Spring, 2018

My beloved twelve-year-old daughter asked me to share my story with you. I am having a hard time with where to start, what to write, and how much to unveil. Perhaps I should begin from the present and make my way back to the past.

I’ve been in prison for twelve years now. In 2010, I received a life sentence after pleading guilty to being one of the ringleaders of the “Toronto 18” terror plot. Thankfully, no one was physically hurt. I was 20-years-old then, and I am almost 33 now.

In pre-trial custody, I was deemed a radical threat to the inmate population, and so, I was involuntarily placed in solitary confinement for three years. After receiving my sentence, I was once again considered a radical threat and sent to the Special Handling Unit, Canada’s only super-max prison. (Usually, you would have to kill or stab someone inside to be eligible for such a transfer.) After spending six horrifying years there, I was finally transferred to Millhaven Max,
where I currently reside.

Given this information, it wouldn’t be a huge leap to assume I’m a tough, violent, and angry man with a threatening demeanour. But truthfully, I am the exact opposite.

Guilty, I am.
Radicalized, I was.

Yet, I still find my entire situation incredibly surreal. I often go back in time to retrace my steps in search of clues—anything—that can tell me how I ended up here. But every time I engage in this exercise, I stumble across a young man who was caught up in a perfect storm of internal and external influences. The inevitability of it all is what I find most remarkable.

After any major terrorist attack, there is usually a fierce debate about what makes individuals susceptible to radical ideologies. Unfortunately, this rarely occurs when the perpetrators are non-Muslims (Right-wing extremists in the U.S., for example). But if I had a noose around my neck, and the only thing that could save my life was the answer to this dumbfounding question, then I would have to say that it is the emotional state of feeling utterly humiliated and worthless.

I have always felt worthless. I still struggle with this feeling to this day. Perhaps I feel this way because I carry within me a strong inner critic that has been ripping me apart since I was a child. Or maybe it’s because I have always felt like an outsider. You see, even though I am a citizen of this country, I have never felt Canadian. For whatever reason, ever since I arrived here as a twelve-year-old boy, in my mind, to be a real Canadian, you had to be white.

Before immigrating to Canada, I lived in my mother’s country of birth, Cyprus. There, too, I felt like an outsider, since I was keenly aware that my Arab features automatically disqualified me from claiming to be Cypriot.

Before that, I lived in Saudi Arabia, where native citizens are infamous for looking down upon all non-Saudis. I still remember the words of a Saudi boy who referred to me as “Phalas-Teezi” (a hybrid word that combines “Palestinian” with the Arabic word for “ass”). The sad fact that I was sexually molested while living there could have only intensified my inner feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy.

Even in Jordan, my own country of birth, I never considered myself Jordanian, since I belonged to a family that originally came to Jordan as refugees after losing their land to the Israeli occupation.

Many of you have probably wondered why the Muslim world has produced so many radicalized individuals in the recent past. Blaming Islam for it is incredibly simplistic, if not absolutely wrong. When I look at what the people of that region have gone through over the last century, I am surprised that there aren’t more extremists, not less. I can’t imagine how utterly worthless many of them have been made to feel. The culprits are foreign and local governments who systematically strip powerless human beings of their dignity

What happens to a street vendor who can’t sell his fruits without having to pay a bribe to a policeman?

What happens to a young man or woman who just graduated from university, but can’t find suitable employment because all the jobs have been given to those with special connections?

What happens to people who have no say whatsoever in how their governments are run and are treated like cattle, if not worse?

What happens to people who have to live under the deadly shadows of drones?

What happens to a person who witnesses their entire family get wiped out by a ‘precise’ missile strike?

Desperate for belonging in my teenage years, these are the only people I have ever felt an affinity towards, and so as they radicalized, I radicalized with them. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq and its resulting massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis represented the crossing of the “Rubicon” for me. You can pretty much draw a straight line from there to my arrest in 2006.

How does it feel to be radical?

You feel worthy, righteous, and heroic. You see yourself as a saviour of your people. Your mind obsesses over the injustices that they endure, and it eventually becomes the only thing you wish to talk about. You see the world in strictly black-and-white terms. Deep inside, you suspect that there may be other colours, and this subconsciously drives you to engage in a constant re-enforcement of your beliefs. It is said that those who are the most dogmatic are usually the least certain. A vivid depiction of this internal struggle is that of a boy who is perpetually fortifying the walls of a sandcastle he built too close to the waves.

When I arrived at the Special Handling Unit (SHU), I desperately tried to engage with the rehabilitative process, but sadly, the administration appeared uninterested, even disdainful at times. Feeling deeply rejected once again caused my radical ideology to reassert itself, leading me to become more extreme in the SHU than I ever was on the outside. Soon thereafter, I adopted a rebellious attitude towards the administration and refused to meet my parole officers for several years.

This state of affairs continued until ISIS declared its Caliphate, and news of its atrocities began streaming in. Before the rise of ISIS, when innocent people were killed, I would rationalize it as ‘collateral damage’ if the victims were non-Muslims or dismiss it as a ‘mistake’ when they were Muslims. Every atrocity committed by ISIS was like a tsunami that would violently demolish my sandcastle, leaving no trace of it behind. Yet, I kept frantically rushing back to rebuild it.

Eventually, the hideousness of this group led me to periods of depression that followed every massacre. At the time, I did not see my radical ideology as separate from my religion, which caused me to fear that abandoning it would lead to abandoning my faith. I also feared confronting the reality that I may have thrown my entire life away and brought so much suffering upon my family for no good cause.

Accepting the truth is not easy…

Holding on became harder and harder until it finally became impossible, and I simply had to let go out of sheer disillusionment. Surprisingly, what followed was not a free fall into a dark abyss of disbelief, but rather a spiritual ascent that is best captured in a poem I wrote called “Servant of the Ever-Merciful.”

If you are not as beautiful as the sun,
when it spreads its light,
upon the face of lands and seas.

If you do not glow as the full moon does,
amid darkness,
illuminating the way for life’s travellers.

If you are not as graceful as the lofty clouds,
spreading shade over life’s scorched inhabitants,
raining water upon their parched lips,
bringing life to their dead lands,
then, I am afraid,
you have misunderstood,
what it means to be,
a servant of God.

I felt liberated to finally be able to see the world in its true colours. This feeling only intensified as I slowly took the shackles off, one by one. This process began a few years ago and has been ongoing ever since.

How do I view my experience?

Despite its hardships and painful losses, I see it as a blessing. Sometimes, I tell myself that I am acquiring a Ph.D. in Life Studies from the University of the Incarcerated. My life is meaningful despite the steel bars and the barbed wire fences. My future is bright. I know that. And to God, I am ever grateful for everything I’ve endured.

I ask the Canadian public to forgive me for betraying their trust and welcoming arms.

I ask the Muslim community to forgive me for causing them so much apprehension by being one of too many who have cast them under a dark cloud of suspicion.

I ask my dear parents to forgive me for breaking their hearts.

I ask my brother and sister to forgive me for causing them so much sadness and distress.

I ask my former wife—whose loss I have never recovered from—to forgive me for abandoning her and devastating her in such a way.

I ask her entire family to forgive me for turning their lives upside down.

I ask all the young men who became involved because of me to forgive me for everything.

I ask their families for forgiveness, as well.

Last but not least, I ask my beloved daughter to forgive me for leaving her
without a father.

Princess, when I see you in my dreams, I sometimes hold you in my arms and weep, and weep, and weep ‘till I awake.

Beloved, knowing what I know now, if I could go back in time to be with you,
I would be there in a heartbeat.

But grieve no more, for I once heard that the truth shall set you free…

And now

And now, after far too long

The truth runs through my veins.