We knew they were tapping our phones and watching our every move, but we didn’t care, we didn’t have anything to hide so we didn’t worry about it very much.  But then one day a militia unit appeared outside our sons’ Islamic school with full combat gear including gas masks and rifles, on a city street, pretending to practice maneuvers by crouching down and pointing their rifles, then laying down and pointing rifles, etc, at the command of their trainer.  All this transpired in front of the bay window of the kindergarten class where my 5 year old was and my 7 year old happened to be playing during recess. The children were quite disturbed; one boy even started to cry and moved back to his seat in fear saying to my son, “the Americans might shoot me”.  Another boy entered the room when he heard they were there, to look for himself and declared “Oh, oh, Canada isn’t safe anymore.”

I tracked down the secret drill hall around the corner the next day to find out who did this and subsequently wrote a letter to “our local Member of Parliament” Wajid Khan, the same MP who initially reported my husband to CSIS for allegedly declaring that Canadian soldiers were in Afghanistan raping Muslim women.  My husband and I have both had a history with this man, of difference of opinion.  My husband has challenged why a politician should use a masjid as a political soapbox, and I myself have called the owner of our mosque to ask him why he continues to ambush us in the Eid prayer with this man begging for votes and spewing rhetoric.  I wrote to him asking who ordered 32 Battalion, a unit training for and serving tours in Afghanistan, to commit such an act of terrorism against our children, just to prove to the community that this ‘Muslim’ was useless to us as an Ummah, and I said to him in the email, “We’ve all heard your bark, now let’s see what’s behind your bite!”

Well, about 3 months later, a SWAT team raided our house, more uniforms and guns to frighten our children.  Is this why we were targeted?  Because we dared to challenge partisan politics and warn the people that supporting a system that removes Sovereignty from Allah and place it in the hands of the people is an act of Shirk?

JUS: I understand that authorities raided your home on the day he was arrested.  Can you please tell me about this?

Sister Cheryfa: It was Friday, June 2nd, 2006.  My husband was at the door holding the hand of my 18 month old son, on their way to the ‘Asr prayer when they opened the door and were overcome by the raid. I heard a terrible sound of men yelling over and over again, and thought for a moment some of my husband's friends were playing a joke at the door, but then it got louder, and I realized they were coming into the house, but I didn't have a Hijab within reach.  I didn't know what to do as I was just putting a clean diaper on the baby (8 months) and couldn't leave him on the couch or without his diaper.  I kept yelling "What is that?" several times, getting more and more anxious and angry as it got louder and louder. My toddler came screaming into the living room without his father as they came into the house and down the hall, splitting off through the kitchen to converge in the living room as more swarmed down the hall to the bedrooms.  My children were terrorized by more than a dozen SWAT men storming the house and climbing over the back fence pointing loaded rifles at all of us screaming at the top of their voices "GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!!! GET ON THE FLOOR!!! GET ON THE FLOOR!!! GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!!! GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!!!GET ON THE FLOOR!!!" ]

They continued to scream at us for about 2-4 minutes while I refused to get off the couch and leave my 8 month old precarious and half diapered, as he would roll off and fall on the floor if I left him. I screamed and swore and screamed some more at them to stop terrorizing my children, but they only systematically inched forward a small step at a time until about 7 of them were surrounding us and pointing their rifles at my head, still yelling their order "GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!!! GET ON THE FLOOR!!!" (the children had by then run screaming to me in terror). My three boys aged 7, 5 and 21 months had gathered up onto the arm and the back of the couch beside me, trying to get away from them, but the wall prevented them from going any further.  All four were screeching at the top of their voices in terror, my oldest screaming, "What do they want?! What did we do?!!"