Barbara Kay: New report suggests Muslim Brotherhood has plans to transform Canada

Photo by Getty Images/iStockphoto

Article content

A new report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) argues that the Muslim Brotherhood — the world’s oldest political Islamist group in the Arab world but forbidden to operate as an official political party in several Arab countries — revealed in a 1991 internal explanatory memorandum its “grand mission” to eliminate and destroy western civilization “in America and Canada,” from within. As with many things, Canada appears to be late in addressing this threat. Hopefully, not too late.

Article content

Article content

The Trump administration takes the Brotherhood’s threats seriously and has produced an admirably robust counter-terrorism strategy dedicated to a number of its chapters’ defenestration. Other western governments, responding to rising anxiety over Islam-related changes in their societies, have published reports on Islamist “tamkeen,” a doctrinal term that can mean simple “entrenchment” or the “acquisition of power to build an Islamic state based on Shariah.”

Article content

Article content

Article content

There’s been a growing awareness of the Muslim Brotherhood over the past decade. In 2015, the United Kingdom issued a report about the group concluding that, “In common with the Muslim Brotherhood elsewhere, Muslim Brotherhood-related organizations and individuals in the U.K. have openly supported the activities of Hamas.” In 2021, the European Conservatives and Reformists Group issued a report about Muslim Brotherhood networks in Europe, which warned that funding Brotherhood-related groups risked “the destruction of our own values.” And in 2025, France published an internal security report on the Brotherhood warning that the group was engaged in “entryism” — a political attempt to quietly infiltrate a societies’ institutions to gain influence and promote their fundamentalist religious agenda.

Article content

Article content

Hamas is a Brotherhood offshoot. A 2025 Global News investigation reported that about 450 people playing roles in Hamas “have ties to Canada.” Experts have testified to the Senate on the Brotherhood and its risks, and research institutes have rung alarm bells about the group. But the words “Muslim Brotherhood” have, to my knowledge, never been publicly uttered by Prime Minister Mark Carney or by his predecessor, Justin Trudeau.

Article content

Article content

In 2025, ISGAP produced a report titled, “The Growing Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on Politics, Academia, and Civil Society in Canada,” taking note of what it sees as Qatar’s expanding footprint in Canada through academic partnerships, religious endowments and energy-sector investments, and some Qatari organizations, which are under scrutiny for terrorist affiliations.

Article content

ISGAP believes the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy is a “deliberate, multigenerational effort that closely aligns with its founders’ vision of gradually transforming western society from within, primarily through nonviolent means,” and claims that, in terms of ideology, it is “fundamentally opposed to western democratic values and governance systems.”