Designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization

"We need urgent action by our government to protect all Canadians now. Designate Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization now."

"[The Muslim Brotherhood is a] real and immediate threat [to Canada's democracy]."

"Canada will undoubtedly fall [if the government does not act against] Canadian Islamist organizations connected to the Muslim Brotherhood."

Amir Epstein, Tafsik executive director

 

"Chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood purport to be legitimate civic organizations while, behind the scenes, they explicitly and enthusiastically support terrorist groups like Hamas."

U.S. Treasury Department  

The White House

"The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, has developed into a transnational network with chapters across the Middle East and beyond.  Relevant here, its chapters in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests. "

"For example, in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attack in Israel, 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."

"A senior leader of the Egyptian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, on October 7, 2023, called for violent attacks against United States partners and interests, and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood leaders have long provided material support to the militant wing of Hamas.  Such activities threaten the security of American civilians in the Levant and other parts of the Middle East, as well as the safety and stability of our regional partners."

The White House  

B'nai Brith and other Jewish groups have called on the government of Canada for years, to list the Muslim Brotherhood as a  terrorist organization. Those calls have increased since the terrorist attack in southern Israel of October 7, 2023, when six thousand Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PLFP and Fatah streamed across the border from Gaza in an orgy of sadistic mass rape, torture and slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, along with the  hostage-taking of 250 children, women, the elderly civilians, soldiers and foreign farm workers.  

"Unlike Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved and learned the hard way that the use of violence will be met with superior violence by state actors. The clever thing to do, it now turns out, was to be patient and invest in a bottom-up movement rather than a commando structure that risked being wiped out by stronger forces."

" Besides, the gradualist approach is far more likely to win the prize of state power. All that Khomeini did before he came to power in Iran was to preach the merits of a society based on Islamic law. He did not engage in terrorism. Yet he and his followers took over Iran – a feat far greater than bin Laden ever achieved. In Iran the violence came later."

Ayyan Hirsi Ali, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Washington 

Policy Alert: New Report Sheds Light on Muslim Brotherhood Terror Ties  Foundation for Defense of Democracies

 

More latterly, members of the Jewish advocacy group Tafsik called on Canada's Liberal government to finally follow the lead of the United States in designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. While the MB does not itself act as a terrorist group, it is the founding enterprise that has launched countless terrorist groups whose violence on display with the hard power of jihad complements the MB's jihadist soft power. Hamas itself is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

 

By stealth and presenting as a reasonable alternative to democracy's secular rule, the Muslim Brotherhood portrays Islam as a gentle, peace-loving religion, omitting its instructions to the faithful to dedicate themselves to jihad, Islam's deep drive to convert the world to the worship of Islam through a type of proselytism unique to its founder, the Prophet Mohammad who launched countless wars of conquest, a heritage that encompassed the Middle East, stretched into North Africa, India, Spain, France and the Balkans.

 

Originating in the 1920s in Egypt, the century-old movement employs gentle 'suasion, establishing mosques, hospitals and social centres in the non-Muslim-majority countries it enters to extend its goodwill and influence as far as its  tentacles can reach. And they reach the very heart of governments, social welfare, elite society and the news media through operative contacts made by its adherents with key sympathizers.  

 

The U.S. took the step last month of designating the Lebanese, Egyptian and Jordanian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, giving them the status of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. A report prepared last year by two French civil servants for the government of France issued a warning that the Muslim Brotherhood movement represented a "threat to national cohesion within the country". France is a country overrun with Muslims, and among them are ample numbers of groups hostile to French values, laws and culture. 

 

Groups linked with and originating from the Muslim Brotherhood, recognized as terrorist organizations, have been listed as such in Canada, including Hamas which, according to the listing identifies Hamas as having "emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987". According to Middle East researcher Thomas Juneau, the Muslim Brotherhood is a complex movement with individual chapters in multiple countries worldwide. Its very complexity in relation to its offshoots makes it difficult to list the MB. 

"[Some of those offshoots are] undeniably [terrorist organizations, but others are not]." 

"Even individual chapters are often more loose movements than unified groups."

"Some Muslim Brotherhood groups are clearly not violent, they are clearly not terrorists."

"They adhere to a fairly conservative and pious version of political Islam, but they are not terrorists."

Prof.Thomas Juneau, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa  

Imam Mohammad Tawhidi/Imam of Peace, while acknowledging the complexity of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity, nevertheless pressed Canada to make the move to identify it formally as a terrorist group as a reflection of its stealth influence, its undeniable links to violent groups that reflect its totalitarian quest for dominance using the hard power of jihadist terror, while behind the scenes as an innocent, well-meaning interlocutor for Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood does its part on the 'diplomatic' front. 

 

 

"Just because they are difficult to put a finger on, and it's somewhat technically challenging to designate the entire organization ... it does not mean that we do nothing about it at all."

"Ultimately, the Muslim Brotherhood will be designated. The question is, when will the courageous people, the lawmakers, take this stand?"

Mohammad Tawhidi, Imam of Peace 

The Glib Lies of Politicians

"The government will always stand with  you. It is not enough to protect the Jewish community. It is not enough for Jewish Canadians to live without fear. Canada is not Canada unless all members of the Jewish community can fully participate in all aspects of Canadian life."

"This is about thriving. This is about taking the light and spreading it today, across our country and through generations, so this is the last generation that has to struggle against hate."

"[Hanukkah] represents the resilience of the Jewish people, but also the contributions of the Jewish people to our society, to all societies, to humanity. And I will always be here with you, and I will not rest until we've moved from protection to thriving."

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

Rabbi Chaim Boyarsky welcomed Prime Minister Mark Carney and Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stéphanie Plante as the ceremony marked the start of Hanukkah. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

 

Statistics Canada reports that the majority of hate crimes recorded as having been reported to police throughout 2023 were aimed at Canadian Jews, representing 70 percent of the total reported, while the Muslim population were the targets of 16 percent of those hate crimes. Beyond ironic since most of the hate crimes perpetrated against Canada's Jews were led by Muslims, Muslim and Palestinian groups and organizations, relentlessly. Any 'hate crime' reported against Muslims would rarely be the fault of Jews and far more likely to be from other Muslim-disaffected Canadians reacting to the Islamist cult of jihad. 

 

Mark Carney, Canada's current prime minister, repeats ad nauseum the same condemnatory mantra his predecessor did from the heights of the Liberal government pulpit; when the pro forma condemnation of antisemitism is uttered by either of these men in reaction to reports of continual egregious threats against the Canadian Jewish community, they speak of deploring racist antisemitism against Jews and 'Islamophobia' against the Canadian Muslim population, as though the two could possibly be equated. One scurrilous assault after another from the latter, qualifying it as the proponent of antisemitism yet portraying themselves as 'victims'.

 

According to the Ottawa Police Service, while hate crime statistics have been fewer through 2024 in comparison to the year before -- in the direct wake of the Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine launching a mass slaughter in southern Israel on October 7 of 2023 when 'pro-Hamas'/'pro-Palestinian' groups came out in force to publicly celebrate the savagery perpetrated on Jews in Israel, accusing Israel of 'genocide' while calling to 'globalize the Intifada' and chorusing 'Final Solution!' -- it has been Canadian Jews who were most victimized, with 113 reported cases last year.

 

For the past two years and more, Jews in Canada have been isolated, vilified, threatened, private businesses vandalized, synagogues fire-bombed, parochial schools fired at, and Jewish citizens have had to put up with gangs of masked, keffiyeh-clad marchers on the streets of mostly Jewish-occupied homes where their privacy and sense of security is challenged time and again by shouts of ridicule and threats to their very existence in the country they've called home for centuries.

 

There has been no government action at any level -- federal, provincial or municipal -- to shut down the violently disorderly and threatening conduct that makes life a misery for Jewish residents and citizens. Police protect the protesters as exercising their Charter rights to free speech, while Jews seeking to counter the marchers' slanderous claims are chastised and advised that their presence and challenges to the demonstrators will be construed as provocations. 

 

A rabbi speaks to mourners at a tribute outside Bondi Pavilion in Sydney on Tuesday, honouring victims of the Bondi Beach shooting. (David Gray/AFP/Getty Images)

 

This is the social/political aura under which Canada's prime minister, like that of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese govern, extending protection to the Palestinian/Muslim populations that have flooded their countries in the past several decades, while leaving their Jewish populations to fend for themselves, having to take extraordinary precautions of self-defense in erecting barriers around synagogues and community centers, and hiring security guards to protect the Jewish presence, where congregants are harried and threatened as they enter synagogues and children mocked as they attend schools.

 

In Sydney, Australia, this Jew-baiting, threatening situation has culminated in a terrifying gunfire attack against Jews celebrating the Festival of Light -- Hanukkah -- on Bondi Beach on Sunday, where two gunmen, a father and son openly supporting Islamic State shot to death 16 people; children, the elderly, rabbis, while 40 other revelers were injured, many critically. There were heroes who placed themselves deliberately in danger to forestall the massacre; a Jewish man and wife who grappled with one of the attackers and died in the effort. A teen-age girl who used her body to shield two much younger children. A non-Jewish man who tackled one of the attackers and disarmed him, while sustaining multiple bullet wounds.

 

In Canada, as in Australia, there is no honour in the mealy-mouthed assurances of their political leaders, who have made no effort at any time to realistically put a stop to the continual and ongoing public displays of antisemitic ridicule, threats, slander and outright criminal acts. Words of support and condemnation of hatred and threats come easily, however. The sanctimony of the betrayers of trust.

 

Olivia Mellcovsky stepped up the ladder as the prime minister held it so she could light the first Hanukkkah candle. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

 

 

The Issues: Parole for Plotting Violent Jihadist Attack: Current Risk to Society

"You voluntarily engaged in actions that could have resulted in the death of dozens of people. You have chosen terrorism to target human rights, democracy and the rule of law. By your acts, you have threatened the dignity and security of human beings."

"You acknowledge your responsibility for the crimes you committed, although you tend to minimize your responsibility and to be defensive when your actions are questioned."

"Since your return to the community, you have demonstrated a willingness to avoid using violence and forcing  your ideas in your exchanges."

"You do not express any deep commitment to an extremist ideology .. you do not demonstrate strong and pervasive political views likely to have an impact on risk."

"You wanted to be considered by the Muslim community as a hero who stopped the war in Iraq."

"Given your overall progress, your CMT [case management team] is of the opinion that your release plan is realistic, structured, gradual and can be endorsed because it currently contains the necessary steps to achieve your objectives."

"After a careful analysis of your case, the board grants you full parole. It is the board's opinion that you will not present an undue risk to society if released on full parole."

Parole Board of Canada -- June 28, 2023

Muhammad Shareef Abdelhaleem, key architect of the Toronto 18 terrorism plot. Photo by Postmedia 

In their great wisdom the Parole Board of Canada decided that 'an undue risk avoidance' is manageable for this 47-year-old Muslim-Canadian whose deep resentment against Canada for engaging with its peer nations in the joint effort to contain the deadly violence threatened and carried out by extreme Islamist groups, justified plotting against the country in a determined strategy to wreak havoc and death as divine punishment. A more prosaic, preventive punishment was meted out to Shareef Abdelhaleem, a software engineer who transformed himself into a vengeance-dealing jihadist.

He was sentenced to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of a plot to detonate truck bombs in and around Toronto, to storm Parliament in Ottawa, to take hostages and to behead the prime minister in the infamous Toronto 18 terrorist plot of 2006. A young Muslim man had volunteered to infiltrate the jihadist plot group and to gather evidence for the investigating RCMP, a move that helped investigators to gather the evidence required to round up the plotters and bring them to justice before any of their plans saw action.

Now, according to the parole board, this man has made satisfactory progress in rehabilitation, rejects extremist ideology, attended deradicalization programs and is prepared to reintegrate into society. He has enrolled in a college course and there has gained good grades. The Government of Quebec has been paying him financial assistance of $650 weekly. In another year and a half his courses will be complete, it seems. He will graduate and become independent of social assistance.

On parole, he is enjoined by two conditions imposed, not to be in a position of responsibility or leadership in any spiritual or religious activities or groups who share the same beliefs; and he is not to associate or communicate with anyone he knows or has reason to believe is involved in criminal activity or radicalized activity. Taqiyya -- (literally "prudence, fear") is a precautionary dissimulation or denial of religious belief and practice...

 

Arrested in 2006, Abdelhaleem was convicted in 2011, granted day parole in 2021, and graduated to living in a Quebec halfway house. His day parole was extended for another three months, followed by a hearing before his request for full parole was decided. He appeared before the parole board on June 27 by videolink, the decision announced the day following.

 

Born in Egypt, his was "a typical Middle Eastern family". His family moved around to different locations in the Middle East, travelled to England, and then emigrated to Canada. They had permanent resident status, and in 1993 Abdelhaleem became a Canadian citizen. A year later he enrolled in a four-year university computer science program but dropped out to establish a computer software business in 1995.

 

Attending a mosque regularly to reconnect with his Islamic background, he met other young Muslim men who were agitating for jihad against the West, and was attracted to their radicalized terror plots. A recent psychological assessment found his risk of general violence was reduced to low, noting positive progress since his release on day parole and making note of his acceptance of democratic values. 

 Notable: in a previous assessment, his case management team advised against his release.

"It was the opinion of the Board that the seriousness of your actions and their potentially devastating nature called for caution."

"The Board concludes that you will present an undue risk to society and your release will not contribute to the protection of society by facilitating your reintegration into society as a law-abiding citizen on full parole."

Parole Board of Canada, September 14, 2022

"Abdelhaleem talked about fleeing the country 15 days before the attack [perhaps to his sister’s house in Cleveland] in order to avoid suspicion. In the next, he talked about being sentenced to ten years at Kingston Penitentiary, where he will be considered a leader by other Muslim inmates. He also explained to me that when he thinks about being arrested, it is only after the fact, after the bombings. He never imagined that the arrests would happen before the bombs were detonated." "Abdelhaleem relished in the carnage they would cause. One of the three selected targets, the CSIS headquarters in downtown Toronto, 'will be affected from the main floor to the top floor', Abdelhaleem said. 'There will be blood, glass and debris everywhere.' In his words, the attack will be dubbed 'The Battle of Toronto'."

Informant's testimony at Abdelhaleem trial

Shareef Abdelhaleem watches as a Crown attorney questions a witness during a Toronto 18 trial in 2010.