OP-ED: Canada has a brewing Islamist problem

"When 35-year-old Jihad al-Shamie terrorized a Manchester synagogue last month on Yom Kippur pledging allegiance to ISIS, few were shocked by what investigators later uncovered."

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Author: Joe Adam George and Hannah Baldock

When 35-year-old Jihad al-Shamie terrorized a Manchester synagogue last month on Yom Kippur pledging allegiance to ISIS, few were shocked by what investigators later uncovered. He attended a Salafi-inspired mosque where extremist rhetoric was routine. His father had praised Hamas’s October 7 attackers as “Allah’s men on earth.” Years of indoctrination taught him that violence was virtue, resistance was glory, and terror was faith.

What unfolded in Manchester is a warning to Canada, where similar currents of Islamist radicalism have been manifestly gathering strength. Across Canadian cities, extremist narratives are taking root among young people through community networks, activist circles, and online echo chambers.

A prominent Shia mosque in Windsor, Ontario, recently held a memorial service for slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah — for the second year running — where youths eulogised the notorious terrorist as a “hero” and “martyr.” The Toronto Metropolitan University’s arts faculty funded a research paper which argues that Canada’s designation of Islamist groups as terrorist organizations is deeply flawed because of “systemic Islamophobia” and racism. Such episodes do not merely glorify violence; they sanctify terrorism and rebrand militancy as a necessity.

Earlier this year, Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, warned it was “increasingly concerned” about the threat of ISIS-inspired attacks. That concern is well-founded. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported a staggering 488 per cent rise in terrorism-related charges between April 2023 and March 2024, much of it driven by ISIS-motivated youth radicalisation. In the same period, antisemitic incidents surged by more than 670 per cent. An ISIS-inspired teenager was arrested in Montreal in August for terrorism offences. These are not isolated events but symptoms of a cultural shift — where extremism masquerades as activism and hate is sold as justice.

Since the breakout of the Israel-Hamas war, unrestrained radicalisation has seeped into mosques, schools, charities, and universities — often protected by Canada’s own liberal frameworks. Islamist networks have mastered the art of exploiting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to propagate radical ideologies while deflecting scrutiny. Wrapped in the language of “human rights” and “anti-racism,” they advance intolerance behind a façade of moral virtue.

As former FBI agent and counter-terrorism expert Lara Burns noted, it’s a tactic that echoes the Muslim Brotherhood’s “sabotage strategy” in North America — infiltrating institutions to steer public debate and soften attitudes toward Islamist causes.

Campaigns to institutionalise so-called “anti-Palestinian racism” (APR) is turning Canada’s classrooms and government offices into laboratories for grievance politics. Marketed as anti-discrimination, APR in reality brands any criticism of Palestinian militancy as racism, giving extremists a moral shield and silencing dissent. Even Canada’s Islamophobia czar, Amira Elghawaby, has been accused of abusing her taxpayer-funded post to conjure up Islamophobia and APR where none existed. During a visit to London in June, she reportedly met officials shaping the UK’s own Islamophobia legislation — a troubling sign of cross-pollination between partisan ideologues.

Meanwhile, Quebec Premier François Legault warned that teachers were introducing “Islamist religious concepts” into public schools, flouting the province’s secularism laws. Ontario’s curriculum similarly instructs educators to define jihad as a “spiritual struggle,” carefully omitting the terrorism waged in its name by groups like ISIS, Boko Haram, and al-Shabaab. Sanitised narratives like these create a moral fog — one that leaves students vulnerable to grooming by those who cloak violence in religious legitimacy.

Canada could learn from Italy, where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has proposed laws forcing mosques to disclose finances and imposing stricter oversight on Islamic schools. France, too, shuttered a popular Islamist seminary promoting jihad and sharia supremacy. Similar steps would help prevent Canadian institutions from becoming conduits for imported ideologies.

But policy alone will not suffice. The fight against radicalisation is as much cultural as it is legal. It begins with parents, educators, and faith leaders willing to defend liberal democratic principles unapologetically — and to name the threat for what it is. Canada’s political class, terrified of offending Islamist activists or jeopardising vote banks, has grown adept at moral evasion. Words like “extremism” and “terrorism” are avoided, replaced with platitudes about “diversity” and “dialogue.” Meanwhile, young minds are being shaped by ideologues who romanticise jihad and vilify the West.

The lesson from Manchester and Windsor is the same: Islamist radicalisation is thriving in plain sight while those in charge avert their gaze. Terrorists are canonised, hate is moralised, and governments obsessed with power pretend it isn’t happening. Canada has a brewing Islamist problem — and unless it wakes up fast, its own reckoning won’t be a question of if, but when.

Joe Adam George is a national security analyst at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa and a counter-extremism researcher at the Middle East Forum in Washington, DC. Hannah Baldock is a UK-based researcher on radicalization and terrorism.