This article originally appeared in the National Post.
By Joe Adam George, November 3, 2025
Last month, the Ahlul-Bayt Mosque, a prominent Shiite Islamic centre in Windsor, Ont., held a memorial to mark the first anniversary of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s death. It was the second consecutive year the mosque — and its affiliated Islamic school — has celebrated the life of a dreaded militant whose organization is listed as a terrorist entity under Canadian law.
This was not a one-off incident. The mosque has previously hosted events glorifying the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini and other Hezbollah “martyrs.”
Images from the latest gathering show many youths dressed in black. In one video, a speaker hailed Nasrallah as a “martyr,” proclaiming that the new generation of Canadian Muslims is no longer afraid to say openly that he was their “leader,” “voice” and “hero.”
In a separate clip, a young woman wearing a red headband — a Shiite symbol of martyrdom — and standing in front of a podium emblazoned with Nasrallah’s image is seen reciting a poem proclaiming, “Though you are gone, we rise anew, each soul a soldier shaped by you.”
The pro-terror spectacle in Windsor reflects a growing national crisis. Across Canada, Islamist narratives are finding traction among youth through community networks, activist movements, university campuses and online echo chambers. The warning signs are already flashing.
In a report published earlier this year, CSIS said that it is “increasingly concerned” about the threat of ISIS-enabled or directed attacks. An ISIS-inspired minor was arrested in Montreal in August on terrorism-related charges.
The RCMP recently reported a staggering 488 per cent increase in terrorism-related charges between April 2023 and March 2024, much of it driven by ISIS-motivated youth radicalization. In the year following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel, antisemitic incidents in Canada rose by 670 per cent.
These are not random developments — they reflect a cultural shift in a post-October 7 world where extremism is reframed as “justice” and terrorism is rebranded as “resistance.” Today, Islamist radicalization is manifestly unfolding in classrooms, mosques and community centres, often cloaked in the language of progressive activism and shielded by Canada’s own freedoms.
Islamist networks have learned to exploit the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to spread radical narratives while avoiding scrutiny. It’s a strategy reminiscent of the Muslim Brotherhood’s long-term “civilizational jihad” strategy — the gradual infiltration and sabotage of western institutions to normalize extremist ideology under the guise of rights and advocacy.
As former FBI agent and terrorism expert Lara Burns noted, Hamas — the one-time Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood — has spent two decades infiltrating North American campuses and media to recruit sympathy for its cause and reshape public discourse. In Canada, those same tactics are being employed with startling boldness — and with minimal resistance.
Last year, Quebec Premier François Legault warned that teachers were introducing “Islamist religious concepts” into public schools, in direct violation of the province’s secularism laws. His remarks followed reports of religious indoctrination in at least 17 schools.
The push to institutionalize “anti-Palestinian racism” (APR) frameworks in schools adds another layer of concern. Framed as an anti-discrimination measure, APR in practice operates as an ideological weapon — branding any criticism of Palestinian militancy as racism and shielding extremist groups from legitimate scrutiny.
When such ideas enter classrooms, they politicize education and cultivate grievance-based identity politics — the first step toward radicalization.
Confronting this crisis requires more than moral outrage. Lawmakers must give Canada’s intelligence and law-enforcement agencies — particularly CSIS and the RCMP — the resources and authority to detect and dismantle extremist influence operations before they turn violent. Publicly funded religious and community organizations should face strict transparency requirements and audits to ensure compliance with anti-terrorism laws.
Canada should follow the example of Europe, where several countries are belatedly waking up to the radicalization threat. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni recently introduced legislation requiring mosques to disclose their finances and tightening control over Islamic educational institutions.
Last month, France shut down a popular Islamist seminary that legitimized jihad and Shariah law. And a major Danish party has proposed banning Islamic schools and foreign funding of mosques in its election platform. Such measures would prevent Canadian institutions from becoming conduits for imported divisive ideologies.
But legislation alone won’t suffice. The battle against radicalization is as much cultural as it is legal. When young Canadians are taught that Nasrallah and Hamas fighters are heroes and that condemning militants is “racism,” the groundwork for extremism is already in place.
Countering this requires parents, educators and community leaders who are willing to unapologetically defend liberal democratic values — and to confront uncomfortable truths about where extremist ideologies are taking root.
The danger of complacency cannot be overstated. Islamist radicalization is no longer a foreign problem — it is a Canadian one. It thrives where tolerance is mistaken for indulgence and where free speech is confused with the right to glorify terror. Left unchecked, it will corrode the very pluralism that defines Canada, erode public trust and strain relations with allies who expect this country to stand firm in the fight against extremism.
The lesson from Windsor is clear: youth radicalization is happening in plain sight. It begins with the normalization of hate, the rebranding of killers as martyrs and the silence of a society that’s unwilling to confront its vulnerabilities. Canada still has time to act — but not much.
Joe Adam George is a national security analyst at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and Canada research lead for Islamist threats at the Middle East Forum.
