A mother’s lament for radical son
An Ottawa woman has publicly decried the radicalization of her son, who stood up in a local mosque and hailed the killing of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo as a heroic act.
“I’ve been on an almost twodecade-long fight against the extremists that are here in Ottawa because they influenced my son and set him on a trajectory of radical views,” Michelle Walrond told the Citizen on Wednesday.
Walrond, an English teacher, anti-poverty activist and founder of the National Islamic Sisters’ Association of Canada, is the mother of Luqman Abdunnur, who was arrested last month while the subject of a national security investigation.
Abdunnur, 39, is now being held at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre on charges of obstructing and assaulting a police officer.
Walrond said her son was radicalized in Ottawa during the past two decades by a group of men who promoted an ultraconservative brand of Islam, Wahhabism, rooted in Saudi Arabia.
“Because my son had come under their influence, he was going around asserting — as they used to do — who was Muslim and who was not Muslim, assuming the right to excommunicate other people,” she said.
“I feel they should be held accountable for what they taught and what they still promote,” she added.
Asked why she has taken up the fight against extremism, the American-born Walrond said it’s all she can do to help right now.
“I’m a mom, and if you know mothers, they will throw themselves in front of moving cars to save their kids. That’s just what we do.”
Luqman Abdunnur was arrested Oct. 25 when a traffic stop — initiated by Ottawa police at the behest of an RCMP national security team — turned violent. Police allege that Abdunnur refused to show police his hands, punched an officer and tried to flee the scene. He was subdued with a Taser.
An OPP officer who was part of a surveillance team following Abdunnur fired his gun during the incident, but the bullet did not hit anyone.
Abdunnur had drawn the attention of national security officials after he publicly criticized an imam who condemned the Oct. 22 attack on Cirillo at the National War Memorial. Witnesses said Abdunnur stood up in the Assunnah mosque two days after the shooting and said the gunman should be called a hero and martyr. His actions were reported to police.
Walrond told the Citizen the event was the culmination of her son’s long road to radicalization, which she said began when he moved to Ottawa in 1995.
Then an impressionable young man, Abdunnur found fellow- ship among a group of Wahhabis — sometimes known as Salafis — who indoctrinated him in what Walrond called their “harsh, isolating” world view. Her son, she said, was fervently religious and embraced their hard-line approach to Islamic law.
Abdunnur entered into a polygamous marriage with two women and fathered more than 14 children.
He also came to scorn moderate imams, she said, and ignore the views of his parents.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Michelle Walrond came of age in the 1960s, when many African-Americans embraced Islam as part of the black pride movement. She officially converted to the faith in 1972, and immigrated to Canada in 1989 to start an organic farm near Barry’s Bay.
Walrond said she believes in an Islam that espouses moderation, balance and religious tolerance. Her son’s radical views have led to a fracture in their relationship, she said.
“It’s a very, very painful situation for me,” said Walrond, 60, a mother of three. “We are the most alike in personality: He’s outgoing and talkative and gregarious, similar to myself.”
Walrond said the radical, Wahhabist interpretation of Islam now dominates the Internet and has helped spawn the “monstrous” Islamic State, Boko Haram and al- Qaida. Wahhabi leaders, she said, have been effective at blurring the line between traditional Islam and their politically-motivated ideology, which she said opens the door to violence and strife.
In Canada, Walrond argued, religious teachers should be held responsible for leading young people down the path of extremism. And they should be challenged, she said, to denounce ideas that are “inimical to traditional Islam, the universal values.”
Walrond recently visited her son at the detention centre.
“He basically told me, ‘Don’t try to help me. Don’t worry. I’m OK.’ Of course, I’m worried about it, but there’s nothing that I can actually do beyond what I’m doing in general to promote traditional Islam.”