Mohamed Fahmy: I've seen the Muslim Brotherhood's violent ideology first hand. Canada must designate it a terrorist entity

As an Egyptian-Canadian journalist of the Muslim faith and human rights defender, I strongly urge the Canadian government to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

The story of this malicious transnational Sunni Islamist organization starts in Egypt in 1928. The ideas of its founder, Hassan al-Banna, spread globally, influencing charitable organizations, political parties and violent Islamist groups, such as Hamas.

Canada designated Hamas as a terrorist entity in 2002, but its ideological forbearer, the Muslim Brotherhood, is still noticeably absent.

While covering the political turmoil on the streets of Egypt as a journalist for CNN during the peak of the Arab Spring and its wave of revolutions that gripped the region in 2011, the dangers of political Islam became evident to me.

I often thought about the Muslim Brotherhood’s logo, with the Arabic word “prepare” written below two crossed swords, as thousands of the group’s supporters waived flags carrying this striking emblem in some of the most organized and well-funded daily protests. They often chanted “Islam is the solution.” Many of the protests ended with violent confrontations with the authorities. But what were they preparing for?

Egyptians learned the hard way that their famous motto, “Islam is the solution,” meant that the group wanted to eventually implement the movement’s self-stated goal of establishing a state ruled by Islamic Shariah law.

On June 24, 2012, I was in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square to report the results of the Egyptian election for CNN. I stood inside the main tent of the Muslim Brotherhood, surrounded by its disciples, who were gawking at a small TV set.

Once it was announced that Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi had been declared the winner by the official electoral committee, tens of thousands of Brotherhood supporters began shouting celebratory chants, as many cried and distributed candy with happiness. In my mind’s eye, it was the beginning of many dark days to come, an opinion I could not report on CNN at the time.

The nightmare did not last long, however. Almost a year into its rule of Egypt, the real face of the Muslim Brotherhood gradually started to appear. Its many TV channels anchored by heavy bearded men spewed hate speech around the clock. The party’s clampdown on free speech became evident as many famous Egyptian actors and musicians rallied outside the Ministry of Culture, protesting the new ruling party.

Muslim Brotherhood lawmakers began pushing their poisonous ideas into the school system. Their violent street protests aimed at imposing their ideas and instilling fear in the public continued unabated. The women of my own family did not feel safe on the streets of Cairo. The country’s Coptic Christian community felt constantly threatened and marginalized. President Morsi pardoned some of the most hardened convicted terrorists who had blood on their hands.

I personally think the nail in the coffin came when Morsi issued a constitutional decree in November 2012 that granted himself immunity from judicial oversight. The same president who had promised inclusion, democracy and modernization was leading Egypt back to the Middle Ages.

Thankfully, the Brotherhood was ousted in July 2013, after millions of Egyptians took the streets to protest the group’s dictatorship. The military responded by ousting President Morsi and imprisoning him on charges that vary from espionage to political violence.

In December 2013, while working for Al-Jazeera, I went live on air for the last time in my career and reported that the Egyptian government had just designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Over time, more Islamic countries — including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — designated the group as a terrorist entity.

More recently, the United States has recognized the dangers posed by the Islamist group. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has been one of the most vocal lawmakers advocating for the much-needed designation.

In July, he introduced the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist designation act. And on Nov. 24, the White House announced that U.S. President Donald Trump plans to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations.

Trump’s executive order stipulates that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will consult with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, in order to produce a report within 30 days.

U.S. officials then have 45 days to levy sanctions and officially designated the chapters as foreign terrorist organizations, if deemed necessary.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s political ambitions brings back rooted memories. I recall entering Iraq on the first day of the war in 2003 with the Los Angeles Times, when I stopped shortly after the invasion with my crew at the infamous Camp Bucca, a U.S. detention centre built in southern Iraq that once housed the late ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former member of Al-Qaida who has become the president of Syria following the overthrow of the Assad regime — a historic shift, an evolving scenario of Islamism, a sheer rejection of secularism and western values.

My interviews over the years with countless Islamists — such as Mohammed Badie, the leader of the Egypt branch of the Muslim Brotherhood since 2010 who is now on death row in an Egyptian prison, and the late Muhammad al-Zawahiri, the brother of the former head of al-Qaida — have been eye-opening.

It is widely known in Islamist circles that the late founder of Al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, was strongly influenced in his youth by the Muslim Brotherhood, attending many of its camps and embracing the ideology of Sayyid Qutb, a leading Muslim Brotherhood leader and political theorist.

To understand the dangers of political Islam at the core of the Muslim Brotherhood’s mandate, one must focus on the brainwashing and malicious recruiting methods the organization uses on young moderate Muslims in mosques, its treachery in fundraising and the secrecy of its cult-like ground operations, charities and various channels of spreading its poisonous ideas that do not represent true Islam.

The Brotherhood’s ideas do not conform with the Canadian constitutional order. It does not even embrace the secular rule of law.

As a Muslim who studied in university in Montreal and Vancouver, I grew up to enjoy the utopia that is Canada and embraced the civility and the true meaning of respecting diversity, religious inclusion and democracy. Yet I am concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood and its political agenda has flourished in Canada, and now has its tentacles in some Canadian universities, mosques, political circles and civil society groups.

My question remains: why is Canada not taking tangible steps towards designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization when leading Muslim countries in the Middle East and have done so?

National Post

Mohamed Fahmy is an award-winning journalist who has covered the Middle East for numerous outlets, including CNN, Al-Jazeera the Los Angeles Times and Foreign Policy.