Hi, I'm Anne's train champs. So there's a phrase that comes up when we talk about acts of terror,

senseless violence, which implies that there can be no comprehensible reason, no sane rationale

for shooting up a nightclub or loading a truck with explosives. But terrorism experts tell us that that's not actually true.

There are real compelling reasons and motivations,

some of which we share,

which can drive ordinary people to commit extreme acts of violence.

I think the closest I ever came to traveling overseas to fight was one time I was in the

mosque with a few of my friends. Two of them, they were asked right on the spot, do you want to go to

Yemen? And they said, sure. And that was the last I saw of heard of them heard from them don't know what

happened just disappeared I was ready to go but I hadn't done enough of the

prep work so to speak my name is Mubin Sheikh I'm a former extremist turned

government level counterterrorism expert.

One of the biggest misconceptions about terrorists is that they're nothing like us.

They don't have the same feelings, values, ideals.

They've somehow parted company from the human race.

Today, on to the best of our knowledge, we're going to show you that that's not the case.

We're going to ask you to imagine an extremist who is maybe not that different from the guy next door, someone like Mubin Sheikh. I was born in a time where there was one mosque in all of Toronto.

I come from a religious family. We would go to the mosque at least once a day.

So it was me going to public school by daytime and going to Koran school by evening time

and basically setting the stage for what I like to think of as an identity crisis that would manifest acutely later on in my life.

So I was 17 and my parents were in India and I decided, hey, the family's gone, let me have a party.

And, you know, that evening, those people just started showing up, as expected, of course.

...