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ISGAP argues that networks established in Western democracies can provide resources that may later be deployed in support of Islamist movements in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan.
Published Aug 28, 2026
Canada’s political institutions, charities and universities are facing renewed scrutiny over alleged Islamist influence networks after a new report accused Muslim Brotherhood-linked organisations of pursuing a long-term strategy to build institutional power from within the country’s democratic system.
The nearly 200-page study, released on Monday by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), argues that activity linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada should not be viewed as a collection of unrelated organisations or isolated controversies. Instead, it describes what it calls a transnational strategy of “entryism” – gradually establishing ideological, political and institutional influence through existing civil society, government and educational structures.
The report, titled “Assault on Democratic Values and Principles: How Islamist Entryism Weakens Civil Society and Higher Education in Canada,” builds on ISGAP’s earlier research into alleged Muslim Brotherhood influence in the United States and other Western countries. It argues that Canada presents a particularly important case because of its open political system, extensive civil society and relatively limited national disclosure requirements for foreign funding in higher education.
ISGAP says the strategy it identifies is rooted in the gradual accumulation of influence rather than direct confrontation. It uses the Arabic term tamkeen, or empowerment, to describe the process, arguing that networks seeking influence can gain legitimacy by participating in institutions, forming political alliances, cultivating relationships with universities and charities, and shaping public debate.
The report traces the intellectual history it attributes to the Brotherhood from its founder Hassan al-Banna through Sayyid Qutb and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, while placing particular emphasis on two documents, “The Project”, dated 1982, and the 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum”. ISGAP says those texts illustrate a long-term strategy of building influence through social, political, educational and financial structures in Western societies.
That interpretation is central to the report’s argument: what might appear to be ordinary political advocacy, charitable activity or community participation can, it contends, form part of a broader network whose influence becomes visible only when individual organisations and relationships are examined together.
The study identifies four principal areas of concern: ideological and strategic development, political and electoral mobilisation, civil society and regulatory oversight, and higher education.
In the political sphere, ISGAP examines Muslim organisations and voter-mobilisation campaigns operating around federal elections. It highlights the Canadian Muslim Vote and the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council, and says Muslim voter mobilisation focused on dozens of closely contested constituencies.
The report points in particular to the 2025 federal election, when a campaign it describes as “Vote Palestine” secured endorsements from 344 candidates belonging to four political parties. ISGAP argues that efforts concentrated on between 60 and 80 competitive constituencies gave organised Muslim voters influence beyond their numerical size in some races.
The report presents such mobilisation as evidence of an effort to translate community organisation into political leverage. But electoral participation itself is not evidence of extremist activity, and the report’s interpretation of political mobilisation is one of the areas where its broader allegations would require scrutiny beyond the study’s own findings.
Its examination of federal institutions is similarly controversial. ISGAP points to networks involving Muslim federal employees and to engagement between Muslim advocacy organisations and government bodies, arguing that access to public institutions can provide a route to influence policy and institutional decision-making.
The study also focuses heavily on Canada’s regulatory system for charities and non-profit organisations. It cites the Canada Revenue Agency’s examination of the Muslim Association of Canada, which produced preliminary findings in 2021 and a final decision in 2023, and highlights concerns it says emerged around foreign political activity, financial matters and organisational links. It also discusses cases involving the Muslim Association of Canada and the Islamic Society of North America Canada.
ISGAP argues that regulatory interventions have produced compliance measures or financial penalties without necessarily stripping organisations of charitable status, and questions why public funding and institutional relationships have continued in some cases.
But the report’s interpretation of the Muslim Association of Canada’s regulatory history is strongly disputed by the organisation itself, underscoring the contested nature of some of ISGAP’s wider conclusions.
In a response to the report, the Muslim Association of Canada described it as “nothing more than recycled Islamophobic tropes dressed up as research”, calling it a “biased, unsubstantiated hit piece” that relied on what it said were discredited allegations.
MAC said those allegations had themselves been challenged by the Ontario Superior Court over their apparent bias. It also disputed ISGAP’s account of the Canada Revenue Agency examination, saying the audit had been completed and that preliminary questions concerning alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood were dismissed from the CRA’s final conclusion.
“MAC is a solely independent Canadian organisation,” the association said, rejecting the report’s portrayal of it as part of a broader Muslim Brotherhood network. It accused ISGAP of amplifying narratives designed to “fuel Islamophobia and sow division within Canadian society”.
The competing accounts point to a central difficulty in assessing allegations of Islamist influence: the same organisational relationships, regulatory records and forms of civic engagement can be interpreted very differently depending on whether they are viewed as evidence of an interconnected ideological network or as legitimate participation in Canadian public life.
The report’s most consequential section, however, concerns universities. That dispute also provides a backdrop to ISGAP’s broader examination of Canadian institutions, where the report argues that apparently separate relationships between charities, political organisations, universities and government bodies can take on a different significance when considered as part of a wider network.
It argues that Canadian higher education has become a meeting point for foreign funding, academic partnerships, student activism, faculty networks and institutional decision-making. Among the cases examined are relationships involving the University of Toronto, Toronto Metropolitan University and the University of Waterloo.
At Waterloo, ISGAP identifies more than C$3.8 million in Qatari state-linked research funding and estimates that associated scholarships and sponsored students bring the wider value above C$10.5 million. The report argues that the absence of a comprehensive national system requiring Canadian universities to disclose foreign gifts and contracts leaves the public with limited visibility into the terms of some international partnerships.
That concern goes beyond the question of any particular donor. ISGAP says universities should disclose not only the value of foreign funding but also provisions relating to research access, intellectual property, curriculum, institutional governance and student or institutional data.
The report’s argument is therefore broader than a conventional investigation into extremist organisations. It asks whether foreign funding, political advocacy and academic partnerships can combine to create forms of influence that remain difficult for governments to identify because each relationship appears legitimate when examined separately.
ISGAP Executive Director Charles Asher Small said the issue was not simply the presence of individual extremist voices but the way interconnected networks could acquire legitimacy, institutional access, public funding and political influence.
“Canada’s challenge is not simply the presence of individual extremist voices or isolated institutional weakness. The report maps how interconnected ideological networks acquire legitimacy, institutional access, public funding, political influence, and protection from scrutiny,” Small said.
The report calls for a much more assertive response from Ottawa, including closer coordination with Washington and investigations by Public Safety Canada and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service into organisations and networks it identifies as potentially linked to the Brotherhood.
It also proposes a national system for disclosing foreign funding received by universities, charities, research institutions and civil society groups, as well as risk-based reviews of international academic partnerships.
Other recommendations include stronger scrutiny of charities and non-profits, greater transparency around campus organisations and external relationships, and a regulatory review of the Canadian Islamic College covering its governance, funding, curriculum and institutional ties.
ISGAP says Canada has lagged behind countries including the United States, France, Britain and Austria in conducting government-level investigations into alleged Muslim Brotherhood networks. It argues that the absence of a comparable national inquiry has allowed questions about individual organisations, funding arrangements and political campaigns to remain compartmentalised.
The report is part of a broader ISGAP campaign on Islamist influence and foreign funding. Its earlier Canada study, released in 2025, similarly called for the Canadian government to investigate organisations it described as linked to the Brotherhood and to consider designating the movement as a terrorist organisation.
The latest study goes further by presenting what it says is a systemic picture of institutional influence, rather than focusing primarily on individual organisations.
That distinction matters for the political debate now facing Ottawa. Canada’s pluralist system is deliberately designed to allow minority communities to organise, advocate, vote and participate in public institutions. Muslim political mobilisation, charitable activity or international academic cooperation are not, in themselves, evidence of an Islamist strategy.
The more difficult question is whether particular networks have used that openness to pursue undisclosed foreign or ideological objectives, and whether Canada’s existing regulatory and security mechanisms are capable of distinguishing legitimate civic participation from covert influence.
The report also raises a wider question about the relationship between Islamist movements and the Arab world. ISGAP argues that institutional networks established in Western democracies can provide financial resources, political relationships, media platforms and international legitimacy that may later be deployed in support of Islamist political movements in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan.
In that reading, influence in Canada is not merely about Canadian politics. It can become part of a wider transnational infrastructure capable of shaping international perceptions, mobilising diaspora communities and influencing Western governments’ responses to political crises in the Middle East and North Africa.
The argument is likely to remain contested. Organisations identified in reports of this kind have generally rejected broad allegations of ideological conspiracy or infiltration and characterise their activities as legitimate civic, political, religious or charitable participation. The report’s findings and interpretations therefore face a significant test: whether Canadian authorities, independent researchers and the organisations concerned reach the same conclusions when the underlying evidence is examined.
For Ottawa, however, the controversy highlights a policy problem that extends beyond the Muslim Brotherhood. Foreign funding, political mobilisation and institutional influence have become increasingly difficult to separate in an interconnected society.
The central challenge is not simply whether Canada should allow outside actors to participate in its public life. It is whether that participation is sufficiently transparent for citizens and institutions to understand who is financing influence, who is exercising it and what interests are ultimately being advanced.
ISGAP’s report seeks to turn that question into a national-security issue. Whether Canadian policymakers accept that framing, reject it or pursue a narrower transparency agenda may determine how seriously Ottawa treats foreign-funded ideological networks in the years ahead.
