On October 19 in Ottawa, two men who learned about Islamist movements in captivity asked Canada a question its government has yet to answer. Mohamed Fahmy spent 438 days in Egyptian prisons. Theo Padnos spent nearly two years as a hostage of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. In a panel with Brian Lee Crowley, founder of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, the two activists launched the Fahmy Foundation’s Canada Act Now campaign.
If governments across the Middle East, Europe, Muslim-majority countries—and now the United States—have deemed the Muslim Brotherhood and its various branches serious enough to warrant terrorist or extremist designations, why has Canada not undertaken a transparent and comprehensive examination of the organization and its networks here?
During the panel, Fahmy presented the following question: “If governments across the Middle East, Europe, Muslim-majority countries—and now the United States—have deemed the Muslim Brotherhood and its various branches serious enough to warrant terrorist or extremist designations, why has Canada not undertaken a transparent and comprehensive examination of the organization and its networks here?”
It is the right question. It is also the one Ottawa least wants to hear.
The Witness Cairo Made
Fahmy earned his standing on the Muslim Brotherhood the hard way. In December 2013, Egyptian police arrested him and two Al Jazeera English colleagues in Cairo. Prosecutors accused them of aiding a terrorist organization, meaning the Brotherhood, and of spreading false news. Press-freedom groups around the world condemned the trial, and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pardoned Fahmy in September 2015.
Egypt held him in the terrorism wing of Scorpion Prison, alongside the Brotherhood’s leadership, including its Supreme Guide, Mohamed Badie. He shared meals with them, talked with them for months, and watched young detainees being drawn into their ideology. Years earlier, while working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, he had conducted unescorted interviews with Brotherhood and Fatah al-Islam detainees in Lebanese prisons. Note the irony. A man Cairo jailed as a Brotherhood helper came out as one of the movement’s best-informed critics. In December 2025, he urged Ottawa in the National Post to designate the group a terrorist entity.
Padnos, the foundation’s head of research, was abducted near the Turkish border in October 2012 and held by Jabhat al-Nusra, then led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who now governs Syria as President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Freed in August 2014, Padnos has since worked with families of young Canadians who left to join jihadist groups in Syria. “Radicalization rarely begins with violence,” he said in the launch release. “It begins with ideas, grievances, isolation and a search for identity or belonging.”
Canada Stands Apart
Other governments have addressed the issue. Egypt designated the Brotherhood a terrorist group in 2013; Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates followed in 2014. Jordan outlawed it in April 2025 after security forces tied a Brotherhood leader’s son to an explosives operation. On January 13, 2026, Washington designated the Egyptian and Jordanian branches for their material support to Hamas and named the Lebanese branch a Foreign Terrorist Organization. In March, it added the Sudanese branch. On October 8, the European Parliament voted 381 to 167 for an EU strategy against Brotherhood “entryism” and asked member states to put Brotherhood-linked people and groups on the bloc’s terrorist list. Britain’s 2015 government review concluded that “membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism.”
Canada has done none of this. Its own list of terrorist entities describes Hamas as having “emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Ottawa lists the offspring. It has never examined the parent.
What the Auditors Found
Fahmy’s case does not rest on foreign examples. In December 2015, the Canada Revenue Agency opened an audit of the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), the country’s largest grassroots Muslim charity. Over 13 months, auditors made 30 site visits, conducted 27 interviews, and reviewed about 1 million financial transactions across 60 bank accounts, plus 415,874 emails, according to a 2023 Ontario Superior Court ruling. The agency’s preliminary letter recommended suspending MAC’s charitable status and cited political links to the Brotherhood; two former directors had advised Mohamed Morsi.
The Fahmy Foundation’s February analysis of the file drew out its most striking finding: members of Middle Eastern Brotherhood branches could transfer into MAC, and back, almost automatically. Fahmy told CTV on October 21 that the arrangement works like “a university-style exchange.” MAC calls the audit discriminatory and says its charitable status was neither suspended nor revoked; the courts called its challenge premature. The audit answered a tax question. The security question it raised has not been put to any public review.
Others have reached similar conclusions. On the morning of the launch, the National Post reported on a nearly 200-page study by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy tracing Brotherhood-linked influence in Canadian charities, campuses, and elections. The Middle East Forum’s Joe Adam George has warned that Washington sees Canada’s Brotherhood problem as a threat to North American security.
What Ottawa Should Do
Fahmy is precise about what he is not asking. “This is not about targeting Muslims or restricting legitimate religious or political expression,” he said in the launch release. “It is about applying the same scrutiny to Islamist movements that we apply to any organization whose ideology, financing or networks may pose a threat to Canadians.” An Egyptian-Canadian Muslim journalist making that case is hard to dismiss as a bigot, which is precisely why his campaign matters. Three things follow.
First, Ottawa should commission the review Fahmy asks for: public, comprehensive, and modeled on Britain’s. Once it exists, he told CTV, investigators can “track money transfers” and “the members who fly in and out.”
Second, Ottawa should test each Brotherhood branch Washington has designated against the listing standard in section 83.05 of the Criminal Code. Canada already lists Hamas. The branches Washington designated for supporting Hamas deserve the same examination.
Third, Ottawa should fund the prevention work Fahmy studied in Britain: early intervention, one-on-one mentoring, and the religious literacy that lets a counselor answer a recruiter who twists scripture.
Fahmy told CTV his greatest fear is that Brotherhood ideas become “normalized” in Canada and that a movement outlawed in much of the Arab world comes to see the country as “a safe haven.”
He paid 438 days for the right to make his case.
Canada should answer him.
