Barbara Kay: Canada needs to have a serious talk about the Muslim Brotherhood
Nevertheless, investigations carried out elsewhere are available to us. For example, in 2021 a European Parliament committee produced an in-depth analysis of Muslim Brotherhood activity in Europe. More recently, a classified French report the group's plan to take over Europe was leaked to France's Le Figaro; writing on the subject, the Free Press's Simone Rodan-Benzaquen observed, 'The Brotherhood operates as a political project. Its goal is not sudden revolution, but gradual transformation.… And it is not coming just for France. It is coming for all of the West.'
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The U.S. has known all about the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology since a damning 1991 memorandum by the group detailing its Islamist aims and methods surfaced in the next decade during the Hamas-centric Holy Land Foundation trial. Before the Trump era, a cone of silence, similar to Canada's, had been placed over it. (Barack Obama naively believed he could make the Brotherhood an ally.)
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In 2017, Congress held a hearing on whether the Muslim Brotherhood should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization, but a proposal to criminalize it failed to materialize due to divisions in Trump's first administration. Now, lawmakers are trying again: early this month, a new bill was introduced to Congress with promising bicameral support.
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Unfortunately, the chances of Canada's present government following suit — or even committing to a Europe-style investigation — are nugatory to nil.
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My certainty springs from the concerning fact that on June 6, in Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney chose MAC as his audience for a multiculturalism-themed Eid al-Adha address. A George Washington University report by the school's Program on Extremism found that MAC proudly self-identifies as a Muslim Brotherhood legacy group. The Brotherhood also hosts foreign speakers whose discourse features antisemitism, misogyny and homophobia.
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At his address, Carney equated MAC values with Canadian values. Backlash ensued; more than one observer noted that MAC had been investigated by the Canada Revenue Agency which, in a 2021 audit document, alleged that some MAC directors and employees were involved in 'an apparent Hamas support network.'
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It's one thing for woke, virtue-signalling global marchers to be shrouded in ignorance. We can mock their credulity. The same appearance of ignorance is inexcusable in a nation's leader. Was Carney deliberately messaging acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood's claim for social inclusion under the aegis of multiculturalism? If so, that too is inexcusable, but also makes no sense. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has, like the Brotherhood, spawned numerous terrorist offshoots — Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad — was (finally) designated by Canada as a terrorist entity in 2024. Yet there is precious little daylight between the triumphalist end games of both IRGC and the Muslim Brotherhood.
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A saving grace in the era of Soviet-sponsored infiltration of the West was our freedom to educate ourselves about communism's dangers without being accused of 'Marxophobia.' It's past time we had that same freedom to hold a 'national level discussion' on the Muslim Brotherhood.
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Globe and Mail
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CBC
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Plastic pollution is still a problem. A UN meeting in Geneva is hoping to change that
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CBC
24 minutes ago
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What's up in Texas? Trump's gerrymandering push, explained
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That means "it is absolutely permissible to draw maps based on maximizing partisan advantage," said Texas state representative Brian Harrison, a Republican. "All the other Democrat states are doing it. The state of Texas should as well," Harrison told CNN on Tuesday. Why did Democrat legislators leave the state? Abbott, the governor, called a special session of the state legislature in late July with an eye to making the new boundaries law. To stop that from happening, Democrat representatives in the Republican-dominated Texas House left the state so there wouldn't be quorum, the minimum number of lawmakers required for business to proceed. Most went to Illinois, others to New York, deliberately choosing Democrat-run states to face no risk that the long arm of Texas law enforcement would find local co-operation to bring them back. Wait, what? Politicians can be arrested for not showing up to vote? On Monday, the Speaker of the House in Texas signed warrants authorizing the sergeant-at-arms to compel the Democrat representatives to attend the legislative session. Abbott then ordered state troopers to arrest them. The warrants only apply within state lines. While each legislator faces a $500 fine for each day of absence, they do not face criminal charges. However, Abbott is threatening bribery charges if the legislators use donations to pay the fines and some Republicans are seeking ways to have the Democrats removed from office. What is Trump's view of gerrymandering? The president is offering two justifications for why the Republicans are "entitled" to five more seats in Texas. He claims that the Republicans deserve more seats from Texas, and that the Democrats gerrymander their states too. " Democrats are complaining and they're complaining from states where they've done it, like in Illinois, like in Massachusetts," Trump told reporters in Washington on Tuesday afternoon. "The Democrats have done it long before we started. They've done it all over the place." Trump argued that the Republicans should hold a bigger share of House districts in Texas given the election results in 2024. Yet that's not borne out by the math. Trump took 56 per cent of the presidential election vote in Texas, while the election delivered Republicans 63 per cent of its House seats. Trump also claimed twice Tuesday that in 2024 he got "the highest vote in the history of Texas." That's simply not true. George W. Bush won a higher share of Texas (his home state) in both of his successful presidential campaigns (59 per cent in 2000 and 61 per cent in 2004), while Ronald Reagan won an even greater share of Texas in his 1984 landslide presidential win (nearly 64 per cent). Where does it all go from here? California Gov. Gavin Newsom is warning that if the Texas Republicans follow through on their gerrymandering, he'll seek to redraw his state's electoral districts as a counter measure. There are similar noises from the blue states of New York, Illinois and Maryland. If the Texas Republicans eventually get the new map confirmed, it could face a legal battle, but an uphill one, given that 2019 Supreme Court ruling allowing partisan gerrymandering.
