Rubio Push to Label Muslim Brotherhood a Terror Group Tests Carney’s Palestinian Statehood Stance
Islamist Front Groups’ Surge in Canada Poses a New Challenge for the Western Alliance
With Prime Minister Mark Carney’s surprise recognition of a Palestinian state still reverberating in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s pledge this week of ongoing legal work to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization sets up a direct test of whether Ottawa will align with its closest ally on a transnational movement long tied by American lawmakers to Hamas financing, radicalization, and political subversion — or risk deepening a posture critics say panders to an influential Islamist diaspora base in Canada’s largest cities.
National security experts such as Casey Babb of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute warn that the Brotherhood’s self-described “civilization-jihadist process” — outlined in a 1991 strategy memorandum entered as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing case — aims to “eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within” and is now rapidly gaining strength, “materializing just north of the U.S. border.” Babb cites Canada’s “shockingly permissive immigration policies, multiculturalist ethos, and general complacency toward national security threats” as fertile ground for the Brotherhood’s ambitions.