Al-Qaeda rejected by Syrian rebels; Imam tips police on VIA-Rail terror plot...

We don’t want them in our revolution’: Syria rebels decry Al-Qaeda interlopers


By Michael Stors, The Media Line, in National Post, April 23, 2013
ALEPPO, Syria — When the jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra announced it was joining al-Qaeda, Syrians in rebel-held territories cringed. “Now everyone will think our revolution is nothing but a jihadist power grab,” complained 28-year-old Muhammad Ansari. “Who will support us now?”

With the Syrian revolution faltering and secular rebel groups disintegrating amid infighting and civilian abuses, it is the jihadists who have benefitted most. Syrians believe these groups have hijacked a secular revolution.
Like many in the town of Maarat Numan, Mr. Ansari fought to dislodge regime troops hunkering down in the city centre last year. Since then the municipality has endured months of punishing airstrikes by regime fighter jets and long-range shelling. For most of the ordeal, it was homegrown rebels who were directing the fight. But recently, Jabhat al-Nusra fighters have poured into the town, hoping to turn it into a base. Maarat Numan connects a number of cities in northwest Syria, making it a key locale coveted by the warring parties.
“We don’t want them here,” shouted Ahmad Fartawi, 35, when queried about the organization. “We don’t want them in our revolution. These people don’t help our cause,” the computer peripherals salesman explained bitterly while biting into a falafel sandwich.

Syrian rebels do not want Al-Qaeda affiliates, associates, collaborators....infiltrating their cause!
A Toronto imam showed so much courage that he tipped the RCMP off about the alleged terror plot to derail a VIA-Rail train leading to the arrest of two men living in Canada.
This is a growing indication that there are forces, however disparate, working together against the Al-Qaeda forces in all of their many incarnations around the world, to wrestle the monster to the ground, and to total and utter impotence, emasculation and eventual death.
Nothing short of the death of the Al-Qaeda movement, including its violence, its belief system, its recruiting and brainwashing activities, its websites that "teach" adherents how to make "pressure-cooker" bombs, and likely many other things that no civilized society can tolerate, and its penchant for narcissistic publicity can be the goal of individuals in every country, of all governments, and of all international organizations.
A call from a Boston listener to the On  Point radio program, with host Tom Ashbrook, made the point recently that given the fact that America deploys violence, celebrates violence, trades in violence video games, and arms around the world, as well as kills many innocents in the course of carrying out its foreign policy, and its revenge and its domination, Americans should not be surprised when such violence is meted out against their people. Just as it is true that Al-Qaeda must be defanged and brought to heel, so too America must rein in her violence in all of its many forms, and against all of its many innocent bystanders in so many violence theatres of conflict.
It was the eight-year-old Martin Richard, whose memorial was held yesterday, following his death in the Marathon Bombing last Monday, who earlier had prepared a poster he held in a photo circulated around the world, both in the public media and on the internet, that provides the kind of "child" leadership we all need to read, reflect upon and seek to foster. It read: "No more hurting people!"
Can the world recognize and commit itself to both the inspiration and the wisdom in his prayer?