like, have you seen the Muslims there? It's got to already be a tourist haven't. Have you seen the Muslims there? It's like there's halal KFC like right there. Like, I mean, like, and people flock to it. Wow.

McDonald's, halal burger king. So it's like, you don't want to make it into a tourist. You get like, you know how Starbucks has mugs from different stores? Is there one that says like Mecca and the Starbucks? Oh, no. I haven't seen that. I doubt they'd have that uncovered woman though on the cup. Probably not.

Probably have to like black mark or like. It would be the Starbucks gap, but with like a full niqab. That's right. That's right. Yeah, they could do that. That might not have the same branding effects. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Mubin'ein' Shake. We'll be right back.

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to your podcast player so you don't miss a single thing. And now back to our show with Mubin Shake. All right. So you go to Syria. It's a real police state. How do you then become working with the Canadian CSIS, which is, I guess, the Canadian CIA kind of thing? Well, it's a little bit.

FBI more like, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So basically what happens is I go through a period of de-radicalization while I'm in Syria. I'm introduced to the Sufi sect of Islam or the Sufi understanding of Islam. They're not a sect. It's more like an understanding. You know, the Sufis are like the Jedi's of the Muslim world. And the Wahhabis are like the Sith, all right?

Best analogy. Gotcha. We both draw from the force, but one is dark side of the force. So, you know, I de-radical as while I was there. I realized that my interpretations were wrong. You know, I learned the history properly. I learned the prophetic traditions. Went into the Quran in depth.

and finally became so like almost depressed, you know, that I was in Syria. I was like, man, you know, I just want to go home, you know. And I had this newfound appreciation for the rights that we have in the West, at least in Canada anyway. And I can't really comment on the U.S. situation here. Yeah, yeah. Can't throw stones in this glass house. I finished my two years there.

I basically gave up, you know, in the sense because I had this idea that I was going to stay there for many, many years and not realizing, of course, that, you know, the war that kicked off in 2010, God only knows what would have happened to me and my family. Oh, man. Yeah, I don't want to think about it. I mean, the horrible videos that I saw already coming out online, I just, I couldn't imagine if I was still there. Guaranteed I would have been killed.

Yeah, you would have got... By the regime. I would have been tortured for years and then hopefully he killed. So basically, I come back in 2004 to Canada, and the first week that I'm back, the first Canadian has been arrested on terrorism charges, the post-9-11 terrorism charges. Momin Kowaja was arrested in connection with the 2004 London Fertilizer bomb plot was the plot before the subway bombings. Momin Kowajah sat beside me in that Koran school I went to as a kid.

Oh, wow. In Canada. In Canada. We used to play Hot Wheels cars together. He lived on the 8th floor, apartment 808. I picked up the phone and remember once upon a time they had phone books? Yeah, vaguely. Yeah.

So I basically found the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and I called him up and I said, hey, I know this guy, I know the family. And they're like, oh, you know him. Okay, well, I mean, then someone's going to come and have a chat with you if that's okay. Don't move. Yeah. Yeah. Just where are you going to be in the next hour and a half is what he said.

So basically the intelligence officer came. I told him my whole life story again. And he just basically put to me the prospect of consulting for them in an undercover capacity and basically guiding them as to who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. Wow, that was fast. They must have already checked you. out if they did that. I would hope so.

I mean, I think, though, they did see the value that I brought because I had the ability to access those vulnerable communities or those specific targets that they had in mind. They knew I could get next to those people without any problem. Sure. Because if people did backcheck me, which they did, you know, I remember coming to one place and the guy was like, oh, yeah, yeah, we did a credit check on you. You know, everything checked out. And I talked to myself credit check.

Oh. Oh, that kind of credit. Right. Street credit. Street credit. Yeah, not Equifax or whatever you have up there. Yeah. Wow, that's interesting.

I wonder how they do that. They just go, oh, where'd you study? Oh, that? All right. Who do we know that was there? Who knows this? Yeah, that's right. Mobean guy.

That's right. It's exactly what they did, both from the government side and the bad guy side. For the government, it was, okay, check if this guy registered with the embassy. And I was like, oh, sure enough if he did. How do you know that was what the, how do you know that was? How do you know that was what did it, though? They tell you? They, well, they told me.

Oh, yeah. He told me straight. Basically what he said was your background check would have taken much longer had you not registered with the embassy. Because then what they do is they then asked the local Syrian police to go and find out what was this guy doing, who was he with, what town was he living in? Who was he studying? Sure. So they're cooperating. Like, hey, just make sure this guy, for your sake and hours, this guy's not getting radicalized right now.

That's right. Oh, that's interesting. It worked out for me because I was de-radicalizing, right, at that point. Because it would have been tough for them to call Syria after and be like, do you have any info on this guy? Yeah. Maybe. What do you? What's it to you?

Yeah. Tid for tat. Okay. So you're kind of trying to go under your cover. Actually, you're trying to vouch for your old friend who turns out to actually be a bad guy. Yeah. So what were you like, no, no, he's fine. And like, here's all the evidence.

You're like, never mind. Yeah. Well, and it was more, you know, they were basically saying, look, you know, it's out of our hands his case. because the police lay charges. And the way it works in Canada is the security intelligence component is done by CIS. The federal policing bit is done by the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In the U.S., the FBI does both. Okay, got it.

The CIA does what's called foreign intelligence collection. Canada does not have a foreign collection of intelligence. At all? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. We do piggyback off of allies, five eyes, what's called the Abca Alliance, America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and we do kind of piggyback off of that with liaison officers, but we don't have a dedicated agency to do that.

Like the CIA or even the Australians actually have ASEO, Australian Security Intelligence Organization. You don't have your own spy agency? Dang. I mean, if you can piggyback off the U.S., you don't really need to worry about. It saves some money. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So what do they have you do then? They got an idea for you. Yeah. It's basically get close to these people. and tell us what they're doing. Who are these people, though? So these people are Muslim, Muslim people,

who for whatever reason have come under some kind of suspicion. They're online and they are in the mosque. And my job is to basically become friends with them or find out what's happening with them. And I'm not told anything. If the service has any information on them, I'm not informed of that. And that is to keep me honest, really,

that there's no bias involved, that I just freely report what I'm able to access. So I was really good at my job and I was able to get in with a lot of people and either verified what the service already knew or denied what others had claimed of this person. So for example, it was also getting people off of suspicion. Yeah, sure, because they might be like, you know, I don't like that guy. I kind of want his house. I'm going to tell somebody that he's doing something shady. and he'll get thrown in jail.

Perfect example. There was this imam who was making truckloads of money doing Arabic teaching, Arabic classes online. And other imams who were jealous of him contacted the service and said, this guy's Taliban. Damn, that sucks. And it was like, and when it came to me, I was like, what? I was like, that dude is not Taliban.

No. He's not Taliban. Yeah, that's horrible. And he's like, and then basically they told me, They're like, okay, well, because a couple of imams are saying that he is. And I was like, those imams are jealous of him that he's making that kind of money and they're not. And they've learned this in their countries because in those countries, anonymous phone calls

do qualify as evidence. And that's it. And you'll be disappeared for years. You hear about that. You hear about that in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria? Happens all the time, right? And so thankfully, we live in a society. And I would hope we would want to live in a society in which you need more than that.

more than just anonymous phone calls. And so that's where a person like me comes into place. Yeah, okay. So then they got you on these kids who don't really look all that impressive on paper, right? I've looked at the whole Toronto 18 investigation and like the mastermind dude just looks like he played a lot of Fortnite.

Well, it wasn't Fortnite back then, but he played the equivalent, man, like World of Warcraft or something like that. And this attack plan, well, we'll get into that in a second, but there's like this, the guy sets up a training camp in North Northern Canada, where it looks like kids in snow suits running around with paintball guns and they're freezing, they're sleeping in their car. I mean, what was that all about? Yeah, the Toronto 18 case

in 2006, what ended up happening was it started off with CIS, them telling me, there's a bunch of guys tell us what they're up to. Now, CISIS already knew 11 days before they sent me in that these guys had a training camp, quote unquote, planned. And so I basically became friends with them and they basically started to try to recruit me or they were kind of saying, yeah, brother, don't you believe that, you know, the Canadians are a fair target because of their deployments in Afghanistan and because of what the Americans did in Iraq. And since the Canadians are partners to the Americans, again, their fair game. So this is the general grievance narrative that emerged post-2003, really. I mean, even if you look at the Boston Marathon bombings, the guy literally

wrote it in blood in that boat. This is because of Iraq and Afghanistan. So the Those grievances have played a big part in the things that have happened afterwards, that London subway bombings were a result of that as well, or in retaliation slash response. So in this environment, post-2003, these kinds of groups are popping up all over the world. In Australia, there was a similar group, in the UK, in the, you know, the Nordic countries, and now also in Canada. And this is what a lot of Canadians couldn't understand, that there were people like this, what the heck is radicalization?

We don't know. It was a relatively, still a very, relatively new term. So these guys got involved online. They were fantasizing a lot about this stuff for five years. All they did was online companionship, basically fantasizing about wanting to do something. And then in 2005, they decided that enough talk, it's time for action. And a number of things were set in motion. A guy came from the UK. Two guys came in a Greyhound bus from Atlanta, Georgia, up to Toronto. And three guys who were in Toronto, they all made. met together and they decided we need to escalate. So this became very aspirational. They had this idea

in mind. And that idea was basically commit catastrophic terrorist attacks. Now, a lot of this, them being depicted as these bumbling amateurs, it comes from me because that's what I saw. Yeah. I mean, I'm the older guy. I've been exposed to more serious things. Like you said, these guys were kids. And even I've used that term, I mean, there were technically adults in law, But there were four young offenders in law. Like they were under 18 and they were really kids. Like this, you know, I made this joke about, you know, one kid who put his shoes too close to the fire. They melted the rubber off of his shoes or one guy bringing a spring tent that we were supposed to stay in.

And I'm just like, what? Like, how are you going to survive in the spring tent? Yeah. So they're freezing. And that's why we end up sleeping in the car because I kept the heater on all night because these kids, they could. die from hypothermia in there. And then that's really what, you know, I was thinking about is like, wait a second, like, it's very unsafe in that sense. So that's what happened. This training camp was held for like 12 days. We went up there and played G.I. G. J.I. jihadi, basically. And, but the main thing

was this is that they, they had some plans, right? Nothing was really, you know, concrete. It was aspirational. Their reach exceeded their grasp. They were not going to succeed in the catastrophic terror attacks that they had envisioned, simply because the group had been sufficiently infiltrated. But the test in law is not whether you can succeed in a catastrophic terrorist attack. The test in law is, do you have a guilty intention? And have you taken steps to realize that intention? Simple. And so they did. And I mean, that aspect of the law, at least that its basic, you know, core mens rea and actus reaist, that was fulfilled. Yeah, because they were smuggled. Yeah, because they were smuggling guns up or trying to smuggle guns up had gotten some guns you at one point had gotten a rifle for them

and then you like didn't give it to them oh my god this i mean just to show you how complex and like on the fly things are so you know this is very early on and december four 2005 and the guy the guy calls me you know he's like hey i need you to come i need to talk to you right now you need to come right away. So I was like, sure, okay, hopped in my car, and drove over. Now, unbeknownst to me, even, he had enrolled in a hunting course, and the instructor had a store in which she was selling this rifle, and he had his eyes on that rifle. But without telling me any of this, he simply said to me, he said, look, we need to go and go shopping for guns. Can you do that? Because they knew that I had a gun license. So I said without hesitation, I said, sure. So he replies, okay, good,

that was a test because some people were saying that you might be a spy. So there you go. So now it was so now look at how. Did you worry about that at all? I'd be like, uh, well, let's let's let's walk this through. Yeah. Look what ends up happening. The next day, we go gun shopping and we go to three different locations that sold guns. The first one, you know, they looked at us and we were shady as F and he was just like happy to get us out of there. Yeah. The other guy just like, yeah, whatever, didn't care. Didn't probably thought we weren't going to buy anything anyways.

So whatever. And then we got to the store that the lady owned where this guy knew exactly the rifle that he wanted was a 22 caliber long rifle Marlin. And then he says to me, he goes, oh, well, here it pulls out a lot of money. And he's like, here's money for, I want that rifle. And I want a thousand rounds of ammunition. Now what am I supposed to do? Yeah, you have to buy it?

I have to buy it. Sure. But I just bought a gun, a rifle, and thousand rounds of ammunition. So I thought to myself, all right, I don't know that he has any other 22 rifles. So I said, I'll keep the rifle and you can keep the bullets. Well, he said, I wanted to keep, you know, you wanted both. But I said, no, let me keep the weapon just in case somebody comes to my house to check on it. And so at least I had the rifle, but now this has not.

Because you have a gun license, maybe they can actually expect the weapon. Exactly, exactly. And so this is the kind of on the fly. you know, buy your wits, you know, thinking that you're going to do. And what ends up happening, of course, is that I get accused of, well, you're the one that bought the gun. Well, you're the one that facilitated all of this. And it wouldn't have happened without you.

So, I mean, that's the thing. And what people don't realize is that they can enlist the assistance of criminals to get illegal guns. Like, they've done it already. So it's not a far cry that they could have done this elsewhere, right? So basically what ended up happening is I had to give the bad guys, you know, this false story that the intelligence service came to visit my home and they were asking about the rifle. And so when I told this story to them, they were like, oh, yeah, that's because of us because

we're involved in some pretty serious stuff. And so blah, blah, blah. It was like a badge of honor. Yeah, they think they were being tough. They think that they, so of course, you know, and then we basically had to come up with the story. I said, okay, look, man, I want to get rid of this rifle. I'm just going to get you your money back. And I don't want to deal with this anymore. But the bullets were still out there. and that's something that at least it was manageable, right? Sure. Because the main thing is the rifle itself.

Get the weapon off the street. Right. Yeah. And I know that one of the guys had put like a few thousand dollars down supposedly on some guns from Mexico. So like these guys had intent and they were going after it. Yeah, they did look, they did successfully bring over at least one gun because that was the one gun that we had with us on the training camp.

Oh yeah, the handgun. The handgun, right? And that, of course, turned into a while it's Mubin's handgun and it's not my handgun. And what's funny is how for a long time, probably to this very day that we have a lot of Canadian Muslims, especially those who accuse me of entrapment in this case, they think that I'm armed. They think that I have a gun that I carry around all the time. And it's like, guys, I don't. But it's like, all right, well, whatever, I'll let you continue thinking that.

Whatever keeps you safe, yeah. But it just kind of showed how this is what you got to do, right? Like sometimes it's a test. And like if you blow your cover or like you remove that undercover element, they go dark and you lose contact. Sure, which is scary. And then you don't know how long it's going to take before something ends up happening. And we don't have the luxury of doing that. So a sting operation manages the close of that investigation by arresting them.

What was your plan? Your plan was or their plan, not your plan. Yeah. So there's some confusion here. So initially, let's call it a large asset. aspirational generic plan. Okay. And that is basically blow shit up.

All right. Somewhere. Simple. But then it becomes more specific. So the one really fantasy plot was attack the parliament building in Canada, in the capital city, Ottawa, take the members of parliament hostage and begin to cut their heads off one by one and force the eviction of Canadian forces from Afghanistan. them. We joked about how we would put snipers so that if anyone came, we could obviously take them

out. There was another, again, just going through scenarios. Could we have car bombs go off in the city to draw the attention of first responders and distract them while we stormed the parliament? So that was one plot. But then what happened is the group kind of split because Zacharia Amara basically began to think that Fahim Ahmed was a big bullshitter. So one of the guys thought the other leader was just kind of full of crap. It's very similar to a gang scenario where it's like, don't follow that guy. I'm going to be the leader now, right? I'm the captain now.

And then what happened is he basically took a smaller group of guys and they developed a plan to detonate three one-ton ammonium nitrate truck bombs. The Oklahoma City bombing, the Murrah building, that's what a one-ton ammonium nitrate truck bomb does. It takes the whole half of the building right out. So that was their intent. And they thought of three locations. The first one was the CIS building, the intelligence office.

Of course, underneath it. So if you were to put that bomb on that road, it wouldn't just take out the building above it. It would take out the pedestrian pathway beneath it. The Toronto Stock Exchange was the second target. And also one of the guys wanted to make false investments, fraudulent investments, and make money off of that attack. To like short the market and then profit. And then the third target was an Air Force base where I were falling.

soldiers are repatriated because of the psychological impact of killing your guys a second time. And so that's what it ended up becoming. Wow. Jeez. So that is really like despicable plan. They would not succeed in this attack. It's a complicated attack. You're going to attack the intelligence headquarters.

I mean, like no one's looking for that kind of chatter and everything. Exactly. You know, one does not simply come up with a ton of ammonium nitrate. Hey, uh, Amazon. Oh, go on Amazon and order every bag of ammonium nitrate. that you can find. Well, what they did, they thought they were smart, but they created a false company called Student Farmers.

And they printed T-shirts and a business cards and a website because, you know, that's all it takes, right? Right. I mean, you don't think they're looking for people ordering one ton of ammonium nitrate? Sir, someone just ordered one ton of ammonium nitrate. Well, check them out. Well, they did print T-shirts that said they were student farmers. That's fine.

Let them have it. Can't be anything. So, and we do laugh at it because it's like it's impossible that they could have succeeded. The seriousness to me is what they fantasized. Yeah, yeah. What they saw happening in their head was just macabre is what it was. It was, well, it was macabre. If they couldn't have gotten the fertilizer because the order got dinged and they didn't get arrested,

they would have just figured, you can go to the mall with a bunch of swords and start hacking people up and you can still do damage. I mean, at some point, you're just going to do something horrible. Well, and that's a good point because, I mean, what does happen, right? When they realize that, well, I can't achieve that, why they just completely. abandoned all plans whatsoever. Guess I'll go to college now. Exactly. Exactly.

Because even we know, I mean, certainly the Americans and all like, just one pistol. One pistol, 15 rounds. I mean, how many people you can kill with them? Yeah, sure. Right? Or more pistols or a long rifle with 900 rounds of ammunition. Let's start a fire at a stadium. What's full of people?

That was the thing is that even though that was a plot that they could not have pulled off, they could very easily have just dropped down a few notches and, you know, taken the loss. and go with a less spectacular attack, but still kill people. So they certainly were of that mentality, right? I do wonder, though, when you guys were at that camp, weren't locals kind of surprised that a bunch of, like, super Islamic looking dudes are hanging out in the woods, and then, like, popping into Tim Hortons every few hours to pee and get a drink?

Yeah, that was really funny because there was actually a, we went to this no frills to get, I think, tuna. And it was like, we were in, like, Whitey McWhitville, you know? And like these brown bearded camo wearing, when we walked in, it's like you could hear the pin drop. Like the next just go, like what is this? It became public knowledge afterwards that in fact the police had told the neighbors they are being watched and don't engage them, don't confront them. There was this like hermit dude who kept coming out and saying, hey, guys, what's going on? And just like totally, he seemed like he was just spakey.

all the time, like out of this. Super high. I don't know what it was, but he was just like, hey, guys. Because, you know, sometimes the UFO lands over there and, like, he just really got us going. He's mentally. Yeah, I don't know what, but, you know, he was just this really, this eccentric figure who was a local. He just didn't bother us. There were some snowmobilers who were kind of like, hey, what are you guys doing here?

You know, this is like Joe McDonald's land. Oh, yeah. Not realizing, like, we were basically squatting on this guy's property, but they were basically told, just leave it alone, we're watching this, and carry on. Wow, they must have been, yeah, so they knew, man, that's the biggest thing to ever happen up there, northern Canada. Absolutely. So you bust this plot wide open, the kids get arrested, there's a video of it, we can link it

in the show notes. They basically, they're like unloading all these fake bags of ammonia nitrate, which are probably rock salt or something. And then these armed swat cops come in and bust these dudes in student farmer t-shirts, which... Cover all. Damn, but the T-shirts didn't work. Your dad finds out because he sees you on TV.

Yeah, I actually told him in advance. I did tell him before that show aired because he does watch that show religiously. I did tell him right before the show. Wait, he watched which show? It was called the Fifth Estate. Is it like a news show? Yeah, it's like you're 60 Minutes. Oh, yeah.

Oh, right on. Like, yeah. I basically told him, I was like, listen, you heard about the arrest that happened of all those guys because the arrest happened early June. And I gave my interview in July, basically. And so I said, listen, you heard about these arrests. I'm the undercover on that case. And he just looked at me and he was just like, al-hambul-llil-law, you know, I'll praise it

you to God. Tell them to give you a full-time job now. That was his thing. And they did. Right? So I was like, hmm, yeah. That was the first thing he said? That was the first thing he said.

He was like, tell them to give you a job. Al-hamdulillah. I think he then very quickly realized, we had a second. Yeah. Now that it became very public, the impact of that started to be felt. Sure. You know, he is so respected in the community that I think maybe, I'm sure a few people did tell him that, hey, your son, what your son did was not good.

Yeah. And he just didn't tell me. Sure. So not to hurt my feelings. But he claims that most people said that what your son did was right. And, you know, you should be proud of him. Well, that's good. Yeah.

Yeah. And he's got such cred in the community that nobody even tried to blacklist. him. Like, they totally blacklisted me. Don't get me wrong. To this day, I get like, not invited to the wedding. I'm persona non-grada and a lot of these things, right? Which is fine with me because I don't have time for their birriani dinners and, you know, where they backbite about other people. I don't have time for that. You have five kids. I got my own life and things happening. So, but they didn't even try to do that to him. And I think one of the reasons why I didn't get whacked is because the people who could basically call for me to get whacked know my dad very, very well.

Yeah. I was wondering about that. You know, it's bad what he did. We don't agree with it. And he ruined these kids' lives. But, you know, he didn't kill anybody. Yeah. Whatever.

I mean, you didn't ruin their lives. You got their own lives. They would have died in that attack. Well, again, they wouldn't have even been able to succeed in that attack. Or even if they would have, you know, moved on to some other attack, maybe less of a spectacle, but still lethal. Again, like, that was irrelevant to me. Those are all secondary factors to me. It's like, this is what you want to do in a city that I'm born and raised in, in the name of my religion, right? I'm not going to allow that to happen. I don't care what people say. Those things alone that you want to blow shit up in my home and use my religion as a cover, not acceptable.

Yeah, not on my watch, right? I'll end your life if I have to. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Mubin Shake. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. So to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard so you can check out those amazing sponsors, visit Jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode.

That link is in the show notes at Jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. If you're listening to us on the Overcast Player, please click that little star next to the episode. We really appreciate it. Now for the conclusion of our episode with Moabin Shake. Well, another thing that surprises a lot of people is that all this radicalization thing, this hits all social strata. It's not like broke-ass, poor people from nowhere. There are people that go over there where you're like, wait a minute, your dad's a lawyer, your mom's like a surgeon.

Middle class, educated, they have stuff. You know, it's funny, I do this presentation because I train U.S. Special Forces now on ISIS, especially those who are, you know, going to deploy. and I have this whole section, and on one of my sections, I have these photos of food pictures that ISIS guys were posting. I noticed that. I was searching on Twitter, and I was like, I was looking for what jihadis were talking about. A lot of it's in Arabic or whatever, I can't read it. And then I look at stuff and I'm like, is that a kebab? What is, is that a freaking shwarma looking sandwich? It was funny to me because I'm thinking, okay, there's a lot of pictures of food, but what's going on here? Isis members are freaking talking about the pictures of their lunch and Raka.

it's like jihad meets like some hipster from Brooklyn like some guy from a high school who now is making bespoke kombucha in his apartment in Williamsburg and yet these guys are also like they're like we're going to blow up and shoot a bunch of stuff also we have kebab yeah this fresh goat we just slaughter it was just everybody takes pictures of their food even to is yeah yeah I mean in those days what was happening is they were trying to recruit people to get them over and join their lands and people were afraid that am I going to be able to eat the way that I ate so they would put out these recruiting posters. It's like kebabs?

Yeah, we got that. And there's a picture of nice kebabs. You know what I mean? And then it's like, how can I not take a picture of that? And it's like a milkshake. And then they have like frappuccino from Starbucks or Nutella was a big thing. There was like this whole thing with ISIS and Nutella. Like your listeners right now, if you were just to go and Google that, go, go and Google

that right now. Isis and Nutella, you'll see the kind of stuff that came up. And in one of those pictures was really, like you said, kind of across social strata, this Indo-Pakistani, so like, you know, Indian subcontinent, in the UK, British citizen, in Syria, referring to pizza as home food. He's like, home food, how I missed you, and it's pizza. Wow, the irony, man. Right?

And it's like, but what that told you is these guys, these people, they are products of the society they grew up in. They can front all they want and wave their placards and their flags and their slogans, but you are products of the West. Yeah. If I can flip the script a bit, there's a, uh, woman female who admitted she said that all I wanted to do was get my piece of eye candy and basically she was Oh, she went there for a kid. No, no, she didn't even go there.

She was watching these jihadi videos and seeing these guys with long hair, big guns. And the phrase she used was, I wanted to get my piece of eye candy. And we laughed because it's like, we use that phrase. That is a purely Western phrase. You know, it kind of also shows you that these are young kids or, you know, maybe young adults who have been told to suppress their sexuality where they can't even interact with members of the opposite sex without it being framed under marriage or virgins in heaven after you blow yourselves up. It's like, dude, just get a girlfriend right here on earth.

Yeah. Yeah. You preferred. Yeah, definitely. What type of people get radicalized, though? Like, are there, there's got to be. Male, female, rich, poor. Yeah. You name it. White, black, Asian. You've got these four factors, though, like geopolitics or ideology, money, adventure, frustration. Can you talk about that a little? You don't have to go into too much detail, but that was an interesting combo. I mean, basically, there's always a multiplicity of factors. There's a great quote by Peter Neumann. He's the founder of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization. Says ideology without grievances doesn't resonate. And grievances without ideology are not acted upon. All right. One more time. Ideology without grievances doesn't resonate, and grievances without ideology are not acted upon. Another quote that's mine is, sometimes religious ideology is indeed a driver for violent extremism,

but at other times just a passenger with other psychosocial factors at the wheel. Okay. And so that will include then your sense of meaning and belonging, needs. The geopolitics falls under the grievances, so wars that are happening in different lands. Because people ask, you know, why do they hate us? Well, you've been bombing them for decades and decades. You're destroying their societies. So what do you think is going to emerge from those societies, if not extremist thinking?

Yeah, of course. So, yeah, the frustration, the geopolitics and the ideology. Exactly, right? So these are the things that relate to it. And why I put, you know, like poverty, for example, people say sometimes poverty is a factor. Other times it's not a factor. What you've got to look at is every individual in their context and look at every factor relative to that individual in that context.

So ideology could be prevalent for some people and it just be a secondary factor for somebody else or for some other people. Right, like some people who have nothing might go for the money because they're just like whatever. That's right. But other people are going,

no, I'm here for the ideology. I don't care about the money. But also the adventure is kind of cool because I'm 18 and I'm bored off my ass. Yep, yep. That makes sense. The opportunity to go from zero to hero overnight. Yeah.

Yeah. How intriguing, how enticing is that for a young person who sees himself as a zero, right? Just living at home doing nothing. What can we look for, our parents or friends? Like, what am I looking for if I'm like, is this person doing some radical weird stuff? Like maybe I wouldn't have somebody like that in my circle, but maybe there's like a Muslim kid or a Muslim parent who's like, my kid is being weird. They're on the internet. I don't know what they're doing.

Right. What do they look for? Yeah, it's a very good question. Very timely. You know, sudden changes in behavior are there? the biggest warning sign and especially extreme changes. Now, just because, you know, your daughter comes home with a hijab or, you know, your son decides he's going to convert and wants to grow a beard, that in and of itself is not a sign of

extremism. You have to look at clusters of behaviors. So when you start looking at unequivocal black and white thinking, especially where you begin to demonize others, so it's like believers and disbelievers and kufar. Well, now it's like you're really demonizing people who don't believe in. your religion, right? It's something to say, oh, they don't believe in my religion, right? Like, okay, we have a difference versus anyone who does not believe what I believe is going to hell. Yeah. Now, even that, that's like you could say even, that's extreme conservative thinking.

So let's look at more clusters. And really, ideology is going to be a big kicker in that. As soon as you start to justify or sympathize with certain activities or certain actions or saying, well, you know, this is okay what they're doing because then now you're starting to get into sympathy and then that starts to lead into membership. So you might obviously look to see, I mean, is this person carrying around ISIS paraphernalia or is it Al-Qaeda paraphernalia? Or I don't even know what that is. Who do I call? Yeah. Right. So if I can just give a quick shout out and open plug-in to a group called Parents for Peace, they're at parentsfor-pease.org. there is a line for parents, a 100 number that they can call where there are people that

will actually talk to you. So there is some assistance in that regard for that. But really, like I said, ideology is the big one. Look to see what sect that they are either converting to or something along those lines. And that will be a good start in terms of seeing what your kid is actually up to. Because the last thing you want is the FBI basically breaking down your door and hauling your kid out. So you talk to some of these extremists on. line right now and try to kind of debunk their BS. Is that one of your hobbies now, I guess? I don't know. Yeah, basically what happened is after like the Toronto 18 court cases was done in 2010 and this whole ISIS thing really start to kick up in 2012 and lasted for a number of years. Yeah. And in those years,

what I was doing from 2012, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, I was online every day with these people trying to engaging them, directly engaging them, trolling them, responding to them, using, you know, Islamic sources to counter their deviant interpretations, training government agencies in trying to do the same thing, obviously not to the level that I was doing. So I did do that for several years, day in and day out. I stopped doing that because I just got fed up with it, to be honest, right? It took so much out of my soul, you know, that, like, because they're, they're so needy. They require so much, because they're, especially those who are young kids, like the young recruits and ideological.

or professed acolytes of ISIS, they were just like hours and hours of the day. And I'm an adult. I have a life. I have a family. I have like things that I got to do. And it's like, it just sucked up so much of my time. Right. So I did do that for a while.

But, you know, ISIS was, you know, largely defeated. I'm going to put that in air quotes because they're not defeated. They are going to rise again. They've just kind of gone into hiding and laying low until a more opportune moment. But that is what I did in that time, yeah. I mean, a lot of these people are loners with, like, no friends that are finding their community online. So, yeah, you going, hey, look, I got to go eat dinner with my kids. They're like, well, I'm going to be online for another seven hours, but I have nothing to do.

I would do that deliberately, you know, I would say to them because I would make them wait for me to come back. Yeah. Because they were like dying. That's all they do. They were online all the time. And it's like, oh, okay, well, I have a life now, so I'm going to go and I'll be back in a few hours, you know, and just kind of tease them like that. So what's the volume of discussion in recruiting? Is it like hundreds of people or is it like thousands of people are online recruiting kids for ISIS?

Now it's, I mean, the whole recruiting for ISIS thing has plummeted is really the word. In 2012, when it's just started to kick off, 2014 is really when it started. 2015 escalated. The attacks began ISIS attacks. The first ISIS attacks happened really at the beginning of 2014, but late 2014 because mid-2014 is when they did. declared their caliphate or their caliphake, as I call it. And then 2015 was even more. 2016 was more than that. 2017 was more than that. And then by 2018, it started to come down. So those are the years in which it really starts to peak. And what they were doing, and there have been some studies done on this as well on how they, you know, amazing use of technology, use of bots. Yeah. They did that hijacking hashtags. So they would come on World Cup during World Cup and ISIS and beheading video.

And then you who's kind of scrolling through, it's like, oh, I said beheading video. Oh, let me check that out. And then you go further down in the rabbit hole. So this was like a trawling almost, right, that they were doing. So there were thousands of recruiters, but a lot of them were bots.

Oh, interesting. So there were a core group of recruiters who were putting messaging out. That messaging was being amplified by followers, by electronic account, like bot accounts. it did spread far and wide in that time. What's interesting is that we kind of watched how social media gave platform to these people

and allowed them to recruit openly in any cases. And it frustrated the hell out of me that this was allowed to happen. That kids are being recruited. Like it's happening here. Look, go and see it happen. But what's funny is that I spoke to a CIA friend of mine who said basically, if we just turned out the lights, then they would just go dark. and we wouldn't know where they're going, who they're going with, where they're staying,

allowing these guys to talk, it's like, okay, a few dozen people get recruited. But you know what this does is it opens up the door for hundreds of them to be compromised. So what's the trade up. You can monitor and try to trace back. So that's what ended up happening. So that's what happened with the whole recruiting thing anyway. How do you de-radicalize? I mean, you kind of did it by seeing the September 11th attacks going to,

Syria learning stuff. It's kind of hard to go, oh, you know, some of your beliefs are wrong. You should do this multi-year self-education so that you make sure that you're right and find out that you're not. You know, I liken attempts to de-radicalize people like trying to convince somebody to change their political stripe. Yeah. Think about how difficult that is. So almost impossible. It is, it is. And that is what you're looking at with de-radicalization. Now, unfortunately, in this context now, we're dealing with a lot of individuals who are in custody or have been arrested. And so that de-radicalization option is really under coercion, right? And so it's hard to know if they're sincere about it. Yeah. How do you know? And I've taken recently a harder line on de-radicalization. It is not a

magic bullet. It's not something that it's assumed or automatic or whatever. It's extremely difficult. And one of the things, like I'll mention only, you know, some things because I don't want to give away all, because these guys will deceive you. They will tell you what you think you want to hear so that you will give them the checkmark of de-radicalized and then maybe get a lesser sentence and maybe get out sooner. But basically you have to look to see the changes in ideology,

change in religious practice, right? How do they see Islam? How do they view the world? How do they view those who are not like them? There are nuances that you want to be able to look at. And really the best way to do this is using former extremists like myself. even in some cases in Germany, they have, because in Germany, the de-radicalization of white supremacists is actually what began this whole de-radicalization thing. It was in Germany in the 80s where people were

leaving neo-Nazi groups, and then the principles of that were now transferred over to jihadists. And so in Germany, you have an ex-white supremacist who actually counsels jihadists. That's got to be an odd couple hanging out. Yeah, and it just kind of shows you. So now we're doing a, you know, we're trying to, trying to get a more formalized system in place, you know, my friend, our mutual friend, Brandon Blackburn, you know, we've been actually trying to work with State Department to train other countries how to conduct de-radicalization and how to conduct training for some of these government agencies because a lot of the Middle Eastern countries, there are

tens of thousands of foreign fighters who are going to return back. Yeah. I actually do have like the most up-to-date numbers for the U.S. How many foreign fighters were? Yeah, actually, if you got a second here, I'll give you the, this is actually the freshest information available right now. So, 300 in total tried or succeeded going to Iraq or Syria, Americans. From the United States. Wow.

18 are back. 11 males who were charged, two males who were not charged, plus two females who were charged, and three females who were not charged. So 13 males and five females. at least in addition, okay, so that's 18, plus at least 13 children that they've had over there. That are back. Oh, that are back. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Like hundreds of people. So that's what you're dealing with in the U.S. These are relatively low numbers. I mean, the U.S. is so far away. Just like Canada, we're dealing with fewer numbers. I mean, I think there's like 30 some odd in custody right now, six were men, nine who are women, and 17 who are children, most that are under the eight. of five. Those are small numbers. Now you start to go over to Middle Eastern countries where you're

dealing with thousands of people. Germany, Belgium, even Europeans, because it's very close proximity and so for them they were able to go. So that's the situation where we're dealing with now, facing the prospect of these individuals going back to those countries and basically waiting to see what happens in the next few years if they kick off. What kind of programs are there for jihadists who come back to their home country and are like, all right, I should probably de-radical or they're not even thinking that. They're just like, oh, I'll chill in America because this ISIS thing's not working out. Syria is a mess.

Well, the U.S. is really good in the sense that their material support of terrorism charge is very broad and allows them very easy prosecutions in that regard. Other countries, not so much. Canada is struggling. The U.K. is struggling, especially the Commonwealth nations. Australia are struggling to charge these individuals because it's very difficult to get evidence of war crimes in a war zone. Sure.

And in a lot of these cases, these individuals are not being charged at all. Does everybody need to be charged? I mean, look, maybe I'm naive, but some of these people are just dumbass 18-year-old kids. Well, yeah. Wow, I'm so glad I'm not there anymore. The place sucked. Well, we need a triage process to determine who those people are. Because I submit that it is a colossal failure of our legal system that we can't charge these people.

Because you're basically telling them you got off. You got off of being part of a, you know, raping, mass-murdering, terrorist. group. And what message does that send to people? Does it dissuade them? I don't know. Of course not. It's not going to dissuade them. They're going to think they're protected by Allah because the Kufar can't touch me. I killed, I shed blood and nobody can charge me. And that's like, so why would we go out of our way to repatriate these people? At least in the U.S., they're getting significant jail time, in some cases. There is one guy who was captured by the Kurds in Syria. And he was like a total like dumbass, okay?

Like the way that he spoke, like you could see like his Arabic wasn't good. Like he would be somebody that I score low on the threat and risk scale. He got 20 years. Ooh, geez. And 20 years in the U.S. federal prison. Yeah. That's an appropriate sentence in my view. Yeah.

I mean, in some cases, like in Canada, we had a pretty big one like nine years given to one guy. I was actually surprised at that case. That was one of the higher sentences given. But a lot of these other guys, they're getting just. Not even getting charged, right? We have a guy who came back. He was part of New York Times' podcast called Caliphate. Yeah.

By Rukmini Kalimaki. So fantastic. So interesting. We'll link to it in the show notes. Yeah, great. Because I'm featured in, I think, episode five. Are you? Oh, so I've already heard you.

I didn't even know. Yeah, yeah. But Abu Huzaifa, the Canadian, who is featured in that, the guy admitted to killing two people. Yeah, I know. And we know who he is and this and that. And he wasn't charged. And nothing, right?

And in fact, he bragged about how the Kufar can't touch me, this, that, and the other. So that's the, dilemma that we face, right? And so some of these people, truly, if we want to bring them to justice, that means holding them accountable for the crimes that they committed, not just crimes that we can charge them with that we can prove in a court of law. Yeah, I feel you. I mean, look, it's a different game, right? It's a war. Are you worried at all about retaliation now that extremist groups, you know, you've sent some of them to prison, you are actively trying to

foil their terror plots. That's never a good way to make fines. You're online messing with their recruiting efforts. Like, are you worried about these people at all? Look, I do use ghosting software, government issue ghosting software, so basically hide my locations and whatnot. And they did in those years anyway when I was that active. They have put out warnings against me on their Facebook pages. Yes, they had Facebook pages that were eventually shut down. They actively tried to find out where I was.

And even on Twitter, they were trying to, they would post photos of some poor suckers backyard in New Jersey because that's where my, you know, my IP address showed my location to be. So I do take steps to avoid detection by them. And the agencies are also watching out for me. Sure. I'm not too worried. Well, thank you for your work, keeping us safe. And good luck.

We'll see you on Netflix, hopefully. Yeah, yeah. I want to give a shout out to fusionintel.com, of course. Yeah. Brandon and I have been doing a lot of good work. And in fact, I would like to say, you know, one of a high priority mission that we are working on now is to actually repatriate one of these children back to the custody of her father from which she was stolen and taken and basically kidnapped to join ISIS and has been, you know,

captured by the Kurds. So, so that's what we're doing nowadays. Man, I saw in Vice. There was a guy whose wife bounced while he was on a business trip. She apparently died in airstrike, but the kids, there's people who say they're alive, but then when they go interrogate people at the refugee camps, They get, oh, they're over there. Oh, they're dead. And so now they're thinking they're alive, they're just being hidden. It's heartbreaking because this guy is like a taxi driver or something. Went on a trip to visit somebody and then comes back and his wife's like, well, you didn't want to join me.

Kids are gone. And, you know, you video chatted with him for a while. There's all kinds of these stories. Horrifying. Unfortunately, that's just the mess that ISIS left. Yeah. Well, thanks for doing your part and help to clean it up. Thank you, man.

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