A prominent, non-profit Muslim organization in Canada was investigated and then later suspended after it was accused of having ties to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, a claim the group vehemently denied.
The Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA), Canada’s tax authority, opened an audit of the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), the country’s largest grassroots charity for Muslims, in 2015. The group has about 500 members and 1,500 volunteers operating 30 schools and 22 mosques.
According to the report "The Muslim Brotherhood in the West?: Evidence from a Canadian Tax Authority Investigation," published by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, the CRA reviewed one million financial transactions and 400 thousand emails over three years as part of the audit.
The tax watchdog also accused MAC of suspected non-compliance, namely advancing non-charitable, collateral purposes such as gathering real estate and furthering the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In its investigation, the CRA found three main pieces of evidence that prove MAC’s connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The first piece of evidence the CRA found was that several MAC leaders were involved in the political activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, with some even holding positions in the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Freedom and Justice Party (JFP) and in the government of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi.
One example is Wael Haddara, MAC’s former president, who worked on Morsi’s presidential campaign in 2012. He tried to hide his campaign work, but he was outed after a photo of him behind Morsi was posted on the Facebook page of the Freedom and Justice Party. While Haddara and other MAC leaders tried to limit the damage caused by this incident, Haddara was forced to step down as president.
Aside from the direct connections between MAC leaders and the political activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the charity also supported other organizations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. A very famous and controversial example was when MAC donated over $295 thousand to IRFAN-Canada from 2005 to 2009. IRFAN-Canada’s charity status was revoked by the CRA in 2011 after investigations found it funneled over $14.6 million to groups that have ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
While MAC stated that it no longer provided any kind of support to IRFAN-Canada since 2009 and that it opposes terrorist activities, it was found that the charity continued to support IRFAN-Canada, which was designated as a terrorist group by Canadian authorities in 2014, by allowing the unpaid use of MAC’s premises, as well as promoting its programs and even letting the group have collection boxes at events organized by MAC.
Lastly, the CRA also found several cases of membership transfers between MAC and the Muslim Brotherhood and other Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups, including MAC’s American counterpart, the Muslim American Society (MAS).
“It is not entirely clear how the Organization, which purports to be entirely Canadian-based with no foreign activities, is able to transfer membership to and from foreign organizations,“ the CRA said.
In one example, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt acquired a MAC membership when he relocated to Canada. Another example provided by the CRA was the case of a woman who was sitting as a member of a “regular usra [the core unit of the Muslim Brotherhood] in Egypt“ and then became a regular member of the Canadian Muslim charity after relocating to Windsor, Ontario.
The CRA concluded its report by saying that “the audit found that the Organization appears to conduct and support activities that further the advancement of the Muslim Brotherhood organization,“ adding that MAC has not operated exclusively for charitable purposes and even assessed that “there may be grounds for revocation of the charitable status of the Organization.“
