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Fahim Ahmad, ringleader of the Toronto 18 terror cell, will be sentenced Monday. Fahim Ahmad was an average teen who worked at Harvey’s and had a penchant for sports, movies and chasing girls. But after Sept. 11, “everything changed,” he says. Questions surfaced about his Islamic faith, which he rarely practised, and of his homeland, Afghanistan, which he barely remembered. His parents juggled multiple jobs and were rarely home, so Ahmad turned to a Mississauga mosque for the answers, seeking out those with the longest beards and largest turbans, signs of “knowledge and devotion.” He became increasingly religious, often surfing Islamist websites where Muslim teens “feeling similar alienation from school and society” talked of violent jihad. Increasingly fanatic, he followed a downward spiral that culminated with his arrest in June 2006 for being the ringleader of a homegrown terror cell, the so-called Toronto 18. In a...

Fahim Ahmad, ringleader of the Toronto 18 terror cell, will be sentenced Monday. Fahim Ahmad, ringleader of the Toronto 18 terror cell, will be sentenced Monday. Fahim Ahmad was an average teen who worked at Harvey’s and had a penchant for sports, movies and chasing girls. But after Sept. 11, “everything changed,” he says. Questions surfaced about his Islamic faith, which he rarely practised, and of his homeland, Afghanistan, which he barely remembered. His parents juggled multiple jobs and were rarely home, so Ahmad turned to a Mississauga mosque for the answers, seeking out those with the longest beards and largest turbans, signs of “knowledge and devotion.” He became increasingly religious, often surfing Islamist websites where Muslim teens “feeling similar alienation from school and society” talked of violent jihad. Increasingly fanatic, he followed a downward spiral that culminated with his arrest in June 2006 for being the ringleader of a homegrown terror cell, the s...

“I think sometimes when people’s lives get busy they forget to prioritize happiness," Taylor Swift says.   Pop stardom and artifice go hand in hand, so perhaps that’s why Taylor Swift is a rather likeable breath of fresh air. Even if you’re not down with her unapologetically girly brand of country lite — and, let’s be honest, to be truly taken with Taylor Swift’s oeuvre, which often plays like the musical equivalent of a cinematic romance starring Julia Roberts, you probably do have to be female — you never get the sense that it’s anything but the honest product of a 20-year-old with a big ol’ heart that takes a bruising sometimes but remains resolutely in love with the idea of being in love. There’s something genuine and universal about her lovelorn pop confessionals, which tend to come rendered with the sort of diarist’s details that keep the gossip pages humming with speculation as to wh...

“I think sometimes when people’s lives get busy they forget to prioritize happiness," Taylor Swift says. “I think sometimes when people’s lives get busy they forget to prioritize happiness," Taylor Swift says. Pop stardom and artifice go hand in hand, so perhaps that’s why Taylor Swift is a rather likeable breath of fresh air. Even if you’re not down with her unapologetically girly brand of country lite — and, let’s be honest, to be truly taken with Taylor Swift’s oeuvre, which often plays like the musical equivalent of a cinematic romance starring Julia Roberts, you probably do have to be female — you never get the sense that it’s anything but the honest product of a 20-year-old with a big ol’ heart that takes a bruising sometimes but remains resolutely in love with the idea of being in love. There’s something genuine and universal about her lovelorn pop confessionals, which tend to come rendered with the sort of diarist’s details that keep the gossip pages humming with spec...