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.

How Western media manufactured consent for genocide in Gaza

Western media do not simply reflect reality they produce . . . In the context of Israel-Palestinian story telling they shape public consciousness and manufacture consent for state violence. 

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

In his seminal work Covering Islam, one of his books on the subject of “Orientalism”, Palestinian-American academic Edward Said discussed how Western news media constructs, distorts, and weaponizes narratives about Muslims, Arabs, and the Middle East. Said demonstrated that Western media do not simply misrepresent Islam and Arab societies, they also produce an entire worldview in which Muslims, and specifically Middle-Eastern societies, are rendered suspect, irrational, violent, and culturally inferior.

In his book Said showed that news media in the West through the lens of Orientalism depicts “Islam as a monolithic force”, a view shaped by ignorance, racism, bigotry, and geopolitical interests. His analysis exposed the machinery through which Western media manufacture fear, justify domination, oppression, and erase the humanity of those living under Western-backed violence. Nowhere is this structure more visible — or more lethal — than in Western coverage of Palestinian issues over the decades, and Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The Gaza Genocide through a biased Western media lens

Said warned that Western media portray Islam and Muslims through a “hostile and belligerent” lens, reviving “discredited Orientalist views” whenever geopolitical interests demand it. That lens is now the default through which the Gaza genocide is covered. Palestinians are framed not as human beings with rights, histories, agency, and suffering, but as abstractions — “human shields,” “Hamas sympathizers,” “terrorist-adjacent populations.” Meanwhile Israeli lives are individualized, named, and mourned while Palestinian lives are recognized only through death tolls, and their narratives doubted, minimized, or erased.

This is not accidental, and has been happening for decades whenever Palestine and Israel have been discussed in the West, and more so over the past three years.  The news media have fuelled Israel’s genocide by uncritically repeating Israeli claims, suppressing Palestinian testimony, and framing Israel’s brutal violence as “self-defence” even when it has targeted hospitals, schools, journalists, and entire families. This provides credence to Said’s argument that Orientalism functions by privileging Western voices and those of its Israeli ally over those of Middle Eastern Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. For decades since its creation the Israeli narrative has been treated as authoritative and trustworthy, while Palestinian voices are treated as emotional, biased, suspect, and dangerous.

Canadian media’s coverage of Palestinians is no exception. A study by The Review of Journalism found that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) flagship program The National featured more Israeli voices than Palestinian ones in its Gaza coverage, giving disproportionate weight to Israeli perspectives and marginalizing those of Palestinians. This is Orientalism in practice, where the colonizer’s voice is legitimized, and the colonized are not spoken to as people with agency, but spoken about as if they have none.

Said emphasized that Orientalism is not only about what is said, but how it is said. Language constructs reality, and Western media’s linguistic choices when talking about Palestinians or Muslims reveals a hierarchy of human worth, with Palestinians and Muslims sitting near the bottom.

Israeli deaths are described with emotional and graphic specificity — “slaughtered,” “massacred,” “butchered.” Whereas Palestinian deaths — even when numbering in the tens of thousands — are described with passive, distancing language — “died,” “were killed,” “perished,” or the most dehumanizing of all, “casualties.”

As the independent news outlet The Maple reported in 2020, there is a “devastating” pro-Israel bias in Canadian media. Stories on mainstream Canadian news outlets have repeatedly used an active voice to describe Israeli deaths while consistently using a passive voice for Palestinian deaths, subtly implying agency when Israelis are harmed and inevitability when Palestinians are deliberately killed by Israeli forces even when they are peacefully resisting occupation. This linguistic asymmetry is not neutral but rather a moral ranking mechanism. When Israel kills Palestinians, the media ask: What did Hamas do to cause this? When Israelis are killed by Palestinians the media ask: Why did Palestinians murder Israelis for no apparent reason?

This is precisely the Orientalist logic Said identified, one where the West (and its allies) act and those in the Middle East are acted upon. Israeli violence is contextualized while almost eight decades of Palestinian dispossession, oppression, suffering and death are not.

Silencing pro-Palestinian voices is the new McCarthyism

Said wrote that Western media relies on “experts” to reinforce dominant colonial and imperialist narratives — well-known and credentialed voices who reproduce the Western worldview of power while masquerading as neutral analysts. These experts, he argued, are selected not for their insight but for their ideological reliability. That is, they tell the public the Israeli and pro-Western narrative in favourable terms, reinforcing already established Orientalist narratives. Today, this dynamic has intensified to the point of open intimidation. Journalists who are sympathetic to Palestinian narratives — especially those who report honestly on Israeli atrocities — are not merely marginalized, they are disciplined or fired. Newsrooms that once claimed to value independence and fairness in coverage now enforce ideological conformity in how Israel and the story of Palestinians are portrayed, with the rigidity of a security apparatus.

Reporters who attempt to humanize Palestinians, verify Israeli claims, or document Israeli war crimes, face investigations, suspensions, and removal from their jobs, as editors spike stories that contradict Israeli talking points. Freelance reporters lose contracts for expressing grief or sympathy over the suffering of Palestinian children or posting social media comments, and entire careers are destroyed for refusing to participate in the dehumanization of a people living under a brutal occupation for almost eight decades. This is not a marketplace of free speech as much as it is a system of control, with prejudiced and racist editors and producers controlling how Palestinian humanity is represented in stories. It is the modern incarnation of what Said identified decades ago — a media environment in which dissenting news stories are treated as threats to the dominant narrative, and truth-tellers are disciplined into silence to reinforce Israel’s anti-Palestinian propaganda.

Across Canada, journalists have been suspended, fired, or censured for expressing even mild sympathy for Palestinians or for criticizing Israeli war crimes. The Maple documents how Canadian journalists who attempted to report on the scale of Palestinian suffering were reprimanded or removed from assignments. Breach Media reports that Canadian op-ed pages have overwhelmingly published pro-Israel commentary while rejecting Palestinian perspectives long before the start of the Gaza genocide. Middle East Eye shows how Western media have “manufactured consent” for Israel’s killing of hundreds of Palestinian journalists by downplaying or ignoring these targeted assassinations.

This is not merely media bias, it is repression and censorship. It is the policing of acceptable speech by media gatekeepers, and the enforcement of a narrative that protects Israeli power and erases Palestinian humanity. Said warned that Orientalism is not merely an academic discourse but also a political weapon that promotes oppression. And that is evident today, as this weapon is being used against journalists who refuse to participate in the sanitization of Israel’s horrific crimes and the vilification of Palestinians.

The long history of Anti-Palestinian racism

Anti-Palestinian prejudice did not begin on October 8, 2023. It has been embedded in Western media and society for decades. As Rabble.ca notes, Western media have a long history of ignoring or minimizing atrocities committed by Israel, from the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 to the Great March of Return in 2018 and 2019 — a weekly peaceful protest in which Palestinians in Gaza demonstrated for their right of return to the homes from which they were ethnically cleansed by Israel in 1948, 1967 and the decades since then. It is clear from the history of Palestinians since before Israel came into being that Western media portrayal of the Middle East is conducted through a lens shaped by “geopolitics and economic interests,” not by truth.

What has changed in how Western media portrays Palestinians over the past few years is not the scope of anti-Palestinian prejudice but its visibility. The Gaza genocide has exposed the depth of Western news media’s structural anti-Palestinian racism, particularly in major broadcasters and newspapers like CNN, BBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Mail, and others. It has revealed how deeply Orientalist assumptions are woven into Western newsroom culture, editorial decision-making, and journalistic norms. In Canada, newsrooms cling to “flawed notions of objectivity” that unquestioningly treat Israeli state narratives as authentic and truthful while Palestinian narratives are questioned and seen as biased. This is Orientalism masquerading as professionalism — a veneer of journalistic neutrality that conceals a racialized hierarchy of credibility. The result is a media environment where Palestinian suffering is filtered through skepticism and prejudice, Israeli claims are granted automatic legitimacy, and the very idea of Palestinian humanity becomes negotiable within the offices of Western news editors and producers.

Western media do not simply reflect reality they produce it claimed Said. In the context of Israel-Palestinian story telling they shape public consciousness and manufacture consent for state violence. If one looks closely at news stories in Western media about the Gaza genocide, they have played a role that is structurally analogous to the role the tabloid Der Stürmer played in Nazi Germany, not in ideology, but in function.

Der Stürmer dehumanized Jews, justified state violence, and normalized atrocity. Western media today dehumanizes Palestinians, legitimizes Israeli violence, and normalizes genocide. Western media have become a weapon in the Gaza genocide, shaping public opinion to enable mass killing, and have systematically suppressed images, testimonies, and evidence of Israeli atrocities.

When media systems consistently dehumanize a people, erase their suffering, and amplify the narratives of their oppressors, they are not neutral observers. They are participants and criminally complicit.

There needs to be accountability

If international law is to have any meaning, then institutions that materially contribute to atrocity crimes must face scrutiny and be held legally accountable. This includes media institutions whose coverage enables, rationalizes, or sanitizes genocide. While media systems — as institutions — can be complicit in mass violence, such complicity does not arise spontaneously. It is shaped and enforced by people — executives, editors, and senior decision‑makers — who determine which narratives are amplified and which are suppressed. The precedent is clear. At the Nuremberg Tribunals, Nazi propagandists were tried and convicted because their media apparatus played a structural role in enabling the Holocaust. Similarly Western media executives have played a significant role in the atrocities carried out by Israel in Gaza. The principle established at Nuremberg — that propaganda and disinformation can constitute participation in atrocity — remains relevant today. Western media have spent three years repeating Israeli talking points, reiterating its claims without verification ignoring Palestinian testimony, and denying that genocide is taking place. In effect, Western outlets have adopted Israeli military language, framing mass killing as “precision strikes” and ethnic cleansing as “evacuations,” thereby laundering and legitimizing Israeli state violence through their framing of genocidal acts.

Said taught that knowledge is never neutral and that media power always constitutes political power. When that power is mobilized to facilitate or obscure genocide, the question becomes unavoidable: what forms of accountability are necessary for institutions that help enable mass atrocity? His critique of Western media bias, once dismissed by some as academic overreach, now reads as prophetic. The analytical framework he developed is not merely relevant to the present moment, it is indispensable in understanding how the Gaza genocide has been narrated, justified, and normalized in the West.

The atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza have revealed the true nature of Western media, not as watchdogs of power, but as instruments of it, not as defenders of truth, but as manufacturers of consent, not as neutral observers, but as structural participants in atrocity. The patterns Said identified decades ago — the privileging of colonial narratives, the erasure of Indigenous voices, the racialized hierarchy of credibility — have all re-emerged with devastating clarity. They shape which deaths are to be mourned, which claims are to be believed, and which atrocities are to be rendered invisible.

Said warned that Orientalism was not a relic of the past but an active system of thought that would continue to shape Western perceptions of the Middle East unless confronted directly. The world did not listen and for the past three years, a genocide has unfolded in real time, with Western media helping to make it possible — through distortion, through silence, through selective empathy, and through the steady reproduction of the narratives that justify the dehumanization of Palestinians.

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