The Martyr's Oath: The Apprenticeship of a Homegrown Terrorist

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Since the Biblical Samson committed suicide by breaking the pillars of
the Gaza building to which he was chained and thereby killing large
numbers of Philistines, suicide killings have been part of Middle
Eastern culture. For better or worse, Middle Eastern culture has spread
to the rest of the world, including Canada. Yet most Canadians are
appalled that someone from the Middle East could spend his youth in
Canada, enjoy the benefits of this country, and yet prepare to follow
Samson. In The Martyr’s Oath, award-winning investigative journalist
Stewart Bell explains how this came to pass and gives us an inner look
at the workings of al Qaeda.

Mohammed Mansour Jabarah was born in 1982 of a prosperous Iraqi family
living in Kuwait. One ancestor had been a legendary Arab military hero,
and during the 1950s, Mohammed’s father had raised funds to help
Algerians fight the French and to assist Egyptians against the British.
The deeply religious family found Saddam Hussein’s occupation of
Kuwait (1990–91) brutal and welcomed liberation. However, everyone
knew that the first President Bush had not sent his army to liberate
Kuwait for altruistic reasons. His goals were to keep Kuwaiti oil
flowing and to limit the power of an enemy of Israel. Worse, U.S. forces
remained in Saudi Arabia, where Islam’s holiest places are located.
After the war, the family moved to St. Catharines, Ontario, because
Kuwaitis distrusted Iraqis, not because the Jabarahs admired Canadian
values. Canada was a place where they could go. Mohammed learned to
speak English like a Canadian, attended a Roman Catholic school, and
adopted many Canadian mannerisms, but his Canadianism was a veneer.
After graduation from high school, he went to Afghanistan, where at age
19 he joined al Qaeda and swore an oath that he would die for the cause
of Osama bin Laden. Travelling on a Canadian passport and appearing
Canadian in every way, he gained admission to Singapore, where he
plotted to blow up the U.S. and Israeli embassies.

In brief, Mohammed’s parents removed their son from the Middle East,
but they did not remove the Middle East from him.