Does Canada have an extremism problem?

For most, the mention of this mild-mannered country, known mostly for its ice sports, maple syrup and natural resources, does not bring to mind images of rampant corruption or extremist ideologies.

Canada is classified as a democratic First World nation, with an economy advanced enough to take part in the Group of Seven. Its armed forces have fought against Islamic terrorism, communism and fascism. Yet today, its battle with extremism is much closer to home.

In 2011, then Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned that even a decade after 9/11, radical Islam still posed a threat to Canada.

Today, it appears his warning is more relevant than ever. Recent developments in both the Conservative and Liberal parties of Canada point to a trend of tacit acceptance toward Islamic extremist ideology.

On August 24, Member of Parliament Erin O’Toole won the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race, with 57 percent of the vote. M.P. Peter MacKay came in second place at 43 percent. O’Toole is looked on positively by many Canadians, who see him as an agent of change. He has spoken out against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s inaction on China and the ongoing conflict of interest scandal plaguing the Liberal Party.

However, beyond his repeated claims of being a “true blue” conservative lies a concerning lack of action against the spread of radical Islamic and anti-Semitic beliefs in Canada’s government.

This problem is not totally unique to Canada. It bears some resemblance to how United Kingdom Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitic views were exposed in the lead-up to the 2019 general election. Yet there are two important differences: For one, the problem has not been discussed by any major media; second, the problem is not confined to one left-wing party. It affects both of Canada’s major parties.

O’Toole’s campaign chair is one example. On the surface, Walied Soliman is a highly decorated and successful Toronto lawyer. He is the global chair of legal firm Norton Rose Fulbright. He also served as campaign chair to Patrick Brown, who led the Conservative Party from 2015 to 2018.

Among Soliman’s many connections is the Muslim Brotherhood—chiefly through an organization called the Muslim Association of Canada (mac). This organization was named in a Royal Canadian Mounted Police search warrant, which discovered it had sent nearly $300,000 to the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (irfan-Canada), a designated terrorist organization. irfan-Canada was designated as a terrorist organization in April 2014 after losing its charitable status in 2011 for funneling $14.6 million to Hamas-backed terrorists between 2005 and 2009.

Besides sending money to designated terrorist groups, mac runs a network of mosques known for extremist rhetoric. One video emerged showing an assistant imam praying, “Oh Allah! Purify the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews!” and “Oh Allah! Count their number; slay them one by one and spare none of them.” The meaning of the words has been disputed, but regardless of which translation one believes, it remains provocative.

mac has had other incidents of hate speech as well. It has hosted Abdurraheem Green, an imam living in Birmingham, England, who once told the New Zealand Herald that “dying while fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise and Allah’s good pleasure.” He has advocated stoning and forced amputation, punishments in Sharia law. On another occasion, mac invited the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Imam Ekrima Sabri, to speak. He has called Jews “cowardly creatures” and spoken highly of child suicide bombers. “The younger the martyr, the greater and the more I respect him,” he told Egypt’s Al-Ahram Al-Ahrabi newspaper in 2000.

In 2019, mac recognized Soliman as its Global Citizen Laureate. Soliman is also currently involved with the growing field of Sharia law-compliant Islamic finance, which he has worked to advance for over a decade. Knowing this, Ontario Premier Doug Ford appointed him chair of the Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce, a consultation aimed at “modernizing” provincial investment and regulatory rules for the first time in 15 years and “supporting economic growth and job creation.”

Conservative Party connections to the Muslim Brotherhood do not stop with Soliman.

Member of provincial parliament Kaleed Rasheed is a supporter of Islamic Society of North America, which had its charitable status revoked for a year due to funding the Pakistani terrorist group Hizbul Mujahideen. Yet even more overt is his support for the Al-Qazzaz Foundation, which he promoted in an April 17, 2019, speech at the Ontario legislature. He stated that the organization is committed to “social justice” and “equity of access and outcome.” What he did not say is that the organization has Muslim Brotherhood links.

Khaled al-Qazzaz, the charity’s founder, served as foreign relations secretary for Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president who ruled from 2012 to 2013. Qazzaz was imprisoned when Morsi was driven from power. His brother-in-law, a Canadian citizen named Ahmad Attia, campaigned for his release. Attia is a member of mac. Peter MacKay, who came second in the Conservative leadership vote, later appointed Attia as his Muslim liaison minister.

The Conservative Party may be trying to gain favor in the eyes of Canada’s approximately 1 million Muslims, who account for 3 percent of the national population. More than half of this population lives in Ontario, Canada’s most industrialized province.

Yet the Conservatives are not open to all Muslims. Salim Mansur is a Muslim who has devoted his life to writing about the dangers of radical Islam. Growing up in India, he personally experienced the Indo-Pakistani war, losing members of his immediate family. He arrived in Canada as a refugee and began working as a journalist and an academic, warning about the dangers of Islamic extremism.

“I came to Canada. I went to university. I did all of that. And then, suddenly, I see the very people who had brought the disaster in the part of the world from where I fled were now ensconced right here in Canada,” Mansur said in an interview with True North Canada. “So I started talking about it. I started writing about it.”

Mansur had been on his way to joining the Conservative Party in Parliament when he was abruptly dismissed in June 2019 on the grounds of his views being “Islamophobic.”

It’s not only the Conservative Party that has partnered with radical Islam. Liberal politicians have plenty of connections to extremist organizations as well.

The most prolific is M.P. Omar Alghabra. While working for Human Concern International, he arranged for $68,820 to be given to irfan-Canada, the designated terrorist organization. From 2004 to 2005, he served as president of the Canadian Arab Federation (caf), a charity tasked with helping resettle Arab immigrants arriving in Canada. The group derived 74 percent of its budget from taxpayer money—about $1 million. In 2009, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney stated in an e-mail that this group was “radical and anti-Semitic,” calling the government’s funding of it “shameful.” That same year, the government cut off its funding. In 2014, the group launched an appeal against this decision. However, the court only found more evidence of extremism: caf officials had compared Israelis to Nazis, encouraged murder of Jewish children, and held an essay contest on the subject of “ethnic cleansing” in Israel. Alghabra was not the head of the caf when this happened, but Kenney told the National Post that Alghabra “criticized my decision to defund caf.”

This is not the only revealing criticism Alghabra has made. In June 2005, he wrote a letter to former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, criticizing his involvement in the “Walk for Israel” charitable event. Also that year, Alghabra opposed an anti-terrorism bill while accusing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service of “systemic errors” in profiling potential terrorists.

Shortly before this, at the death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004, the caf under Alghabra’s leadership took a positive view of Arafat’s legacy, publishing a press release expressing their “sorrow and regret.”

Alghabra’s views do not appear to have shifted in recent years. On Dec. 1, 2019, he attended the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People hosted by the Arab Palestine Association of Ontario. Part of the program featured children dancing to songs promoting anti-Semitic violence. An outgoing member of the Green party was also present. Neither made any statements condemning the event.

While Alghabra is one of the most well-known supporters of these views, he is not the only one. Another Liberal member of parliament, Iqra Qalid, has also attended anti-Semitic events. In 2018, she represented the Trudeau government at a celebration of Land Day hosted by Palestine House.

Land Day is symbolic of the Palestinian Authority’s desire to wipe Israel out and claim the land for itself. Six years earlier, in 2012, Palestine House lost its government funding after Jason Kenny identified its “pattern of support for extremism.”

Acceptance of radical Islam in Canadian politics touches even the Canadian prime minister himself. Three years before being elected, Justin Trudeau spoke at an irfan-sponsored event, the annual “Reviving the Spirit of Islam” convention in Toronto. This was in 2012, one year after the cra had revoked its charitable status. At that time, Trudeau was running for leadership of the Liberal Party. He dismissed critics of his decision as “short-sighted.”

Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have faced backlash for allowing these connections to continue. The current liberal government is mired in controversy, albeit for a different reason.

For two months, Prime Minister Trudeau has battled through a conflict-of-interest scandal. It began when he appointed WE Charity, an organization focusing on humanitarian issues abroad, to handle a financial relief program for unemployed Canadian students during coronavirus. However, it later emerged that the prime minister, his wife, brother and mother had been paid tens of thousands to speak regularly at charity events.

If the Ethics Commissioner finds Trudeau guilty, this will be the third time since his election in 2015.

Not long after, Finance Minister Bill Morneau was also implicated in the scandal. In violation of the Conflict of Interest Act, Morneau’s family accepted a free trip by private jet to WE Charity’s property in Kenya. His daughters regularly spoke at the charity’s events. This led to Morneau’s resignation as finance minister and exit from Parliament on August 17.

The next day, Trudeau prorogued Parliament until September 23. This could trigger a crisis whenever Parliament does return—possibly even an election.

Looking at the corruption and confusion reigning in Canada’s government right now, it can be easy to either lose hope or to want to ignore the problems altogether. Many Canadians are distant from the troubles of Parliament, and assume that life will go on as it always has. But will it?

The Trumpet is different from other news websites because its forecasts about the future are informed by Bible prophecy. What could the Bible, a book written thousands of years ago by authors in the Middle East and Asia Minor, have to say about modern-day Canada? As Herbert W. Armstrong, author of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, wrote: “An exciting, pulsating, vital third of all the Bible is devoted to prophecy. And approximately 90 percent of all prophecy pertains to our time, now.”

He went on to prove in detail that Britain and the British people come from ancient Israel. This includes former colonies and dominions, such as Canada.

Prophecy is for our day, and the Bible records a stark warning for the U.S. and Britain, including Canada. This same book also gives the only real solution to current troubles.

Is there a solution to the widespread corruption plaguing both parties in what has been one of the world’s most stable democracies?

Politicians are unable to offer lasting solutions to curb corruption, stamp out extremism, or to fix any other problem mankind faces. At the best, they can stave off these problems temporarily. God describes our failure to deal with these problems: “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment” (Isaiah 1:5-6).

What does this inaction on our societal ills lead to? The prophecy continues, “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers” (verses 6-7). Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains this in his free booklet on Isaiah: “Our cities in the United States and Britain will be burned by fire from rioting within. ‘Strangers,’ or Gentiles, within and without will play a major role in devouring our land.”

Could this happen in formerly peaceful, open, democratic Canada? Prophecy says it will. The entire world, including Canada, the U.S. and Britain, will experience a time of “great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21).

Canada has been blessed with stability, peace and wealth, but it is gradually losing those blessings. Our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy will make plain the reason why. It will show you that beyond the coming suffering there is a bright future for Canada, Britain, the United States and all nations. It will give you hope that no politician can.