A Toronto Muslim who worked in a shelter in Scarborough, Ontario, and knew some of the suspects in the Canadian Jihad case, says extremism is prevalent in the Toronto area.

He should know. He says he was an extremist himself, but he’s all better now.

A Toronto-area man who knew some of the 17 people charged in connection with an alleged bomb plot in Ontario says one had some fairly extreme views.

Mohammed Robert Heft claims Faheem Ahmad thought the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington were a good thing for Islam.

Heft converted to Islam in his twenties. He says he fell briefly into a radical religious mindset but then regained his perspective. That’s when he started helping troubled Muslims at a Scarborough, Ont., shelter.

He says he knows five of the suspects facing terrorism-related charges, some of whom came to the shelter. He never heard any of them advocate violence against Canadians, but he says he had a long and disturbing debate with Ahmad, 21, two months ago outside of a Scarborough mosque.

“He believed the 19 people involved in the World Trade Center bombings were martyrs and he was handing out DVDs openly of wills and testimonies of those 19 people suggesting what they did was right,” said Heft. …

Heft says a lot of young Muslims are angry and extremism is prevalent in the Toronto area. They get upset when they hear of alleged atrocities overseas in places like Iraq.

“People get emotional. Imagine if somebody came into your house and raped your family, or by mistake just blew up your family, you’d get a little angry. I mean we get angry … when the water isn’t hot in Canada or we lose our electricity for a day. So imagine what these people overseas are going through.”

So apparently we’re supposed to understand that being angry about alleged atrocities in Iraq naturally leads to a plot to blow up the CN Tower and murder thousands of people at random. Sure, makes sense. After all, they can’t drink.

How much of an extremist was this guy, anyway?

Heft knows personally about the road to religious extremism. He says when he was in the thick of it, he would have killed his own parents had they come between him and his newly chosen religion.