The "Meadowvale Brothers" weren't concerned with waging holy war. For the most part, they just wanted to talk about how boring summer school was, or how the third instalment of the Terminator movie franchise would stack up against the Matrix trilogy -- normal high-school kid stuff.
The lone exception: Zakaria Amara.
An Internet diary examined by The Globe and Mail details the thoughts, aspirations and angst shared by a group of Muslim students at Mississauga's Meadowvale Secondary School. The students, most of whom graduated in 2003, called themselves the Meadowvale Brothers. Among their members was Mr. Amara, who faces a string of terror-related charges.
The blog, which has since been taken offline, reveals a group of students discussing everything from "getting raped on" final exams to making sure they keep their Fridays clear when they go to college so they can continue attending prayer. However, Mr. Amara's posts -- hundreds of them over the course of several months -- consistently take a different tone.
For example, on July 28, 2003, Mr. Amara posted a statement claiming flags are nothing but a symbol of nationalism and segregation. (Punctuation and spelling are as they appeared in the blog.)
"I hate flags. I hate countries... I hate man made laws.... I hate nationalism with a passion... I love for the Sake of Allah and I hate for his sake...... When the islamic [rule]comes back... there will be no palisitne flag, no philipino flag... no pakistani, somali, american, or british flag... it will just be 1 flag," he wrote, using the pseudonym "Aleph," the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. He then posted an image of Arabic script followed by an English translation: "THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH AND MUHAMMAD IS HIS FINAL MESSENGER..."
Most of Mr. Amara's posts were in one way or another advocating a religious cause, dispensing advice on being a good Muslim, or denouncing the treatment of Muslims. In one such post, Mr. Amara wrote, "but honestly, these people in the states got convicted of using paintball as a method of training. no one asked for my opinion but il give it anyway: if ur intention is that of training, then go to peshawar or kashmir and train properly..."
The topic of paintball came up because, the postings indicate, the group had recently been on an outing.
"As for the painball guns that we have, man whether 'training or not' it was a hell of alot of fun," Mr. Amara continued.
The blog could go a long way to quell any fears of rampant extremism in Mr. Amara's pocket of Mississauga. Mr. Amara's posts are not the norm, and the writings of his friends do not share the same degree of venom.
On July 21, 2003, another member of the site accused Mr. Amara of constantly trying to be an "Islamisized version of Eminem."
Even though Mr. Amara consistently posted serious comments, he is not immune to run-of-the-mill teen angst. On June 29, 2003, he posted: "My grandmother from Cyprus came over today....she called me fat....i feel like killing myself...not even my loved ones have spared me, so i went upstairs and my brother told me my mom was the one who told my grandmother i was fat..." A few days earlier, he quotedat length from the movie Good Will Hunting.
But Mr. Amara made perhaps his most telling comment on June 12, 2003, when he segued from a post about exams to an explanation of why the prophet Moses did not return to Egypt as a conqueror. Mr. Amara wrotethat even though it would have been more logical to return to Egypt rather than continue through the desert, that doesn't matter.
"the KEY HERE IS,,,THE ORDER OF ALLAH DEFEATS LOGIC and is WAY ABOVE IT," he wrote.
Greg McArthur