He Wanted to Blow Up a Synagogue. Then 9/11 Changed Everything

At 17, Mubin Shaikh was a regular Canadian teenager. A few years later, he had embraced a jihadist worldview, learned to see non-Muslims as enemies and even fantasized about blowing up a synagogue.Then came September 11, 2001. His first reaction to the attacks shocked even him, and forced him to confront what he had become.In the first part of this extraordinary East to West conversation, Mubin takes Sarah Martinez-Amir inside the process of radicalization: how a search for identity became extremism, why jihadist ideology can feel morally righteous to a young person, how religious texts are manipulated to justify violence, and why 9/11 ultimately sent him searching for a different understanding of Islam.This is the beginning of a story that would eventually lead Mubin back into the world of jihadist extremism, this time undercover.