It reported, variously, that the two young Muslim men “may have attended the mosque” or more vaguely that “at least one of those (two) attended mosque in London, Ont.”

There are, in fact, two main mosques there, the London Muslim Mosque and the Islamic Centre of Southwest Ontario. The CBC and the other media that followed the story could not seem to keep the two apart (a telling sloppiness when it comes to Muslims and their institutions).

Neither place had anything to do with the youth, one of Arab ancestry and the other a Greek Orthodox converted to Islam. But by Tuesday morning, the idea had taken hold, especially on commercial radio, that the two got radicalized frequenting a mosque, the mosque or mosques.

“That sent shock waves in the community,” Munir al-Kassem, the imam of the Islamic Centre, told me. “We asked around, and nobody in either mosque had heard of these two. No one recognized either name.”

He and Rob Osman, chair of the Muslim Mosque, called a news conference to say so and also condemn violence, of all kinds.

This is by now a familiar ritual.

News breaks that someone with a local connection is involved in terrorism somewhere. Accusations are hurled that mosques, imams and madrassahs are inculcating a jihadist culture, which is said to be an inevitable byproduct of Islam that’s deemed violent. Demands are issued that all Muslims condemn, condemn, condemn “homegrown radicalism,” “extremism,” “fundamentalism,” etc., even if they have had nothing to do with it and may, in fact, be as vehemently opposed to such traits as anyone else.

“This raises significant issues about the media and our popular culture,” says John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and the current president of the American Academy of Religion.

Author of several books on post-Sept. 11, 2001, issues, Esposito told me that he has been following coverage of the London youth.

“A report like that comes and there’s a knee-jerk spreading of collective guilt on all Muslims, and the media descending on a mosque in the vicinity of where the young person or persons may live or may have lived in the past.

“This puts an unprecedented pressure on the Muslim community and their mosques and religious centres. They have to constantly disassociate themselves with the bad actors, even though they may have had no connection. It places them under a constant 24/7 anxiety.

“We don’t do this with other people — force a community from where a pedophile or a murderer may have come, to declare, ‘We are not all pedophiles,’ ‘we are not all murderers here.’”

The CBC has since identified a third London youth who allegedly crossed over to the dark side and joined a militant group in North Africa. A Korean Canadian, he was raised a Catholic but was also said to have converted to Islam.

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