The city of Plano, a wealthy suburb of Dallas, has handed over $1.2 million to extreme Islamist organizations, including an Islamic center under investigation by state and federal agencies over its alleged plans for a sharia enclave and whose leader advocated the killing of homosexuals; a mosque whose imam permits husbands to beat their wives; and two charities accused of links to foreign terror organizations.
East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC)
Since 2016, records published by the government of Plano, TX, indicate the city has given $219,000 to the controversial East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), despite ongoing law enforcement investigations into the notoriously radical mosque’s efforts to establish an enclave north of Dallas.
Significant national media attention on EPIC in recent months has focused on the mosque’s controversial plans to establish a 402-acre compound north of Dallas, named EPIC City.
Crucially, the most recent grant, of some $142,921, was provided on May 9, 2025, weeks after the state of Texas, on orders of Governor Greg Abbott, opened multiple investigations, including by the Texas Rangers, into the mosque and its “affiliated entities” for “potential criminal activities.”
On March 31, the governor declared: “Texas is a law-and-order state, and those scheming to evade law enforcement scrutiny must know justice is awaiting them. That is why I directed the Texas Rangers to fully investigate the group behind the proposed EPIC compound for potentially violating criminal law. Texas will ensure that anyone affiliated with EPIC who is breaking the law is brought to justice.”
The very same day the most recent Plano grant to EPIC was issued, the Department of Justice also established an investigation into the proposed compound.
EPIC’s head, Yasir Qadhi, is a prominent imam with a long history of involvement in Islamist causes. Some years ago, Qadhi openly expressed hatred for Jews and advanced Holocaust denial ideas.
In an undated recording, Qadhi also advocated the killing of homosexuals.
Despite claims he has renounced his earlier extremism and anti-Semitism, in October 2016, Qadhi offered a defense of the Taliban. And following the October 7 attacks by the terrorist group Hamas, in which over 1,200 Israelis were murdered, Qadhi declared he had “the luxury of bluntly saying I am not going to condemn the fight of an oppressed people.”
As noted by MEMRI, other imams at EPIC have, in sermons at the mosque, praised the October 7 attacks for putting “horror in the hearts of the enemy,” and declared that every “true Muslim would love to have such a death” as the Palestinian “martyrs.”
EPIC and its imam also support efforts to free Aafia Siddiqui, an Al-Qaeda operative whom the FBI found to be planning a “mass casualty attack” against targets across America. In the lead-up to her trial, Siddiqui demanded that Jews be excluded from the jury, claiming the entire prosecution had been orchestrated by unnamed “Jews.” She was sentenced in 2010 to 86 years in prison, after the jury found that “Siddiqui attempted to murder Americans serving in Afghanistan, as well as their Afghan colleagues.”
Islamic Association of Collin County
EPIC is not the only extremist beneficiary of the Plano city government.
In 2017 and 2020, Plano seemingly handed over twelve grants totaling $1 million to benefit the Islamic Association of Collin County (IACC), also known as the Plano Masjid.
The IACC’s imam is Arsalan Haque, a leading hardline advocate of sharia in the Dallas area. In a sermon given at the IACC, Haque permits husbands to hit their wives, so long as such abuse is conducted in the proper “context” and only “to bring her back to her senses.”
In another sermon given at another DFW mosque, Haque warns that men may not beat their wives “to the extent that they die.” Haque also contrasts the benefits of an Islamic system of slavery to historical Western models He praises the “rights” afforded to slaves under Islam, conceding that it is sometimes necessary to “discipline” slaves, just as it is a “duty to discipline my wife if she rebels.”
The IACC’s previous imam, Azhar Subedar, trained in the United Kingdom with Tablighi Jamaat, a global Deobandi missionary movement linked by security services to dozens of terrorism and radicalization cases.
The IACC supported the recent violent anti-Jewish student encampments at the University of Texas.
Radical Charities
Plano also gave over $6,000 to the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), a radical activist group with a history of anti-Hindu rhetoric and alleged terror connections,
In particular IAMC has been accused of links to the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), an Indian-designated terrorist organization. SIMI’s founder, Ahmadullah Siddiqui, reportedly appeared at the IAMC’s first convention in 2003.
In addition, the Middle East Forum’s Benjamin Baird has recorded:
Prior to his repeated appearances at IAMC conventions, Ghafoor participated in a radio debate where he reminded fellow Muslims that they were in the U.S. “to bring truth and justice and Islamic ways to this country. . . . you should rule by Islam otherwise you’re a Kafir [unbeliever, non-Muslim].”
Other senior IAMC officials have empathized with the Taliban and justified its resistance against American armed forces. Ajit Sahi, IAMC’s current advocacy director, has expressed compassion for jihadists from Hamas to ISIS, whose savage tactics even the brutal Taliban abhor.
“A US citizen has the right to kill trespassers on his land. But the Taliban and ISIS are terrorists when they shoot the invader?” Sahi tweeted in July 2014. “Understand that both the Taliban and ISIS are fighting Westerners who had no business to be in their lands in the first place,” he added in the same thread.
Plano handed an additional $1000 to Islamic Relief USA, the leading charitable institution of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose funding of Hamas proxies in Gaza and other Islamists have led to bans and the blacklisting of the organization in multiple Arab and European countries.
Staff of Islamic Relief’s branch in Gaza openly express support for terror leaders and have declared: “I ask god to paralyze the pillars of the Jews and cut their legs and paralyze their hands,” as well as: “O Muslim, O servant of Allah, behind me a Jew. Come and Kill him.”
At its U.S. branch, Islamic Relief staff have included Khaled Lamada, who, in 2017, the Middle East Forum found, circulated text on social media praising the “jihad” of the “Mujahidin” for “causing the Jews many defeats,” and republished claims on Facebook that praised Hamas for inflicting a “huge defeat” against the “Zionist entity.” Another staff member, Yousef Abdullah, has praised the killing of Jews, among other anti-Semitic remarks.
In collaboration with our Muslim partners and allies, Focus on Western Islamism tracks city, state and federal government funding of Islamism across the country.
FWI reached out to the city of Plano to request comment, and will update this article if a response is received.
