The room was split down the middle: women in colourful hijabs on the left, men, most in traditional Islamic dress, on the right.

Spread throughout were several uniformed RCMP, guns tucked into holsters. Officers had removed their shoes, and the women had covered their hair with scarves — this was a mosque, after all.

The group of a few hundred had made the pilgrimage here, to Al-Falah Islamic Centre, on a relentlessly rainy night in May. Many come to this Oakville mosque every week for Friday prayers. But tonight, they also gather for a state of the union of sorts.

It had been just over a month since the barrage of news stories about Islamic terrorism, some hitting too close to home. The London, Ont., boys in Algeria. The Boston bombings. The alleged plot to derail a Toronto-bound passenger train.

The congregation was going through an anxious time, some dreading a reprise of post-9/11 discrimination. Many feared reactionary anti-terrorism laws, and all were eager to stop the extremism that has contorted their faith.

Joining the conversation was a panel of politicians and law enforcement, mostly RCMP.

“The last few weeks have been quite, I guess, concerning. To all the communities,” Supt. Doug Best, the assistant criminal operations officer with the RCMP’s National Security team, told the congregation not long before the meeting paused for prayer.

An odd sight in a house of worship, RCMP officers have nonetheless become increasingly frequent guests in some of Ontario’s well over 100 mosques. For the last few years, the force has been making a concerted effort to reach out to members of the province’s Muslim community by attending town hall meetings, organizing outreach events, or just stopping in at mosques for prayers.

The aim of face-to-face visits is to build trust — and mend relations — with a community that has reason to distrust law enforcement.

A working relationship appears to be developing. In April, when the RCMP arrested Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier, who allegedly plotted to derail a Toronto-bound passenger train under Al Qaeda’s direction, the force claimed the investigation was prompted by a tip from an imam.

The day of the arrest, the RCMP gathered about two dozen GTA Muslim leaders at their airport detachment, informing them of the plot before a news conference would tell the country.

The move was in part made to thank the leaders for helping to foster a trusting relationship. But they also had to be prepped for a firestorm — a questions from within the community, inquiries from the media, calls for stronger anti-terrorism laws.

“The main thing was just to say ‘We’re with you on this,’” Sgt. Derek McDonald, the RCMP’s national security and community outreach co-ordinator for Ontario, later said about the briefing. “We’re going to stand together because it’s going to be a tough time, for the community and for us.”

Despite the tensions — trust issues, suspicion, false assumptions on both sides — the province’s Muslim community and the RCMP are learning that standing together is the only way.

Getting personal

In the summer of 2010, McDonald walked through the doors of Masjid El-Noor, a tall grey and blue building near York University.

He was entering his first mosque as the new community outreach co-ordinator, and was clueless about how to act. He remembers his suit and tie clashing against traditional Islamic dress.

“I asked the imam: ‘Do you want me to just hang back and observe?’ And he said: ‘You can do that, but it will go a lot further with the group if you actually take part.’”

Masjid El-Noor’s director, Mohammad Shahied Shaikh, had wanted to introduce McDonald to the congregation. The visit fell on the day that marks the end of Ramadan, among the most important in the Muslim calendar, and the mosque was “packed,” Shaikh says.

He was proud of the community for accepting McDonald into their mosque, a place some feel should be the exclusive domain of prayer.

“I wanted the community to understand that (the RCMP) are there to do their job,” Shaikh says. “But we have put them there. When we put them there, they will be able to do their job better if we would be able to support them.”

McDonald was shown around the mosque, instructed where to kneel, and said he could pray to his own god.

“I was treated like an honoured guest,” McDonald says.

A native of Brampton and Mississauga, McDonald began his RCMP career in small-town detachments scattered across British Columbia. He moved on to the drug section of Hamilton’s RCMP before being seconded to Project O-Needle, an RCMP-FBI investigation into Canadians buying guns and surface-to-air missiles for Tamil Tigers rebels.

To prep for his new role, McDonald had to be a quick study on terrorism, and took a two-week intensive national security course.

For years, Ontario’s community outreach division was just one officer, who was also assigned to connect with Jewish, Tamil and other groups in addition to the Muslim community.

Just a few months before the so-called Toronto 18 case in 2006 — which saw a group of Toronto men convicted in connection to terrorist plans — the RCMP launched an outreach effort targeting the Muslim community. Called Citizen’s Academy, it was a six-week series of get-togethers intended to give the RCMP and Muslims a chance to interact, dispel misconceptions and discuss counter-terrorism concerns.

But even after numerous academies held at mosques across the city, misunderstandings and suspicions persisted.

In the aftermath of the Toronto 18, there simply weren’t enough resources for the interaction that creates friendships and erases bad blood, said McDonald.

Since his arrival in 2010, McDonald has added two new officers to his team, helping the force reach mosques across Ontario, except the Ottawa area, where RCMP have their own outreach program.

“You won’t build relationships through email or over the phone,” said McDonald. “It’s face time. So you might chew up a whole day driving to St. Catharines to visit a mosque … but it is the way to do it.”

His team also organizes and participates in sessions with other agencies, such as the Canada Border Services Agency, since many Muslims are suspicious of being selected for random checks by airport security.

Efforts have paid off. On the morning of the Esseghaier and Jaser arrests, McDonald managed to assemble about two dozen community leaders with little more than a few hours’ notice, a turnout he calls “phenomenal.”

“By doing all these events, and developing these relationships over the past couple of years, it’s made it so much easier just to pick up the phone. The people trust me.”

The positive reaction is in part because Muslims also benefit from law enforcement in their midst. When there are acts of violent Islamic extremism, it can taint the entire faith, and create the perception that Muslims are to blame.

“A good way to remedy that misperception is to say, ‘What do you mean? We have RCMP and CSIS come to our mosque, we introduce them to our youth, we host functions together,” says Hussein Hamdani, a Hamilton lawyer active in the Muslim community, and one of the leaders McDonald called to the April meeting.

Muslim community activist Farina Siddiqui says that since the Boston bombings, a non-Muslim friend of her daughter has repeatedly told her she can convert to another religion, one not tied to terrorism.

“What hurts us is the stereotyping of a whole community,” she says. “Especially if it’s coming from kids, it means it’s trickling down from the family.”

Siddiqui was also among the leaders invited to the meeting with police. She strongly believes in co-operation with law enforcement and initiatives that see RCMP in mosques.

“There is nothing for us to hide,” agrees Al-Falah congregant Rubina Yahya, after the town hall meeting. “We want them to see our real face. We want the police — everybody — to look at us as people who do everything that everyone else likes to do, normal people.”

‘Our best behaviour’

Positioned under a banner that read “National Security: A shared responsibility,” McDonald and other RCMP officers set up shop at Reviving the Islamic Spirit, a massive Muslim convention held in Toronto last December.

Introducing the officers to thousands in the audience, Muhammad Robert Heft, a convert to Islam who works to de-radicalize youth, expressed joy and pride at their attendance.

But the imam also acknowledged a tension not far beneath the surface.

“I just want to say that I hope we’ll be on our best behaviour,” Heft told the audience. “When you are approaching them this weekend, please say thank you, and then bring up your concerns.”

Distrust of law enforcement, Heft later told the Star in an interview, is “the biggest problem.” It stems in large part from the treatment of some Muslim Canadians in the mid-2000s, including hostile run-ins with CSIS and humiliating questioning.

Many still have fears stemming from the notorious mistreatment of fellow Muslims, such as Maher Arar — the Canadian man wrongly deported to Syria, where he was tortured. The case ultimately prompted an apology and the resignation of the RCMP commissioner.

Uneasiness about the force continued for many Muslims following what some saw as unfair treatment of the Toronto 18, particularly the lengthy periods of solitary confinement before trial.

“We’ve made mistakes, no question,” says McDonald. “Maher Arar, all these things. We have to try and learn and do better.”

The RCMP’s presence at Muslim events is still seen by some as a guise for eavesdropping and spying.

But Christian Leuprecht, associate professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen’s University, says the RCMP doesn’t have the mandate to gather national security intelligence covertly.

Since alarming rights abuses came to light in the 1970s — including that the force used break-ins, theft and arson to gather intelligence — the RCMP has not been allowed to conduct security intelligence.

That job instead falls to CSIS, which was created in the aftermath of those revelations. The RCMP gathers criminal intelligence, the information to lay charges for violating Canadian law. The separation is intended to ensure neither organization has too much power.

If the RCMP attempted to use information gathered covertly, it would likely not be accepted by a judge.

“This is why the RCMP doesn’t have an interest in going into communities and sniffing around,” Leuprecht says.

Instead, the Mounties are reaching out because they might one day need to run a criminal investigation, and require the help of community members to provide evidence, he says.

Suspicion continues nonetheless. Some in the Muslim community even say the much-touted tip that led officials to Jaser and Esseghaier might have been from an imam who believed the information was planted.

“There’s been so much talk in the community that there’s informants and agents, and there’s so much distrust that some imams might be under the impression that that information came to them as a test to see if they were willing to pass it along,” says Heft.

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There is also concern that there might now be too much pressure on imams to be vigilant.

“The role of the imam, if we see it in the proper context, is to provide counselling and guidance,” says Mubin Shaikh, a former undercover informant for CSIS who helped make the case against members of the Toronto 18. “We don’t like the idea that imams, priests, rabbis turning people into the authorities.”

Shaikh, an active member of Toronto’s Muslim community, acknowledges that imams should report suspicious activity, no question. But he also worries that amped-up watchfulness within the mosque could push radicalism underground, making it harder to monitor.

Heft shares that concern, worrying that youth with questions about jihad might think twice about going to their imam, and instead go online, where they could be influenced by violent and extreme videos.

Mohammad Shahied Shaikh, imam at Masjid El-Noor and Mubin Shaikh’s father, said going to authorities with a real safety threat is the right thing to do. But some situations are still “a grey area.”

Because he is well known as a mediator in the community, Muslim parents concerned about their children’s thinking often come to Mohammad Shaikh. Some youth he’s treated have thought, for instance, that it is acceptable to steal from non-Muslims — something he thinks should be corrected through counselling and education.

“Because these people have that belief, it does not mean that I should be able to turn around and call the police and tell them,” he says.

Heft is concerned the public may have an unrealistic expectation of what imams are capable of knowing.

“When people think that we’re out there, yeah, we’re out there, but there might be a thousand people in each congregation, and it’s finding a needle in a haystack.”

McDonald denies there’s extra pressure on imams, saying they have the same obligation to raise the alarm about suspected terrorism as any other Canadian.

“We all have a duty as citizens.”

Winning over kids

Sirens blast down the residential streets in Toronto’s Keele and Eglinton area on a sunny June morning. Two police vehicles have pulled up near the Silverthorn Community School playground, and from one cruiser’s rooftop megaphone comes the muffled voice of a small child, giggling and singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

“I hope the neighbours are understanding,” says a chuckling Const. Jim Lambe, a Toronto police community officer, as he watches children clambering into the cruisers and pushing every button they can.

Sixty-two kids have been bused in from two nearby mosques for a crash course in police work. They’ve run fitness tests, marched in unison, and seen tools used by the RCMP’s Emergency Response Team, including an oh-so-cool remote-controlled camera.

They don’t seem to mind school on a Saturday.

“I like the police uniforms, and ours,” says Amara Sahoneh, 9, admiring the gold and navy t-shirt proclaiming him a “Junior Police Academy Cadet.” Nearby, 6-year-old Zara Jabbi talks excitedly about seeing the police cars.

Of the outreach programs, the Junior Academy program is evidently the most fun. Its purpose is simple: give kids a positive experience with the police.

For some Muslim immigrants to Canada, there can be a general distrust of authorities. Many have heard of or experienced unfair treatment by police and government authorities in their home countries, and their uneasiness about law enforcement can then be passed on to children.

“We are immigrant families. We usually don’t get used to police,” says Mariemusa Jikineh, the imam at Caledonia mosque, a congregation that includes immigrants from Gambia, Senegal, Somalia and Ethiopia. “This is a chance to show children that police are not all bad, that they are here to protect, not to abuse.”

“We’ve got so many diverse cultures coming into Canada,” says Staff Sgt. Maj. Robert Akin, who has attended every Junior Academy to teach children how to stand and march as a group. “We want them to know about the institution, about who we are and why we do what we do.”

The first Junior Academy was held a few years ago in Hamilton, hosted by the North American Spiritual Revival, a Toronto-based not-for-profit promoting the understanding of Islam as a peaceful religion.

The group has since regularly partnered with the RCMP and other agencies, including CSIS and the Department of Justice, for events aimed at older youth.

Hamdani, the Hamilton lawyer who is vice-chair of NASR, says outreach programs are eye-opening for both sides.

“We believe that the various agencies may have some stereotypes about Muslims in general, and Muslim youth in particular, so this is a chance for them to get to know the Muslim youth community.”

Teens and young adults are an important group, often targeted by radicals.

“They tend to be the most skeptical, the most ill-informed, and the most in need of balanced views on politics and religion,” says Heft, the imam who works to de-radicalize youth.

Here too, both communities are hoping face-to-face meetings will curb extremist thinking. Heft has initiated a program that sees law enforcement and young men, aged 16-30, play soccer together. He’s hoping to arrange other sports events.

The hope is to spark a dialogue, Heft said — even if it means respectfully debating police. He tells youth it’s OK to have grievances, “you just have to be able to channel them in a way that displays honour and integrity towards your religion.”

Muslim organizations, in turn, are enlightening law enforcement through sensitivity training, says Yusuf Badat, vice-chair of the Canadian Council of Imams.

For instance, if police come to the door of a devout female Muslim, she may refuse to open it if it is a male officer, with whom she may feel she should not communicate. Through training, police have learned to attempt to provide a female officer in such a situation.

Efforts like these are strengthening relationships, Badat says.

“Where we see sincerity and genuine concern, then we do see that the trust is building up. There are certainly people in the community who just feel (the RCMP’s outreach) is superficial and it’s not with good intentions … But overall, the community seems to be responding well.”

A police truism — an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure — is put to the test through outreach. McDonald is aiming for a few more ounces by initiating an intervention system.

Programs in the United Kingdom and Australia aim to curb violent extremism at its earliest stages by providing social services, such job opportunities or counselling, to youth showing signs of extremism. McDonald is in talks with Muslim Family Child Services Ontario to try to jumpstart something similar.

Abdul Qayyum Mufti, a Toronto imam who helped organize the meeting at Al-Falah mosque in May, says that was a central purpose of the town hall.

“Let’s start from the root, the first sign,” he says.

As McDonald puts it: “The problem is that when someone who is radicalized to violence comes to the attention of the RCMP, they have already crossed the line.

“I need to find out earlier.”

Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca or 416-869-4894