Since I live in the town where six CF18s departed for sunnier climes today, this is something that has concerned me for a while. The Canadians, bless their cottons, have little experience of dealing with domestic terrorism. We had the IRA (mostly before my military time) and then the Lee Rigby incident to sharpen our senses. I stopped wearing uniform in public a few weeks ago unlike most other personnel here.
Despite our best efforts to always appear PC and not come across as racist I'm afraid this latest bunch of nutbags (I mean IS/ISIS/ISIL) are making it harder every day. I try my hardest to treat everyone the same and not view people with suspicion based on thier appearance but that is getting harder by the day.
It is not the politically acceptable thing to say but any Muslim is going to be increasingly viewed with suspicion by people in Western countries. Both the Islamic communities in these nations and governments need to wake up and address the problem before hate crimes start happening.
Just my opinion of course but I have a family to look after so sorry if I appear to be xenophobic!
BV
