The Muslim Brotherhood's Influence in Canada

Parliament Hill Ottawa, Canada. Credit: Ron Przysucha

 

"The Ikhwan [Arabic for 'brethren'] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers [Muslims] so that it is eliminated and God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions."

From a 1991 memo of Muslim Brotherhood domination strategy

 

"[Canada has become] a hub for Muslim Brotherhood affiliated organizations that are exerting significant influence in Canadian civil society, academia, politics and government."

"[Many of whom have received funding from the government of Canada despite] verified ties to extremist entities, including Hamas."

"[The Muslim Brotherhood's] sabotage strategy [is clandestinely materializing in Canada]."

Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) report 

ISGAP Urges Canadian Government to Designate Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Organization

 

The long-lived transnational Sunni Islamist movement with its goal of creating a global caliphate based on Sharia law is widely thought of as the most influential and largest Islamist group in modern history. The network is supported by powerful states like Qatar and Turkey. Both violent and non-violent forms of jihad are championed by the Brotherhood in achievement of Islamist supremacy. Its Egyptian founder Hassan al Banna stated in 1928: "It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet."

 

Al-Banna, a dedicated antisemite, and admirer of Adolf Hitler, had a pathological hatred for the West, Israel and Jews. Thought of as the "intellectual father of modern day jihad", Brotherhood idealogue Sayyid Qutib's radical prose outlined the ideological foundation for the Salafist jihadi movement, such that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri of al-Qaeda were inspired to spawn terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Islamic State.

 

The Muslim Brotherhood is "the world's incubator of modern Islamic terrorism", "the world's most dangerous militant cult", wrote Cynthia Farahat, an Egyptian-American counterterrorism expert, in her book, The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood's Industry of Death. In the 1970s officially renouncing violence to achieve its aims, its support for terrorist groups and its actions in effect yet remain violence-oriented. Hamas was created in 1987 out of the Brotherhood whose international leadership directed its branches globally to support the terrorist group.  

 

The very term 'Islamophobia' was popularized by the Brotherhood for the purpose of delegitimizing criticism of its Islamist ideology, with the intention of equating it with antisemitism, according to a leading scholar on the Middle East and Islam in the West, Gilles Kepel. Its success has enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to claim the moral high ground through implicating suspicion of Islam with victimhood. At the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation attempted to have criticism of Islam declared a universal crime.

 

Recently leaked, a French government report offered the most detailed official study of the Brotherhood's modus operandi and its European presence. The findings were ominous: the Brotherhood seeks to achieve its religio-political goal of gradual societal transformation; with plans to conquer not merely France, but the entire world of the West; findings that happen to reflect those of a similar 2015 U.K. government investigative report. Both France and the United Kingdom have effectively been flooded with a voluminous Muslim presence; the banlieus in France are unapproachable; both governments are wary of offending their Muslim demographics.

 

Canada presents as an ideal host for the Brotherhood given its permissive environment in the face of a newly fragile national identity courtesy of a decade of Liberal rule, its permissiveness of group-bloc votes, multiculturalism, wokeism and flagrantly oblivious immigration intake, including refugees and illegal migrants. The ISGAP report reveals an extensive ideological infrastructure the Brotherhood has furnished within Canada, through charities, schools and mosques, enabling it to infiltrate civil society and influence policy-generation under the mantle of religious and educational action. 

 

Marc Lebuis, the director of Point de Bascule, an organization tracking jihadist movement in Canada. testified before a 2015 Senate committee, revealing that a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader in Canada had inspired Muslims to work toward influential positions in government and the justice system and from that vantage point, put a halt to applying legal provisions incompatible with sharia law. 

 

In April, Jordan took the step of banning the Brotherhood which in effect posed a governing challenge to the Hashemite kingdom, joining Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates all of which had pre-dated Jordan's step by years previously. The sole western country to have banned the group is Austria. Designating it as a terrorist organization may yet eventuate shortly in the United States, where it is deeply engrained in the political and social fabric of the country. 

 

It is imperative that Western countries recognize the danger represented by the Brotherhood, a recognition that now prevails in the Middle East. Its ideology promotes hatred, rejecting liberal democratic values and rejecting western justice. Their corrosive world view undermines social cohesion, fomenting division and radicalization where it establishes itself. In Canada, government should begin the process by eliminating public funding to its affiliated groups, and prosecute those who commit crimes, blacklist terror-financing fronts and publicly reject the entire Brotherhood apparatus. 

 

Photo by GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP