The Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) has announced it will be taking legal action against the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) after claiming a several year-long audit of the group’s finances is “Islamophobic.”
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) launched a financial audit of the charity in 2015 but now the group is claiming that the entire process, which could lead to the rescinding of the group’s designation as a non-profit, is Islamophobic.
Nabil Sultan, the chair of MAC, said that the group was launching a formal legal challenge, and stated, “We want to see an audit that is not discriminatory and we want to be treated like any other religious charity in this country,” broadcaster CBC reports.
The group’s lawyer Geoff Hall claims that CRA questioned expenses relating to events at religious holidays such as Eid and Ramadan. Hall told the broadcaster, “Imagine for a moment if a Christian organization was told by the CRA that its Christmas parties weren’t Christian enough.”
The CRA has also allegedly claimed that the MAC has had “improper foreign ties” according to the broadcaster.
The group has previously run into controversy regarding its ties to other groups, including its prior ties to IRFAN-Canada, to which it donated $296,514 in the 2000s.
It was later revealed that IFRAN-Canada had ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and had allegedly raised millions for the terror group before the Canadian government designated IFRAN-Canada a terrorist group in 2014.
Lorenzo G. Vidino, a terrorism expert who serves as Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, has also claimed links between MAC and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The MAC would not be the first major Muslim organisation in the Western world to be accused of links to more radical elements.
In France, the French government under President Emmanuel Macron moved to dissolve the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) in the wake of the killing of teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded by a radical Islamist Chechen refugee after showing pictures of the prophet Mohammed to his class.
While the CCIF voluntarily dissolved itself, the French government slammed the use of the term Islamophobia as a method for Islamists to silence criticism of radical Islam.