The Globe & Mail has a disturbing look at the family life of some of the Toronto terror cell broken up by Canadian authorities. Although the particular strain of Islam espoused by terrorists does its best to oppress women, it turns out that the wife of the cell leader believed so much in holy war that she wanted to make it a condition of their marriage:

When it came time to write up the premarital agreement between Zakaria Amara and Nada Farooq, Ms. Farooq briefly considered adding a clause that would allow her to ask for a divorce.

She said that Mr. Amara (now accused of being a leader of the alleged terror plot that led to the arrests of 17 Muslim men early this month) had to aspire to take part in jihad.

"[And] if he ever refuses a clear opportunity to leave for jihad, then i want the choice of divorce," she wrote in one of more than 6,000 Internet postings uncovered by The Globe and Mail.

Wives of four of the central figures arrested last month were among the most active on the website, sharing, among other things, their passion for holy war, disgust at virtually every aspect of non-Muslim society and a hatred of Canada. The posts were made on personal blogs belonging to both Mr. Amara and Ms. Farooq, as well as a semi-private forum founded by Ms. Farooq where dozens of teens in the Meadowvale Secondary School area chatted. The vast majority of the posts were made over a period of about 20 months, mostly in 2004, and the majority of those were made by the group's female members.

The wives spent a lot of time on the Internet, wheedling and cajoling their readers to support and to wage jihad on Western society. Farooq wanted a baby badly, and she wanted to name it after a Chechen Islamist commander killed by the Russians. Her dream was to have her children follow in his footsteps, apparently all the way to the grave. She called openly for death by crushing for gays in Muslim societies, and she posted a prayer to Allah for the Jews to be crushed as well. Crushing, apparently, gets big play in the Amara/Farooq household. Canada doesn't fare any better in Farooq's tightly wound world. She repeatedly refers to our northern neighbor as "this filthy country". and explicitly declared in one message that "we hate Canada".

Cheryfa McAulay Jamal doesn't think too highly of Canada, either. She derides the secular nature of Canadian society, advising young Muslims not to vote or participate in its politics. She also finds membership in the United Nations objectionable -- something that might amuse the UN's critics here in the US -- and opposes the rights given to Western women. She used the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Somalia to urge her young readers to violent jihad on a number of occasions.

The portrait painted by the G&M are of an angry subculture that praises oppression and opposes the freedoms that they exploit to pursue their recruitment to jihad. It also paints them as rather naive and foolish; they obviously never considered the trail they left behind them of missives and screeds that support the image of militant jihadis. They may not mind that image, but their husbands will find it very inconvenient when they come to trial.

UPDATE: I forgot to credit Newsbeat1 with the hat tip -- sorry!

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