What we leave behind: Patrick Stewart, Jean-Luc Picard, and the future to which we should aspire

The measure of a life is not the fortune accumulated, the power wielded, or the fame acquired. It is whether we left the world a little better than we found it. 

By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

Late yesterday afternoon the world learned about the death of British actor Patrick Stewart, best known for his role as Captain Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and as Professor Xavier in the X-Men film franchise.  And surprisingly the news has affected me more than I expected.

Since news of his death began to spread, social media has been flooded with tributes from former colleagues, friends, and fans. For millions of people who knew him through his television and film roles, the sense of loss feels surprisingly personal, as though someone they were close to for years has suddenly passed. There is something remarkable about the way certain people become companions on our journey through life, even when we never meet them. Patrick Stewart was one of those people for me. He was among the very few actors I genuinely admired, and news of his passing awakened a familiar feeling, one I have experienced repeatedly over the past two decades as I have lost loved ones, friends, and others whose presence once seemed as permanent as the passing of the seasons. 

Every loss forces me back to the same place. It makes me think about time, about how quickly decades pass, about how faces that once filled our days become memories, how conversations become echoes, and how entire chapters of our lives gradually transform from lived experience into stories we tell ourselves. The older I get, the more aware I become that time is the only thing any of us truly possess, and the one thing we can never keep. 

Patrick Stewart's death felt like another reminder that an era is passing. The people who accompanied many of us through our younger years are leaving one by one, and with each departure I become more conscious that I am travelling the same road. 

When I think of Stewart, I inevitably think of the role for which he will be remembered the most--Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the starship USS Enterprise D.

Like millions of others, I spent countless hours watching Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST: TNG). As a sci-fi fan, I was drawn to the adventure, the exploration, and the wonder of the unknown. As an older man, I have come to appreciate something deeper.  Star Trek: The Next Generation was never really about humanity's adventures in space in a fictional future, it was about humanity.

Stewart’s Star Trek represented a vision of what humanity could become if we chose wisdom over fear, cooperation over tribalism, and reason over hatred. In Captain Picard’s century, humanity had not become perfect, it had simply matured. Greed no longer defined society, and wealth no longer determined a person's worth. Human beings sought self-improvement, knowledge, discovery, and service to others. Conflicts still existed, but humanity had learned, through terrible mistakes, that it either rose together or perished together. As a young man, that optimistic vision felt realistic. 

When I was in my twenties, the world was far from perfect, but there were reasons for genuine optimism. Humanity had survived the Cold War without destroying itself in a nuclear armageddon. Environmental disasters that once seemed unstoppable were being confronted through science and collective action. The ozone layer was recovering, acid rain was being reduced, more nations were evolving into democracies, and human rights issues were being advanced. It felt as though humanity, however unevenly, was learning, and history seemed to bend toward progress. 

Looking back now, I realize that many of the stories told in ST: TNG were really warning labels attached to the future. Episodes such as "The Drumhead" showed how fear, paranoia, and the search for hidden enemies could corrode democratic institutions from within. The story began with a legitimate security concern and ended with a witch hunt. Watching it today, I cannot help but think about societies increasingly divided by conspiracy theories, political extremism, and manufactured outrage, where suspicion often matters more than evidence. 

"The Wounded" explored the scars left by war and how people can become trapped by old grievances and inherited hatreds. Its lesson was simple but profound: unresolved trauma can become a prison, and today's enemies are often the ones that create tomorrow's wars.

"Chain of Command" offered perhaps the most chilling warning of all. During a covert mission, Picard is captured by the Cardassians, representatives of a deeply authoritarian state, and subjected to relentless torture. Yet the objective is not merely to extract information or compel obedience. His captors are attempting something far more sinister—to break his grasp on reality itself. They seek to force him not only to submit, but to deny what he knows to be true and accept a falsehood imposed by power. 

The episode reaches its climax when Picard is finally freed. Throughout his imprisonment, his interrogator repeatedly demands that he acknowledge the existence of five lights when only four are visible. Picard's defiant declaration, "There are four lights!", has since become one of the most memorable moments in Star Trek history because it captures a timeless truth about tyranny. Authoritarian systems rarely seek obedience alone. Their ultimate ambition is to control reality itself, to make people reject the evidence of their own senses and accept whatever version of the truth those in power decree. That lesson feels no less relevant today than it did when the episode first aired. 

The older I become, the more I appreciate that these stories were never really about distant planets or some fictional future. They were reflections of our own fears, flaws, aspirations, and moral struggles, projected into the future so that we might recognize ourselves more clearly in the present. That is precisely why they continue to resonate decades later. The questions they explored were not about alien civilizations, but about the kind of people we choose to be and the kind of world we choose to build. Yet when I look around the world today, I cannot escape the feeling that we are moving further away from the future Jean-Luc Picard hoped humanity could achieve, and closer to many of the dangers that ST: TNG warned us against. 

Today we are witness to Israel's genocide against Palestinians, a label that has been confirmed by the UN, multiple international human rights organizations, and Jewish Holocaust scholars.  For several years we have witnessed Russia's brutal war against Ukraine. Since February of this year we have watched and wondered whether the war launched against Iran by the US and Israel will push an already volatile region closer to catastrophe. Uyghurs continue to face genocide at the hands of the Chinese state, the Rohingya continue to suffer the consequences of Myanmar's genocide against them, Sudan remains devastated by violence fuelled in part by outside powers, and across the globe, countless innocent people are being displaced, imprisoned, starved, wounded, or killed.

What troubles me most is not simply that these horrors are occurring. It is that they are occurring while all of us watch. Previous generations could often claim ignorance because information travelled slowly, and atrocities could be hidden behind borders, censorship, and distance. We do not have that excuse today because we carry the evidence on devices in our pockets.

Every day we witness bombed neighbourhoods, grieving parents, starving children, desperate refugees, and communities reduced to rubble. Never before in human history have so many atrocities been documented so thoroughly and disseminated so widely in real time. And yet they continue.

At the same time, another development has fundamentally changed our world. The rise of a global billionaire class has concentrated wealth on a scale that they couldn’t spend in a hundred lifetimes. Many of these individuals possess enough wealth to transform societies and dramatically reduce human suffering. Yet too often accumulation of wealth becomes an end in itself. Fortunes continue to accumulate while homelessness, poverty, hunger, and preventable disease endure. The irony is difficult to ignore.

In the world of Jean-Luc Picard, humanity had largely transcended the pursuit of wealth. In our world, wealth has become one of the defining obsessions of civilization. Now we live in an age where the world's most powerful billionaires command greater influence than many governments. We celebrate those who speak of colonising Mars while often neglecting the urgent work of repairing the Earth. The dream of escaping our problems increasingly seems more attractive than the responsibility of solving them.

The contrast between Picard's future and our present could not be more stark. His world was built upon moral progress. Ours often seems trapped by moral stagnation.  And so I find myself wondering how future generations will judge us.

The generations that followed the Second World War looked back at the Holocaust and asked haunting questions: How could they have allowed this to happen? Why did so many remain silent? Why did so few act? 

Increasingly, I suspect future generations will ask the same questions about us. How could they witness suffering on such a scale and do so little? How could they tolerate such inequality? How could they watch authoritarianism grow and fail to resist it? How could they know the scale of atrocities committed and yet remain indifferent? 

That thought stays with me.  Perhaps because the older I become, the more conscious I am of time.

When I was twenty-five, ten years felt endless. Now entire decades seem to pass in the space between memories.

And despite everything, despite our ambitions, conflicts, and achievements, our lives remain astonishingly brief. We are here for a few decades in a universe nearly fourteen billion years old. Against that backdrop, our existence is almost insignificant. Entire civilizations rise and fall in less time than it takes our sun to complete a fraction of its journey around the Milky Way galaxy.

One day every nation, every empire, every billionaire, every politician, and every one of us will be gone.

Our lives, which are relevant and gorgeous to us and those who know us, will be momentary blips in the cosmos.  For a while, everything will matter, and then eventually nothing will. Our time in this universe is both forever and achingly finite. 

Yet perhaps that is precisely why our choices matter so much. Because our time in this planet is limited, we have a responsibility to use it well. Not perfectly. Not heroically. Simply well.

The measure of a life is not the fortune accumulated, the power wielded, or the fame acquired. It is whether we left the world a little better than we found it. Whether we eased suffering. Whether we defended the vulnerable. Whether we showed kindness when cruelty was easier, courage when silence was safer, and humanity when the world seemed determined to abandon it.

We have lived a worthy life if we have made an effort to improve the character of human society, whether in our little corner of the world or far beyond it. In a universe of unimaginable vastness, that may seem like a small accomplishment. Yet for the people whose lives were touched by our actions, it is everything.

Perhaps that is why the death of Patrick Stewart affected so many people, including me. Through his portrayal of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, he gave voice to ideals that often seem in short supply in our own age: integrity, compassion, intellectual curiosity, moral courage, and an unwavering belief that humanity could become better than it is. At a time when the world often appears to be moving in the opposite direction, those ideals remain worth defending. 

In the end, Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard will not be remembered only because he commanded a starship. He will be remembered because he reminded us of what human beings are capable of becoming at their best. If there is a legacy worth leaving behind, it is not wealth, power, or status, but the quiet conviction that every generation has a responsibility to push humanity a little further toward justice, wisdom, and kindness than it was before. And if we can do that, however imperfectly, then perhaps we will have helped bring into existence the future that Captain Picard showed us was possible.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

The Rogue Axis: The United States and Israel represent the greatest threats to world peace

The United States and Israel have created an architecture of global hypocrisy, demanding adherence to international law from others while systematically violating it themselves. 

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

In the decades since the Second World War, the international community has repeatedly confronted states that violate global norms, destabilize regions, and undermine the foundations of collective security. Yet no two countries have done more damage to the post‑1945 international order than the United States and Israel. Their actions—spanning illegal wars, covert coups, assassinations, brutal occupations, and systematic defiance of international law—form a pattern so extensive and so destructive that it demands a global reckoning. The world once united to confront Nazi Germany when its aggression threatened international peace. Today, many critics argue that the United States and Israel present a serious threat to global peace and stability—two states that have repeatedly acted with disregard for international law, without meaningful accountability. Their record of military interventions, occupations, targeted killings, and violations of international norms has led some political analysts and human rights advocates to characterize them as rogue actors operating beyond the constraints that govern other nations. Were comparable crimes attributed to private individuals rather than states, they contend, they would likely face prosecution and imprisonment rather than continuing to exercise power with impunity.

The United States emerged from World War II as the world’s dominant military and economic power. Initially it used that position to create the global institutions that are the foundations of the international rule of law.  However, it then embarked on a decades‑long campaign of interventionism that destabilized entire continents. In Latin America, the US repeatedly undermined democratic governments, orchestrated coups, and installed authoritarian regimes aligned with its geopolitical and economic interests. The 1954 overthrow of Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz, engineered by the CIA, plunged the country into a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands. In Brazil, the US supported the 1964 military coup that ushered in two decades of dictatorship. In Argentina, Chile, and elsewhere, Washington backed juntas that tortured, disappeared, and murdered tens of thousands of civilians.

The 1973 coup in Chile remains one of the most infamous examples of US interference. The CIA helped topple Salvador Allende, Latin America’s first democratically elected socialist president, replacing him with General Augusto Pinochet, whose regime carried out mass executions, disappearances, and widespread torture. Declassified documents show that the US actively destabilized Chile’s economy and political institutions to pave the way for the coup, demonstrating a willingness to destroy democracy in the name of ideological conformity.

This pattern was not confined to Latin America. In 1953, the US orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he nationalized the country’s oil industry. Operation Ajax, carried out jointly with British intelligence, installed the Shah, whose brutal secret police, SAVAK, tortured and executed dissidents for decades. The coup not only violated Iran’s sovereignty but also sowed the seeds of long‑term instability, contributing directly to the 1979 Islamic revolution and the adversarial relationship that has persisted with the West ever since.

The US has also repeatedly manufactured pretexts for war. The Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964—used to justify full‑scale US military involvement in Vietnam—was later revealed to be largely fabricated. The resulting war killed more than three million Vietnamese, devastated Cambodia and Laos, and destabilized Southeast Asia for generations. The pattern repeated in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq based on carefully orchestrated lies it presented at the UN about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. The war, launched without UN authorization, killed more than a million Iraqis, created millions of refugees, and fractured the Middle East, creating the conditions for the rise of ISIS and other extremist groups.

The “War on Terror” that followed the September 11 attacks expanded US military operations into dozens of countries, often without congressional approval or international legal justification. Drone strikes killed tens of thousands of civilians in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Secret US torture sites operated in prisons across Europe and the Middle East. The US justified these actions under an elastic interpretation of self‑defence, effectively claiming the right to kill anywhere, anytime, without accountability.

Israel’s record, though geographically concentrated, is no less alarming and destructive. Since its establishment in 1948 on Palestinian land, Israel has engaged in systematic violations of international law, beginning with the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the Nakba, and the murder of thousands more. Over the decades, Israel has launched pre‑emptive wars, expanded settlements in occupied territory, assassinated diplomats and political leaders, and repeatedly defied UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. It has started or escalated nearly every major conflict in which it has been involved, including the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1967 Six‑Day War, multiple invasions of Lebanon, and the Gaza genocide.

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory. Yet Israel has built hundreds of Jews only settlements, home to more than 700,000 illegal settlers, in direct defiance of international law. The UN Security Council has passed dozens of resolutions condemning these actions, but Israel has ignored them all, shielded by US vetoes.

The humanitarian consequences of Israel’s actions have been catastrophic. In Gaza, repeated Israeli assaults have killed tens of thousands of civilians, destroyed hospitals, schools, and infrastructure, and created conditions that human rights experts describe as meeting the legal definition of genocide. Israel’s blockade of Gaza, now in its third decade, constitutes collective punishment, another violation of the Geneva Conventions. The UN has repeatedly declared the blockade of Gaza illegal, yet Israel continues to enforce it with impunity.

Israel has also carried out extrajudicial assassinations of Palestinian leaders, diplomats, and activists across the Middle East and Europe. The 1973 Lillehammer affair, in which Mossad agents killed an innocent Moroccan waiter in Norway after mistaking him for a Palestinian militant, exemplifies Israel’s willingness to violate international sovereignty. More recently, Israel has assassinated Iranian scientists and officials, actions that have led to war.

Both the United States and Israel have repeatedly violated the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force except in self‑defence or with Security Council authorization. They have breached the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through torture, extrajudicial killings, and collective punishment. They have violated the Genocide Convention by engaging in actions intended to destroy, in whole or in part, national or ethnic groups. They have undermined the International Criminal Court, refusing to recognize its jurisdiction while demanding accountability for others.

The February 2026 joint US‑Israeli assault on Iran—launched without provocation or UN authorization—illustrates the ongoing danger posed by this rogue axis. Airstrikes targeted civilian infrastructure, nuclear research facilities, and government buildings. The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, marked a dramatic escalation, violating international prohibitions on political assassination. UN experts condemned the attack as an act of aggression, yet both countries dismissed the criticism, insisting they were acting in the name of “regional stability.”

The consequences of these actions extend far beyond the Middle East. When powerful states violate international law with impunity, they weaken the entire global system. Other nations, observing the US and Israel’s behaviour, increasingly disregard international norms themselves. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s crackdown in Hong Kong, Turkey’s incursions into Syria—all occur in a world where the leading violators of international law face no consequences.

The United States and Israel have created an architecture of global hypocrisy. They demand adherence to international law from others while systematically violating it themselves. They lecture the world on democracy while undermining democratic norms around the world. They speak of human rights while committing egregious abuses that dwarf those of many states they condemn. Their actions erode trust in international institutions, fuel radicalization, and destabilize entire regions.

The world once united to confront Nazi Germany when it threatened global peace. Today, the international community faces a different but equally dangerous challenge—two states whose conduct consistently undermines the foundations of international peace and order. Confronting this threat requires collective action—sanctions, diplomatic isolation, arms embargoes, and international prosecutions of American and Israeli leaders. It requires supporting domestic elements within both countries that seek to dismantle structures of militarism, occupation, and imperialism. And it requires a renewed commitment to the principles of the UN Charter, which were designed to prevent exactly the kind of lawlessness and impunity the United States and Israel now embody.

The survival of a rules‑based international order depends on confronting these rogue actors. Without accountability, the world will remain trapped in a cycle of aggression, instability, and impunity. The time has come for nations to act—not out of hostility, but out of necessity. Peace cannot be built on exceptions. It must be built on universal principles, applied equally to all.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Is Canada’s sovereignty safe in an age of US fascist aggression? Don’t bet on it.

Canada cannot afford complacency. Its future depends upon strengthening its economy, diversifying international relationships, deepening democratic institutions, and upgrading military capabilities. 

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

The decisive rejection of Alberta separatism should remind Canadians that the overwhelming majority of citizens, including Albertans themselves, remain committed to Canada as a united, sovereign, and independent country. It is also a result that was likely greeted with disappointment in certain political circles south of the border. Reports and allegations regarding contacts between American figures and leaders within Alberta's separatist movement raised legitimate questions about whether external actors were attempting to influence a domestic Canadian political debate. Whether those efforts were significant or largely symbolic, Alberta voters delivered a clear message: Canada's future will be decided by Canadians, not by outsiders seeking to advance their own interests.

Yet if there is one broader lesson to be drawn from that episode, it is that threats to sovereignty do not always originate from distant powers. Canadians frequently concern themselves with Russian aggression, Chinese influence operations, and geopolitical instability elsewhere in the world, while often overlooking the possibility that the most significant long-term challenge to Canadian sovereignty may emerge from the country that has been our closest neighbour, ally, and trading partner for more than a century.

This is not to suggest that an American invasion is imminent, nor is it to imply that most Americans harbour hostile intentions toward Canada. Rather, it is to recognize that many Canadians have not fully appreciated the extent to which American political culture, particularly within segments of the Republican Party and the broader MAGA movement, has changed during the past decade. That transformation has called into question assumptions that governed Canada-United States relations throughout much of the post-war era. Principles that Canadians once regarded as settled, including respect for alliances, international institutions, and the sovereignty of close partners, can no longer be treated as permanently secure.

Nor is the issue simply Donald Trump. The larger concern is the emergence of a political movement that increasingly views international affairs through the lens of power rather than partnership. Within this worldview, alliances, trade agreements, and even the sovereignty of neighbouring countries are often evaluated in terms of how effectively they serve American interests. From that perspective, Canada risks being viewed less as an equal partner deserving respect and more as a strategic asset, a source of natural resources, a captive market, and a territory that falls naturally within a broader American sphere of influence.

When combined with repeated rhetoric about Canada becoming the "51st state," such attitudes should prompt Canadians to think far more seriously about the future of their country's independence than many have in the past.

The greatest threat to Canadian sovereignty may not be a military invasion. It may instead be the gradual normalization of a political culture that increasingly views allies, trading partners, and neighbouring countries through the lens of leverage, coercion, and strategic advantage rather than cooperation and mutual respect. If that worldview continues to exert influence long after Donald Trump leaves office, Canada could find itself facing sustained economic, political, and strategic pressure from a neighbour that no longer regards Canadian sovereignty as beyond question.

The end of an assumption

For most of the twentieth century and into the early decades of the twenty-first, Canada and the United States enjoyed one of the most stable and successful bilateral relationships in modern history. Disagreements certainly occurred over trade, lumber, agriculture, defence spending, energy policy, and foreign affairs. Yet these disputes unfolded within a broader framework of mutual respect, shared interests, and a common understanding that both nations benefited from the relationship.

Since the first Trump administration, however, that framework has shown visible signs of strain.

Following his return to office in January 2025, Donald Trump repeatedly revived rhetoric suggesting that Canada should become the "51st state." He argued publicly that Canada depends more on the United States than the United States depends on Canada and suggested on numerous occasions that annexation would solve various bilateral disputes. Statements that once might have been dismissed as provocative humour took on greater significance because they were repeated so frequently and by the most powerful political figure in the United States.

History demonstrates that ideas repeatedly introduced into political discourse often become normalized over time. What begins as a joke, provocation, or rhetorical flourish can gradually evolve into a subject of serious debate once influential political and media figures begin repeating the same themes. While rhetoric alone does not constitute policy, it can help reshape public assumptions about what is politically acceptable.

Trump's treatment of Greenland is equally revealing. He repeatedly argued that the United States should acquire the Danish territory and at various points refused to rule out economic or military pressure to achieve that objective. Even when moderating some of his language, he continued to insist that American ownership of Greenland was a strategic necessity tied to national security concerns.

The significance of this rhetoric is not that Canada and Greenland occupy identical positions. Rather, the significance lies in the fact that senior American political leaders have demonstrated a willingness to discuss acquiring territory from allied countries in ways that would have been almost unimaginable only a few years earlier. The barrier that once separated democratic competition from great-power territorial ambition appears less rigid than many had assumed.

Power rather than partnership

The Trump administration's trade policies offer another warning sign.

Successive rounds of tariffs imposed on Canadian steel, aluminium, automobiles, and other exports were frequently justified on grounds that many economists, trade specialists, and policy analysts regarded as politically motivated or economically dubious. Canada responded with countermeasures while attempting to preserve the broader trading relationship. Yet the deeper concern is not the tariffs themselves. It is the mindset that made them possible.

For decades, many policymakers in both countries viewed trade between allies as a mutually beneficial enterprise. Increasingly, however, sections of American political discourse have begun treating economic interdependence as a source of leverage. Integration is valued not merely for the prosperity it creates but for the influence it provides.

Within this framework, economic relationships become instruments of coercion. The central question is no longer how trade benefits both countries but how economic power can be used to secure political or strategic advantages. Shared values become secondary to calculations of national gain.

This logic extends well beyond Canada. Similar patterns can be observed in disputes with European allies, debates surrounding NATO burden-sharing, pressure campaigns against trading partners, and rhetoric surrounding Greenland, Panama, and other strategically significant territories. When relationships are increasingly evaluated through the lens of dominance rather than cooperation, smaller states inevitably find themselves in a more vulnerable position.

Trump is not the entire problem

Many Canadians comfort themselves with the belief that everything will return to normal once Donald Trump eventually leaves office. That assumption may prove dangerously optimistic.

Political movements frequently outlive the individuals most closely associated with them. All you have to do is look to how Nazism still exists more than 80 years after Hitler’s death.

Trumpism did not emerge from a political vacuum. Rather, it reflects broader changes within American political culture that developed over decades. The growth of populist nationalism, increasing political polarization, declining confidence in international institutions, and resentment toward globalization all predate Trump himself. Trump became the most visible embodiment of these trends, but he did not create them alone.

Many of his closest advisers, media allies, ideological supporters, and political successors remain committed to a more nationalist and confrontational vision of American power. While they may differ on tactics, many share the belief that America's interests should take precedence over traditional diplomatic constraints and that international institutions should serve American objectives rather than limit them.

Even if Trump vanished from the political landscape tomorrow, many of the forces that elevated him would remain. Protectionist sentiment would persist, and nationalist politics would continue. The perception that allies have benefited disproportionately from trade with American and its military protection would still exist among substantial segments of the US electorate.

The question Canadians should therefore ask is not whether Trump will eventually leave office. The more important question is whether the political and cultural forces that produced Trump are likely to disappear with his departure from the White House. At present, there is little evidence to suggest that they will.

A Democratic victory may not restore the status quo

Nor should Canadians assume that a future Democratic administration would automatically restore the pre-Trump status quo. The United States is undergoing a broader structural transformation that transcends partisan politics. Canadian policymakers must recognize that the political environment shaping American foreign policy is changing in ways that neither party can entirely reverse.

Since the pandemic years, American policy debates have increasingly focused on supply chains, industrial policy, strategic industries, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, and competition with major powers. These concerns are not confined to Republicans. Democrats generally frame them differently, but both parties are responding to growing public demands for economic security and national resilience.

The United States that emerged after the Second World War largely saw itself as the chief architect and guarantor of a rules-based international order. Today, politicians across the political spectrum face increasing pressure to pursue narrowly defined national interests, even when doing so creates friction with allies or long-established international norms. This shift did not begin with Donald Trump, and it is unlikely to end with his departure from the political scene.

Canadians should therefore recognize that the assumptions which governed bilateral relations for the past 80 years may no longer apply. The deeper economic and political forces reshaping American society remain intact, regardless of which party occupies the White House.

The Austria analogy

History never repeats itself exactly. Nevertheless, it often provides important warnings. Some commentators have compared contemporary developments in American politics to aspects of Europe in the 1920s and 30s, when fascism was on the rise. But while the US is not Nazi Germany the parallels can’t be ignored. While  intense political polarization and growing strains on democratic norms are increasing in the US it still remains a constitutional democracy with powerful institutions, an independent judiciary, a vibrant civil society, and vigorous political opposition.  However, history still offers lessons worth considering as Canada watches democracy under siege south of the border.

During the 1930s, many Europeans struggled to take seriously the increasingly aggressive rhetoric emanating from Berlin. Expansionist statements were frequently dismissed as posturing intended for domestic audiences. Each escalation was rationalized. Each warning sign was minimized. Many assumed that long-established norms would ultimately restrain more extreme ambitions.

Within this context, Austria occupied a uniquely vulnerable position. It shared language, culture, economic ties, and deep historical connections with Germany. Many believed those common bonds would provide security. Instead, they provided opportunities for political pressure and coercion. By the time Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, its options had narrowed considerably.

The comparison to Canada has obvious limits. The circumstances are fundamentally different. Yet one lesson remains relevant. Familiarity and integration do not automatically guarantee security. Like Austria, Canada exists beside a much larger and more powerful neighbour. Like Austria, it is deeply integrated with that neighbour economically, culturally, and socially. And like Austria, Canada sometimes assumes that those close connections are all the protection it requires.

History suggests otherwise.  Some of the loudest voices within contemporary American nationalism increasingly speak about North America as though it were a naturally integrated geopolitical space that should be organized under American leadership. Within that worldview, Canada possesses resources America desires, territory America values, water resources that may become increasingly important in the future, and strategic Arctic access that is growing in significance as climate change reshapes the region.

Greenland is often discussed in similar terms because of its geography and mineral wealth. Mexico is frequently framed less as a sovereign partner than as a security challenge requiring unilateral American solutions. None of this means annexation is official American policy. But it does reveal an underlying mindset in which power increasingly creates a perceived entitlement to influence, shape, or direct the affairs of others.

History teaches that when powerful nations begin thinking this way, smaller neighbours should pay attention.

What Canada must do

Most Canadians still see ordinary Americans as friends, allies, and partners. Canada's prosperity remains deeply connected to the United States, and that relationship will continue to matter enormously in the decades ahead. Friendship, however, does not eliminate the need for prudence.

The government of Prime Minister Mark Carney has taken important steps toward diversifying Canada's economic relationships. Expanding trade with Europe, the Indo-Pacific region, and emerging markets is no longer simply a matter of seeking new opportunities. It has become a strategic necessity.

However, a country that depends too heavily upon a single market inevitably becomes vulnerable to political and economic pressure. Greater diversification provides Canada with more freedom to pursue independent policies and defend its interests without fear of excessive economic retaliation.

Canada must also move much more quickly to remove internal trade barriers that continue to fragment its own domestic economy. These barriers increase costs, reduce productivity, limit competitiveness, and undermine national economic resilience. Strengthening east-west economic integration should be treated as both an economic and a nation-building priority.

Beyond trade, Canada’s move to deepen strategic partnerships with democratic middle powers that share an interest in preserving a rules-based international order is also a step in the right direction. Economic resilience and diplomatic diversification are essential. But they are not sufficient on their own.

Additionally, a sovereign country cannot indefinitely maintain full strategic independence if it lacks the capacity to defend itself. Canada must therefore begin treating national defence as a genuine priority once again, and it must be acknowledged that, in its current configuration, the Canadian Armed Forces could not defeat the United States in a conventional military conflict. Matching American military capabilities would require expenditures and levels of mobilization not seen since World War Two.

Fortunately, deterrence has never depended upon parity. Throughout history, smaller countries have preserved their independence not by matching the military strength of larger powers but by ensuring that aggression would carry unacceptable costs. Deterrence works when conflict becomes too expensive, too uncertain, and too risky to justify.

Recent confrontations involving Iran illustrate this principle. Although Iran possesses only a fraction of America's military capabilities, policymakers in Washington have repeatedly had to weigh the substantial costs that a large-scale conflict would entail. Military superiority alone does not guarantee favourable outcomes if an adversary retains the capacity to impose meaningful costs. That is the essence of deterrence.

Canada does not need a military capable of conquering the United States. It needs a military capable of making coercion costly, unpredictable, and politically unattractive. The objective is not victory in an offensive war but the preservation of sovereignty through credible defensive capability.

The danger of complacency

The greatest threat to Canadian sovereignty is not thousands of US soldiers and tanks crossing Canadian land borders or an armada of US military jets controlling the skies over Canada. It is the persistence of outdated assumptions. For generations, Canadians assumed that economic integration guaranteed security, that shared values guaranteed respect, and that American power would always operate within predictable bounds. Recent developments suggest those assumptions deserve far greater scrutiny than they once did.

Repeated discussions of Canadian annexation, escalating tariff disputes, coercive trade measures, territorial ambitions regarding Greenland, and a broader political culture that increasingly equates power with entitlement should compel Canadians to rethink old certainties. The issue is not whether every provocative statement made by Donald Trump represents concrete policy. The issue is whether Canada is prepared for a world in which such statements are no longer politically unthinkable.

The reality is that a sovereign nation cannot afford complacency. Canada's future depends upon strengthening its economy, diversifying its international relationships, deepening its democratic institutions, and maintaining credible military capabilities. The lesson of history is straightforward: countries that assume powerful neighbours will remain permanently benevolent often discover their mistake too late. Canada should not be one of them.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

NAZA documentary illustrates Hanna Arendt’s “banality of evil” in Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Evil usually arrives in the form of ordinary people who have stopped seeing the humanity of those they have been taught to fear, hate, and dehumanize, even if they’re children. 

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

One of the most important moral lessons of the twentieth century is that evil is not confined to a particular nation, religion, ethnicity, or people. The Holocaust did not occur because Germans were uniquely evil. It occurred because enough people embraced evil ideas of racial superiority, supported evil policies, obeyed evil orders, or looked away while evil was being committed in their name.

That lesson is universal. It applies to everyone, to every society. And if we are unwilling to apply that lesson universally, then we have to accept that in the face of the evil being committed by Israel in Gaza, we have learned nothing from history.

The growing significance of the documentary NAZA, written and directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, lies not merely in its allegations about the crimes committed in Gaza, but in the profound moral questions it raises about the individuals who designed, managed, justified, and implemented the destruction of an entire people and society. According to published reviews, the film draws on testimony from 24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers who describe the operation of AI-assisted targeting systems and the bureaucratic machinery used to facilitate mass killing on an industrial scale. What emerges is not simply a portrait of military violence, but a disturbing examination of how evil can become normalized, routinized, and embedded within institutions, allowing ordinary people to participate in extraordinary crimes while convincing themselves they bear no personal responsibility. In that sense, NAZA is not only a film about the Gaza genocide, it is a film about the mechanisms through which human beings become agents of evil.

The importance of the Israeli testimony is not merely evidentiary but rather philosophical. It forces us to confront a question that many would prefer to avoid: What happens when ordinary people become participants in extraordinary crimes and acts of evil?

The German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt confronted exactly this question while reporting on the trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. Her famous phrase, “the banality of evil” did not mean evil was trivial. It meant that some of history’s greatest evils were committed not by obvious monsters but by ordinary people who surrendered their moral judgment to ideology, authority, institutions, and career advancement. During his trial Eichmann repeatedly portrayed himself as a man who was merely doing his job and “following orders”. Arendt found that explanation profoundly disturbing because it revealed how easily human beings can participate in acts of evil while convincing themselves they bear no responsibility.

The testimonies described in NAZA evoke similar questions. According to reports of the film, Israeli military personnel discussed targeting systems, civilian casualty calculations, surveillance technology, and mass killing with a striking degree of bureaucratic detachment. Palestinian civilians became numbers, entire families became data points, and inflicting death and destruction became an administrative exercise.  The horror lies not only in what was done by Israeli officials but in how easily it was normalized.

Genocide doesn’t occur overnight

History demonstrates that genocidal atrocities rarely begin with killing. They begin with the dehumanization of a targeted population in a process that takes years.  Before people can tolerate mass suffering inflicted upon a defenceless population they must first be taught that those others are less human, less deserving of protection, less worthy of empathy, somehow collectively guilty, or an existential threat to the dominant population. Once that process begins, moral barriers collapse. Violence that would once have been unthinkable becomes acceptable, cruelty becomes state policy, and indifference becomes a virtue.

That process was visible in Nazi Germany beginning in the early 1930s, and it has appeared in numerous genocides and campaigns of ethnic cleansing throughout history.  And many critics, including Jewish scholars, Holocaust survivors, Israeli human-rights advocates, UN investigators, and genocide scholars, have argued that similar patterns of dehumanization and collective punishment are visible today in attitudes toward Palestinians.  What makes this argument especially significant is that some of the strongest warnings are coming from Jewish voices themselves.

The late Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer spent years warning that the lessons of the Holocaust were being betrayed when they were applied selectively. For Meyer, “Never Again” was not a slogan reserved for Jews alone. It was a universal moral principle.

Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos has publicly spoken about similarities he perceives between aspects of Palestinian suffering and experiences he witnessed as a child during the Second World War. He has criticized attempts to weaponize Holocaust memory as a shield against criticism of contemporary Israeli policies that justify genocide, and has insisted that survivors and their descendants have a duty to speak against injustice wherever it occurs.

Holocaust survivor Marione Ingram, who lost family members to Nazi persecution, has likewise condemned the devastation in Gaza and publicly called for an end to the violence.

These individuals are not arguing that history is repeating itself in identical form.  The Holocaust was a unique event without historical precedent. But they are saying that there are parallels between what the Nazis did to them and other Jews and what Israel is doing and has done to Palestinians.

History matters

The purpose of studying history is not merely to catalogue differences, it is to recognise recurring patterns. These include: dehumanization, collective punishment, exterminationist rhetoric, the treatment of an entire population as expendable, the rationalisation of mass suffering, and the replacement of morality with immoral obedience.  These are patterns that appear repeatedly throughout the history of human atrocity.

Since late 2023, a growing number of respected organisations, international legal experts, genocide scholars, and human-rights bodies have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza either constitute genocide or display characteristics consistent with genocide under the Genocide Convention. These include the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, the UN Special Committee, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, the International Federation of Human Rights, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars. In addition, Prominent Jewish and Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholars, including Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Raz Segal, Daniel Blatman, and Shmuel Lederman, have voiced similar concerns.

People may disagree with those conclusions. Ongoing legal proceedings and historical debate will continue for years. But it can no longer be credibly argued that such assessments come only from political activists or ideological opponents of Israel. Some of the most authoritative voices making these warnings are Jewish scholars, Israeli academics, genocide specialists, and Holocaust survivors themselves.

The most troubling aspect of the present moment is that the evidence of Palestinian suffering has been visible to the entire world.  It has been called “the most transparent genocide in human history.”  No one can plausibly claim ignorance. The destruction has unfolded live on social media, in photographs, in videos, and through the testimony of humanitarian organisations, journalists, doctors, aid workers, and survivors. Yet even amid this devastation, large numbers of people have continued to justify, excuse, minimise, or celebrate the suffering.

That reality demands moral scrutiny. If an individual supports the extermination of a people, that is evil. If a religious leader justifies the annihilation of a people, that is evil. If a political leader advocates the destruction of a people, that is evil. If a military commander orders actions intended to destroy a population, that is evil. And if citizens knowingly support such objectives, they are embracing evil.

This principle of human rights is universal. It does not matter whether the victims are Jewish, Palestinian, Armenian, Tutsi, Bosniak, Rohingya, or members of any other people. The moral standard must remain consistent. Indeed, one of the central lessons of the Holocaust is that no society is immune from moral corruption, that historical victimhood does not confer permanent innocence, and that the suffering endured by one people does not eliminate the possibility that some among them may one day inflict grave suffering on others. The tragedy of history is that persecution does not automatically produce wisdom, compassion, or justice. Many Holocaust survivors and Jewish scholars have warned precisely against this danger—that the memory of oppression can be transformed from a universal call for human dignity into a justification for denying the dignity of others. If the same processes of dehumanisation, collective punishment, and indifference to mass civilian suffering reappear, they must be confronted and condemned regardless of who the victims are or who the perpetrators may be.

That uncomfortable truth is exactly why so many Holocaust survivors and scholars have chosen to speak out. They understand that memory has value only if it informs present conduct. The real question raised by NAZA is therefore not whether Israelis are uniquely evil. The question is whether individuals who knowingly participate in, justify, or support the destruction of another people have crossed a moral line that should be recognized for the evil that it is.

The answer is yes. Because if genocide is evil, then those who incite it, facilitate it, normalize it, celebrate it, or participate in it are engaging in evil. If ethnic cleansing is evil, then those who advocate, implement, or support it are engaging in evil. If mass killing, dehumanization, and collective punishment are evil, then those who knowingly carry out such acts are engaging in evil.

The lesson of history is not that evil belongs to one nation. The lesson is far more frightening.

Evil can emerge anywhere. It can emerge in technologically advanced societies, among educated people, within democracies, and among those who regard themselves as civilised and moral.  When it does, it usually arrives not in the form of obvious monsters, but in the form of ordinary people who have stopped recognizing the humanity of those they have been taught to fear, hate, and dehumanize.

That was Hannah Arendt's warning. It is also what makes the testimony presented in NAZA so profoundly unsettling. The film is not simply a record of what has happened in Gaza during more than three years of genocide. It is a mirror held up to humanity itself. It forces viewers to confront how easily moral boundaries can erode, how ordinary people can become indifferent to the suffering of others, and how individuals and institutions can participate in immense human tragedy while continuing to see themselves as righteous, civilized, and justified.

The message of NAZA extends far beyond Gaza. History's greatest atrocities are not merely stories about the past. They are warnings written in the blood of their victims, cautioning future generations about what happens when hatred is normalized, when human beings are stripped of their dignity, and when conscience is surrendered to ideology, fear, tribalism, or blind obedience to an ideology.  We’ve seen this in Nazi Germany and we’re seeing it again today in Zionist Israel.

The events documented in the film remind us that mass atrocities do not begin with mass killing. They begin with words that dehumanize, stereotypes that demonize, and narratives that deny the humanity of an entire people. They begin when suffering is rationalized and when violence is reframed as necessity, security, revenge, self-defence, or historical destiny. As Arendt understood, evil rarely presents itself as evil. More often, it disguises itself as duty, patriotism, or moral necessity.

This is why NAZA is not simply a film about the victims of Gaza. It is a challenge directed at the conscience of the entire world. More than three years of death and destruction have unfolded before a global audience connected by unprecedented technology, instant communication, and constant access to information. Future generations will not be able to claim that humanity did not know. The more troubling question is what people chose to do, or chose not to do, with that knowledge.

Remembering history alone has never been enough to prevent atrocities. Humanity has repeatedly pledged "Never Again" since World War II only to watch new horrors emerge under different names, in different places, and against different victims. The price of those failures has always been paid by the vulnerable, the defenceless, and the dead. NAZA therefore stands not only as a testament to suffering but as a moral challenge to the living. It calls on us to reject indifference, to resist the normalization of injustice, and to defend our common humanity before cruelty becomes accepted as ordinary and atrocity becomes routine.

Ultimately, NAZA’s warning is not only about what happens to those who are targeted by violence and oppression. It is also about what happens to the societies, institutions, and individuals who tolerate, excuse, or ignore it. When conscience is silenced and injustice is allowed to flourish, the damage does not remain confined to its victims. It spreads outward, corrupting moral judgement, degrading human values, and diminishing the humanity of all who become complicit through action, silence, or indifference. That is the enduring lesson of NAZA, and it is a lesson the world ignores at its peril.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Why Islamic History Month matters: Knowledge that Western publics have been denied

Islamic History Month exists to celebrate achievements and but also challenge ignorance. Understanding this history is particularly important in an era when anti-Muslim prejudice is widespread. 

By Fareed Khan  
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

October is Islamic History Month in Canada. Like Black History Month, Indigenous History Month and other such designated months, it is sometimes met with questions from those who wonder why such observances are necessary, or who complain that they elevate the history of one group above that of the broader population. Such criticisms overlook the purpose of these commemorations. They exist not to privilege one community's history, but to address historical omissions, challenge prejudice, and ensure that the contributions of communities that have often been marginalized, misrepresented, or erased are recognized as part of our shared national story.

Islamic History Month serves precisely that purpose. Officially proclaimed by the Parliament of Canada in 2007, it recognizes the history, diversity, and contributions of Muslims while providing an opportunity to confront Islamophobia and deepen public understanding of the Islamic faith and Muslim societies. More importantly, it challenges one of the most enduring distortions in popular historical memory—the notion that Muslim civilizations stood at the margins of human progress rather than at its very centre. By highlighting a heritage that has profoundly shaped science, medicine, mathematics, philosophy, culture, and the modern world itself, Islamic History Month helps restore an essential chapter of human history that is too often overlooked or deliberately ignored in the West.

For most of us who grew up in Canada and other Western societies, the story of civilization is often told from a Eurocentric perspective, as if intellectual progress moved directly from ancient Greece and Rome to Renaissance Europe. Yet historical evidence reveals a much richer and more complex reality. Between the eighth and fifteenth centuries, Muslim societies were among the most advanced, literate, scientifically productive, and culturally dynamic civilizations on Earth. Their scholars preserved ancient knowledge, expanded it, challenged it, and created entirely new fields of inquiry. The achievements of the Islamic Golden Age helped lay the foundations for mathematics, medicine, astronomy, engineering, philosophy, chemistry, optics, and the scientific method itself, and kick started the Renaissance in Europe.

From the Atlantic shores of North Africa and Spain to South Asia, Muslim societies created a vast intellectual network that dominated scientific and cultural life for centuries. Baghdad's House of Wisdom, the universities and libraries of Córdoba, the observatories of Persia, and the centres of learning stretching across the Muslim world—including the world’s first and oldest university established by a Muslim woman—became repositories of human knowledge at a time when Christian Europe was fragmented and intellectually stagnant.

Contributions of Muslim scholars cannot be overstated

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi developed algebra and helped popularize the Arabic numeral system, including the mathematical use of zero. His work gave the world the very word "algebra," while the term "algorithm" derives from the Latinized form of his name. Every computer program, smartphone application, banking network, and telecommunications system in existence today relies upon mathematical principles that emerged from his scientific scholarship.

Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, authored The Canon of Medicine, one of the most influential medical texts in human history. It remained a standard reference in European universities for centuries. Al-Zahrawi revolutionized surgery through detailed medical encyclopaedias and the design of instruments that remain recognizable to modern surgeons. Ibn al-Haytham—a mathematician, astronomer, and physicist—transformed humanity's understanding of light, optics, and vision. He demonstrated that sight occurs when light reflects from objects into the eye, overturning classical misconceptions and helping establish the foundations of experimental science.

Muslim scholars also revolutionized astronomy through the establishment of sophisticated observatories, the compilation of accurate star catalogues, advances in spherical trigonometry, and the development of navigational instruments that transformed exploration and navigation. Among these innovators was Al-Ijliyyah, a renowned female tenth-century astronomer and astrolabe maker from what is now Syria, whose work contributed to the refinement of the astrolabe, one of the most important scientific instruments of the medieval world. Meanwhile, engineers such as al-Jazari pioneered technologies including the crankshaft, water pumps, mechanical clocks, automated devices, and sophisticated machines whose underlying principles would influence technological development for centuries to come.

Many inventions and practices that are taken for granted today either originated in, or were significantly refined within, Muslim civilization. These include algebra, algorithms, cryptography, surgical instruments, optical research, chemistry, distillation techniques, hospitals, advanced irrigation systems, paper production, navigational sciences, mechanical engineering, and sophisticated banking instruments such as cheques. These achievements were not isolated discoveries. They formed an integrated knowledge system that sustained scientific and cultural leadership in Europe, North Africa, the Middle-East, and West Asia for centuries. Muslim scholars translated and preserved the works of Greek, Persian, Indian, and earlier civilizations. But they did far more than preserve knowledge. They critiqued, corrected, expanded, and transformed it.

This intellectual blossoming played a decisive role in Europe's emergence from the Dark Ages. Through Muslim Spain, the Ottoman Empire, the Crusader states, and Mediterranean trade networks, Europe encountered advanced mathematics, medicine, philosophy, geography, astronomy, engineering, and administrative systems. The translation centres of Toledo and other cities transmitted Arabic-language scholarship into Latin. The curricula of Europe's earliest universities drew heavily upon texts that had been preserved or developed within Islamic civilization.

The Muslim states of modern day Spain became one of the most remarkable centres of knowledge and culture in the world. Historians have documented how Islamic rule transformed the Iberian Peninsula into a society known for scholarship, architecture, medicine, mathematics, and learning. Cordoba emerged as one of Europe's largest and most sophisticated cities. At a time when literacy levels were low in much of Europe, Muslim states in Spain (and beyond) boasted libraries, universities, hospitals, public infrastructure, and thriving intellectual life.

This historical reality complicates simplistic narratives that portray Europe as the sole source of modern civilization. Increasingly, scholars acknowledge that the Renaissance did not emerge in isolation but was profoundly influenced by knowledge transmitted through Islamic societies.

At the same time, many historians have noted that later European narratives often minimized Islamic contributions or erased them entirely. Renaissance and Enlightenment histories frequently presented Europe's intellectual revival as a direct inheritance from ancient Greece and Rome, bypassing the centuries during which Muslim scholars preserved, transmitted, and expanded that knowledge, and claiming credit for that knowledge by suppressing its origins. There is legitimate scholarly debate about the extent of direct borrowing and attribution. However, there is little dispute that many foundational scientific texts used in Europe originated in Muslim scholarship and that the contributions of Muslim thinkers have often been underrepresented in mainstream historical accounts.

Examples frequently cited by historians include the influence of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Ibn al-Shatir on later astronomical models associated with Copernicus, the transmission of mathematical methods through the works of al-Khwarizmi and other Muslim scholars, and the profound impact of Ibn al-Haytham's optics on European scientific thought. While it would be inaccurate to reduce European intellectual history to simple theft, it is fair to argue that Muslim contributions have often been marginalized, obscured, or detached from their original historical context.

Understanding this history is particularly important in an era when anti-Muslim prejudice is widespread in the West. Islamic History Month exists not only to celebrate achievements but also to challenge ignorance. Too often, Muslims are portrayed as newcomers to Western societies or as outsiders to Western history and culture. The historical record demonstrates otherwise.

Muslims have been present in North America for centuries

Many enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims. Historians estimate that millions of enslaved people taken from West Africa practised Islam and carried with them Islamic traditions, literacy, and scholarship. Their labour helped build the economic foundations of North America while their identities were frequently erased through slavery and forced assimilation.

In Canada, Muslim history extends far beyond contemporary immigration. Historical records indicate that some of the earliest Muslims arrived as enslaved persons with United Empire Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution. The first documented Muslim family in what became Canada, converts James and Agnes Love, settled in southwestern Ontario in 1851. Muslims appeared in the Canadian census for the first time in 1871, established community organizations in the early twentieth century, started businesses, and built the Al-Rashid Mosque in Edmonton in 1938—Canada's first mosque.

The story of Muslims in Canada is therefore not a recent story. It is a story rooted in Canadian history since before Confederation.

The same holds true of Muslim presence in the United States, where they have been woven into the fabric of the nation for since the 17th century. As labourers, soldiers, workers, scholars, entrepreneurs, physicians, artists, and public servants, they have helped shape American society in countless ways. To portray Muslims as outsiders to North America is to ignore a documented history that stretches back generations.

Muslim-Jewish relations

Islamic History Month is also important because it provides an opportunity to challenge misconceptions about relations between Muslims and Jews over the centuries.

Contemporary political conflicts relating to Israel and Palestinians have been projected backward into history by pro-Israel voices, creating the false impression that Muslims and Jews have been locked in eternal hostility for millennia. But historical reality is far more nuanced.

Prominent Jewish scholars have asserted that Islamic civilization created conditions under which Jewish communities survived and flourished. Historian David Wasserstein, for example, has written that Islam provided a cultural and political environment that saved Jewish communities across the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain, allowing them to prosper, maintain their religious institutions, and produce some of the greatest achievements in Jewish intellectual history.

Under Muslim rule, Jewish communities often experienced degrees of security, autonomy, and cultural flourishing that contrasted sharply with conditions in many parts of medieval Christian Europe where anti-Jewish prejudice and pogroms were common. Islamic Spain witnessed what many scholars describe as a Jewish Golden Age, where Jewish philosophers, poets, physicians, scholars, and statesmen made extraordinary contributions while participating in the broader cultural life of Muslim society.

This is not to suggest that relations between Muslims and Jews were always free of tension or conflict. Like all civilizations, Muslim societies experienced periods of discrimination, exclusion, and political division. However, historical honesty requires placing those realities in their proper context. During many of the same centuries when Jewish communities faced persecution, ghettoization, forced conversion, expulsion, and periodic massacres in parts of Christian Europe, many Jewish communities living under Muslim rule enjoyed a greater degree of security, religious freedom, and cultural flourishing. This does not mean life was perfect or that equality was absolute, but it does undermine the modern political narrative pushed by Zionists that portrays Muslim-Jewish relations as an inevitable and uninterrupted centuries-long conflict. The historical record instead reveals extensive periods of coexistence, intellectual exchange, commercial partnership, and shared cultural achievement that enriched both communities and produced some of the most remarkable advances of the medieval world.

Indeed, the collapse of Muslim rule in Spain in 1492 and the subsequent expulsion of Jews and Muslims dramatically altered centuries of coexistence in Iberia. The imposition of religious uniformity and persecution by the Spanish Inquisition replaced the more pluralistic social order that had existed under centuries of Muslim rule, forcing countless families, scholars, artisans, merchants, and professionals into exile. Recognizing both the humanitarian tragedy and the intellectual opportunity, Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II dispatched ships to evacuate many refugees and welcome them into the Ottoman Empire. He is famously reported to have mocked the Spanish monarchs for impoverishing their own kingdom by expelling some of its most educated and productive citizens while enriching his own. The expulsions not only uprooted entire communities but also marked the end of an era in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians had lived, worked, and contributed to a shared intellectual and cultural landscape across much of medieval Iberia.

In Canada today, Islamic History Month serves as a reminder that Muslims are not a footnote to national history but part of its fabric. They are descendants of enslaved Africans, pioneers, immigrants, professionals, workers, activists, artists, and public servants. Their story intersects with the stories of Indigenous peoples, Black Canadians, newcomers, and all those who helped build the country.

At a deeper level, Islamic History Month asks Canadians to reconsider whose achievements are remembered and whose are forgotten. The technologies we use, the medicines we rely upon, the mathematics that power our digital world, and many of the scientific methods that guide modern research owe an enormous debt to centuries of Muslim civilization. Yet those contributions are often absent or deleted from public education and popular understanding.

Recognizing this history is not about diminishing anyone else's achievements. It is about telling the truth, and teaching a complete history of how Western civilization evolved to its current state.

When we acknowledge the accomplishments of Muslim scholars, we enrich our understanding of civilization itself. When we recognize the long presence of Muslims in North America, we challenge Eurocentric narratives of exclusion. When we remember the periods in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived, learned, and created together, we undermine the politics of division and hatred that we see too often in our society today.

That is why Islamic History Month matters. It is an act of historical reclamation. It is a rejection of ignorance and prejudice and a recognition that Muslim civilization helped shape the modern world, and that Muslims have long been part of the Canadian and North American story. Most importantly, it reminds us that knowledge, innovation, and human progress have always emerged from the contributions of many cultures and peoples working across boundaries of faith, language, and geography.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.