Report traces alleged Muslim Brotherhood influence in Canada

‘Under the radar, Canada is being infiltrated,’ says the founder and director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy

An anti-Israel protest outside Concordia University in Montreal on Oct. 7, 2024. Photo by John Mahoney/Montreal Gazette/Postmedia

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A new report alleges that the Muslim Brotherhood is infiltrating Canadian institutions through various non-profit organizations and universities, a trend that it frames as part of a broader transnational ideological strategy.

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In a sprawling 200-page study, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) argues that, through an organized campaign of pro-Palestinian activism and anti-Islamophobia rhetoric, the Brotherhood and other groups are helping to foment antisemitism in Canada. The organizations, the report alleges, are often funded through highly sophisticated financial channels that run through Qatar, and have embedded themselves in some of Canada’s biggest universities.

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“Under the radar, Canada is being infiltrated,” said Charles Small, founder and director of ISGAP.

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The report comes after the New York-based ISGAP’s separate study last year, which asserted that the Muslim Brotherhood was systematically influencing various U.S. institutions, and called for the group to be designated as a terrorist organization. (Days later, the Trump administration indeed said it would designate certain chapters of the Brotherhood as global terrorists.)

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The Muslim Brotherhood is a movement that began in Egypt in the 1920s and, at its root, seeks to establish core Islamic values as a foundation for society. Today, the group has multiple chapters spread across the Middle East, each with differing compositions and objectives.

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Various Middle Eastern nations, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have outlawed the Brotherhood and designated it a terrorist organization. Canadian lawmakers have faced pressure domestically to also designate the group as such.

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The ISGAP report argues that the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to embed pro-Islamism into Canadian life primarily through “entryism,” or the act of changing institutions — cultural, governmental, educational, or others — from within.

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Canada, with its preference for multicultural ideals and lax immigration laws, is particularly susceptible to such efforts, Small said. While the report cites Canadian organizations that avoid the more radical Muslim Brotherhood values, it asserts that many such charities and advocacy groups push specific transnational interests, often under the guise of inclusivity, Pro-Palestine activism or efforts to combat “Islamophobic” ideas.

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“The Muslim Brotherhood manipulates and uses these democratic principles and our cultural institutions in a way that allows them to enter into our society, to enter into higher education, to enter into the Muslim community, to create mosques and civic organizations that are radicalized,” Small said.

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Researchers in France have raised similar concerns recently about the Muslim Brotherhood’s entryism there, warning that it threatens to undermine the country’s secular identity. British authorities have raised similar alarms about the group, but so far have done little to stem its influence. Internal Muslim Brotherhood texts like the 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum,” the ISGAP argues, explicitly outline plans to reshape Western society, including Canada, from within.

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The ISGAP report cites groups like the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council (CMPAC) and The Canadian-Muslim Vote (TCMV), which it says have become organs for mobilizing muslim voting bases in Canada. Those groups, it says, have been “employing a targeted riding strategy across 60 to 80 federal constituencies where the Muslim population approaches or exceeds the margin of victory,” in which they back candidates specifically on their Palestine and Islamophobia positions.

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CMPAC’s executive director, Khaled al-Qazzaz, was former foreign affairs secretary to former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, and the former president of the Brotherhood’s political arm in Egypt in 2011 and 2012. The ISGAP report indicates that a 2024 CRA filing by TCMV lists a board member who was formerly the head of another Canadian organization with alleged past ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, although the organization has repeatedly denied those allegations.

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In response to National Post’s questions about the report’s allegations of CMPAC’s connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization dismissed those claims outright, saying it has “no ties with any foreign entity.”

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“The ISGAP report lacks credibility and is full of biased claims that makes it more of an Islamophobic propaganda piece than research,” it said. “CMPAC is a non-for-profit Canadian organization that advocates for civil liberties and against Islamophobia in Canada.”

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The CMPAC spokesperson said also that the organization was “very concerned about rising anti-semitism, Islamophobia and hate in Canada,” and said it is a domestically-funded non-profit group.

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“CMPAC relies entirely on Canadian funds from individuals, private granting organizations and events’ sponsorship. CMPAC does not receive any funds from any foreign entity.”

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The CMPAC said Al-Qazzaz had worked for “one year as a staffer in the first democratically-elected government of Egypt, working on Egypt’s new human rights agenda and the development of Egypt’s new foreign policy vision.” Al-Qazzaz served as Morsi’s foreign affairs minister before he was arrested and imprisoned in 2013 alongside others who were alleged to be aligned with the Morsi government. Al-Qazzaz was never charged, but was held in the maximum-security Tora Prison for nine months before he returned to Canada in 2016.

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In response to National Post’s request for comment, a lawyer representing TCMV called the ISGAP report “inflammatory” and said it was calling on the organization to retract its assertions.

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“TCMV has sent a Notice of Libel to ISGAP seeking a retraction and apology for these allegations,” Jeff Saikaley, partner at law firm Caza Saikaley, said in an email. “TCMV will consider any republication of these allegations to be defamatory and will take appropriate legal action should this occur.”

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On its website, the TCMV calls itself “a national, non-partisan charity empowering Canadian Muslims through civic engagement and education” that says it does not “endorse parties, tell you how to vote, lobby politicians, or preach religion.”

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In his response to National Post, Saikaley said TCMV’s mandate was to “empower Canadian Muslims through civic education, political engagement, and leadership, fostering an informed and active community that contributes to Canada’s democracy. That means encouraging everyone, including our community, to get involved in Canada’s democratic system.” Saikaley said that TCMV has not targeted between 60 and 80 ridings in an effort to mobilize Muslim voters, as the ISGAP report said, but said it “encouraged all Canadians, including all Canadian Muslims, to get out and vote.”

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The report also highlights a handful of universities — the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo and Toronto Metropolitan University — where “consistent concerns are identified.” Those include what ISGAP sees as limited foreign funding disclosures, a lack of disclosure on intellectual property contracts and the “use of campus environments as platforms for sustained mobilization, coalition-building, and narrative development,” among other things.

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The report finds that Qatari financing activities, particularly through its soverign Qatar Investment Fund (QIF) or Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF), have increasingly backed Canadian university programs that often have limited disclosure rules overseeing them. It lists numerous examples of Qatari-backed research projects into strategic fields like smart grids, carbon systems and secure communications. Many of the specific research arrangements at TMU, Waterloo and University of Toronto, for example, don’t disclose details around matters like intellectual property rights, data access or contractual terms, the ISGAP report said.

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Further, many Canadian campuses have become hotbeds for pro-Palestine sentiments, with leadership at those same universities often opting to actively silence pro-Israel events, the report alleges.

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In response to the National Post’s questions, a University of Toronto spokesperson confirmed that the institution has received 11 research grants worth a total of $1.76 million from the QNRF over the last decade, focused on projects ranging from whiplash trauma to “geobiological process in the sabkhas of Qatar.” The $1.76 million in grants, the spokesperson points out, is a mere 0.01 per cent of the $13.3 billion the university and its partner hospitals have recieved over the same period.

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“The university is not subject to foreign influence via research awards, donations or partnerships,” the spokesperson said in an email. “The university has robust policies that protect the academic integrity of the institution and safeguard research independence and autonomy, and all partnerships and funding agreements comply with these policies and with Canadian laws and regulations.” The spokesperson, who declined to identify themselves, said the report’s claims that University of Toronto campus groups and student push anti-Israel ideas are “without merit.”

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University of Waterloo spokesperson Anne Galang said the institution did not independently verify the ISGAP’s claims (the report said it has received $3.8 million on five projects from various Qatari backers), but said U of W has set out clear principles to guide its international research partnerships.

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“We are committed to safeguarding research, and we comply with Canadian government research security requirements,” Galang said in an email.

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Toronto Metropolitan University did not respond to National Post’s questions.

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Muslim groups in Canada have repeatedly claimed that allegations of their ties to extremist groups are themselves an example of Islamophobia.

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The ISGAP report names the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) as a key example of how it says non-profit and other organizations based in Canada can advance ideologies or interests sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood’s cause.

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It cites the Canada Revenue Agency’s preliminary audit of the MAC, in which the financial regulator alleged that some of MAC’s activities “appear to be in furtherance of the Muslim Brotherhood organization,” and also that many of the charity’s activities were not explicitly charitable in nature.

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While the final result of the audit was never publicized, the CRA’s initial 150-page assessment was later released. In that assessment, reviewed by National Post, the CRA drew from financial records and correspondences between 2011 and 2015 that the CRA had indicated some of MAC’s top leaders were actively involved in activities of the Egyptian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. It also details how the CRA alleged that members of the Egyptian and other chapters of the Brotherhood could immediately become MAC members upon coming to Canada. In its assessment, the CRA also said the MAC had expanded its real estate property holdings from $12 million in 2006 to more than $51 million by 2015, enough that the federal agency took the position that the expansion was of an unstated or non-charitable purpose. These things, the agency said, often were in direct contradiction to the group’s claims.

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“There appears to be a significant difference between what the [MAC] represents it stands for and the activities that it appears to conduct,” The CRA stated.

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MAC, for its part, had argued that the CRA had conflated its support for The Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna, and the explicit goals of the wider Brotherhood as an organization.

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“The ISGAP report is nothing more than recycled Islamophobic tropes dressed up as research,” The MAC said in an email. “It is a biased, unsubstantiated hit piece that relies on discredited allegations that were themselves challenged by the Ontario Superior Court for their apparent bias. It amplifies narratives designed to fuel Islamophobia and sow division within Canadian society.”

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The group did not speak specifically to any alleged connections between the MAC and Muslim Brotherhood that the CRA initially raised in its preliminary findings. However, the MAC said in its email that those alleged Brotherhood connections were “were dismissed from the CRA’s final conclusion.” The MAC did not have its charitable status removed following the audit, and continues to operate today.

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The MAC had initially sought to block the CRA’s audit through the Ontario Superior Court in 2023, but the lawsuit was ultimately rejected. While Justice Markus Koehnen was sympathetic to some of the MAC’s arguments, he ruled that the court should not be intervening in the audit process.

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The ISGAP report calls for several policy changes, including greater oversight of academic partnerships with foreign entities at universities; giving financial auditors more powers to review non-profits and charities; and greater transparency for foreign funding to universities.

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Small said that Canada culturally is blind to entryism from foreign interests including by the Muslim Brotherhood, in part because the general population is largely unfamiliar with those entities’ geopolitical aims.

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“In the West — in Canada, but in other Western democratic countries — we don’t really understand what the Muslim Brotherhood is,” Small said. “It sounds like a benevolent organization. It’s a nice name, (but) we don’t understand the ideology, the goals, the religious worldview of the Brotherhood, what the strategic and military or philosophical underpinnings are, and they have mastered us.”

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In Canada, the government has not yet acted on efforts from third parties to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. That is largely because it is difficult to differentiate the current-day activities and mandates of various Muslim Brotherhood chapters.

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While some divisions of the Brotherhood are “undeniably” terrorist outfits, many others are clearly not, Thomas Juneau, a Middle East researcher and professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, told National Post earlier this year.

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“Some Muslim Brotherhood groups are clearly not violent, they are clearly not terrorists,” Juneau said at the time.

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In 2025, the U.S. government designated the Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity, saying that they “support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests,” according to the White House’s executive order.

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Following the Oct. 7 attack on Jewish civilians, “the military wing of the Lebanese chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood joined Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian factions to launch multiple rocket attacks against both civilian and military targets within Israel,” the executive order said.

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