The Islamist Schools Industry in Texas

On December 12, a few weeks after Governor Greg Abbott “designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations,” Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock wrote to the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton to request legal advice on the “eligibility of certain private schools to participate” in the state of Texas’s new private school subsidies program, named Texas Education Freedom Accounts.

Citing the designation of CAIR, as well as the threat of the Chinese Communist Party, the comptroller queried whether a school is legally disqualified from the program if it has:

• “any known direct or indirect affiliation, shared facility use, partnership, or organized association with an entity designated as an FTO [Foreign Terrorist Organizations] or TCO [Transnational Criminal Organizations] under Texas law; and/or...”
• “ownership, governance, property interests, operational control, or financial influence traceable to individuals or entities associated with a foreign adversary as defined under Texas property-security and foreign-influence statutes.”

As the Middle East Forum has analyzed at length, Texas faces a far broader Islamist threat than just the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR. The Islamic private school industry is today dominated by Islamist influence. This state of affairs is entirely the result of Islamist efforts.

Radical clerics, over the past few decades, have issued countless fatwas urging Muslim parents to free their children from the ostensible “depravity” of public school institutions, where “evil is much greater than the benefits.” Meanwhile, Islamist imams at mosques across America warn against “let[ting] your child go to the public school … and mix with the disbelievers, with the kuffar.”

Islamist ideologues have long pursued control of education. Ehud Rosen, writing for Hudson Institute journal Current Trends, explains that Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, “sought in education the achievement of a comprehensive moral edification (tahdhib) and the shaping of fully Islamic personalities whose manners, way of thinking and sense of moral duty were defined entirely in accord with the Brotherhood’s religious and political dawa.”

And indeed, for decades, Islamist movements in the West, aligned with foreign movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and South Asia’s Jamaat-e-Islami, have worked hard to promote private Islamic education as a particularly efficient means to radicalize each generation of Muslim children. Groups such as the Islamist-established Islamic Society of North America and Muslim American Society have established schooling bodies to oversee the establishment of private schools, education trusts and curricula design. Texas-designated CAIR, meanwhile, is an avid supporters of private school voucher programs.

As a result of Islamist interest in a private school industry, there are troublingly few Muslim schooling initiatives that operate without some degree of Islamist influence. Perhaps the most startling change in recent years has been the explosion in Deobandi madrassas across the United States, with dozens of new schools established under the control of hardline muftis.

In total, Middle East Forum data counts almost 800 Islamic educational initiatives across the United States, aimed at both children and adults, comprising part-time and full-time schools, seminaries, curricula bodies, and educational trusts, of which a clear majority are under Islamist control.

Ninety of these educational institutions are in in Texas, of which 34 are full-time private schools. Some 30 of those schools qualify for the new school subsidy program.

To what extent, then, are these schools under extremist influence? Let’s scrutinize some of those 30 qualifying schools.

The Iman Academy is a project of the Foundation to Advance Islamic Teaching in Houston (FAITH), which operates several schools in the Houston area. In the Houston suburb of Webster, TX, the Iman Academy comprises two schools and two daycare facilities.

FAITH was founded by Hamdy Radwan, whom Egyptian media has alleged is a leading U.S. supporter of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Radwan has stated that he does not consider the terrorist organization Hamas to be a “terrorist organization,” but “freedom fighters.”

Radwan has long served as a leading official in the Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors have described as “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.” The United Arab Emirates designated MAS in 2014 as a terrorist organization. In 2019, Members of Congress called for an investigation into its Philadelphia branch after it hosted an event in which children sang about torturing and beheading Jews.

At Radwan’s FAITH schools in Houston, students are taught Islamist ideas such as tarbiyah, a key Muslim Brotherhood education concept, in which Islamist ideas are applied to every aspect of a student’s education and personal life.

Other current and former Iman Academy staff include Khalid Kebbati, who also worked for the Reach Education Fund, one of the most extreme Hamas-aligned charities in North America. Ahmed Gebreel, director of Reach’s Palestine Office, refers to himself as a follower of Hitler, cheerfully noting the Nazis had wiped out millions of “impure” Jews. Ayyad Yassin, Reach’s current chairman, has published “congratulations to all our people in Gaza” following Hamas’s killing of Israeli soldiers, as well as praise for a terrorist attack by Hamas’s Qassam Brigades.

The current principal of the Iman Academy’s southwestern campus, Musa Sadek, openly shares Hamas propaganda on his social media, welcoming the October 7 attacks, along with hundreds of posts promoting far-right anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and alleging malign Jewish influence over the Trump administration.

The Houston Quran Academy is run by the Muslim American Society (MAS) Katy Center, also known as Masjid al-Rahman. All are subsidiaries of the same extremist Muslim American Society (MAS) mentioned in the profile above.

Main Alqudah, a founder of the MAS Katy Center, challenged deportation proceedings in 2013 by arguing that he faced “past and future harm” if he returned to his homeland, because he “advocated [the] imposition of Islamic law instead of secular law in Jordan.” Alqudah admitted during testimony that his family members were part of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, and that he attended Muslim Brotherhood events and donated to the organization.

Main AlQudah declares in rulings published by the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America that women should not engage in public speaking, and insists that parents are expected to train their daughters to wear the hijab from the age of seven.

In one of several published “Beautiful Recitations” on MAS Katy’s social media page, imam Ahmad Elhadad stated: “O Believers! Take neither Jews nor Christians as guardians[,] they are guardians of each other. Whoever does so will be counted as one of them. Surely Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people … with sickness in their hearts.”

The principal of MAS Katy’s Houston Quran Academy is Hamed Ghazali. Ghazali is also chairman of the Muslim American Society (MAS)’s Council of Islamic Schools (MASCIS) and a former superintendent of the Iman Academy (profiled above)

In 1988, as documented by the Causing Fitna blog, Ghazali appeared to openly solicit funds for organizations tied to—and later found to have funded—the designated terrorist group Hamas. In 1989, Ghazali reportedly defended calls for the killing of Salman Rushdie. In 1991, Ghazali’s work was mentioned explicitly in a memorandum produced by U.S-based leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, later seized by the FBI. In the early 1990s, Ghazali led the Ghazali Islamic Video organization, through which he interviewed a number of prominent jihadists, including Al-Qaeda operatives, to discuss their hopes for jihadist efforts to expand beyond Afghanistan.

A speech given by Ghazali in 2010 was cited by the Anti-Defamation League as an example of anti-Semitic incitement, after he claimed “Allah gave us the Jews” as an example of those who “take the wrong path.”

Based in Garland, TX, Brighter Horizons Academy is a subsidiary of the Islamic Services Foundation, a leading Islamist curricula publisher.

Islamic Services Foundation officials have included Ghassan Hitto, a Syrian activist backed by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. In the 2000s, Hitto is alleged to have been closely involved with American Hamas and Brotherhood networks in North Texas. Local media reports Hitto was “heavily involved in running the Dallas-area Brighter Horizons Academy.”

Staff members at Brighter Horizons Academy, notes the Dallas Morning News, have also included “Nabil Sadoun, a Jordanian Islamist activist deported from the United States in 2010 for concealing Hamas ties on immigration paperwork.” The newspaper adds: “Sadoun was on the national and local boards of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which also was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation [terror financing] case.”

Other ISF officials involved with the school include Ramadan Elsabagh, who in 2017 posted a recorded prayer to his Facebook page calling to “destroy the Zionists and their allies, and those who assist them and those who allowed them into the abodes of the Muslims ... Oh Allah save [Al Aqsa] from the hands of the accursed violators ... Oh Allah destroy them.”

The Austin Peace Academy operates under the Islamic Center of Greater Austin. The mosque’s imam, Dawood Yasin, is a former recruit of Tablighi Jamaat, a global Deobandi missionary movement linked by security services to numerous terrorism and radicalization cases.

The mosque has organized multiple events on the “genocide” in Gaza. In 2024, Dawood Yasin hosted the pro-Hamas activist Sami Hamdi, who presented conspiracy theories about “Zionist” power over the American political system. A government official at the Department of Homeland Security has since referred to Hamdi as a “terrorist sympathizer who cheered on Hamas following its October 7 terrorist attack.”

Austin Peace Academy regularly invites extremist imams to address school events. The school appeared on particularly close terms with Wisam Sharieff, a former student of Pakistani imam Israr Ahmed, who founded the extremist South Asian movement Tanzeem-e-Islami. In 2024, federal prosecutors charged Wisam Sharieff with conspiracy to produce child pornography.

Other Austin Peace Academy guest imams have included Amjad Qourshah, a prominent Islamist later imprisoned in Jordan for his reported support of jihad; and Siraj Wahhaj, who once preached: “Take not into your intimacy those outside of your race. They will not fail to corrupt you. Don’t you know our children are surrounded by kafirs [disbelievers]. I’m telling you, making the hearts of our children corrupt, dirty, foul”.

The school also invited Zaid Shakir, who once wrote that Muslims should reject “the legal and political system of America” and warned against “seeking the help of” or “befriending” the “kuffar [unbelievers], Jews and Christians.” Shakir concluded the goal of American Muslims should be “the establishment of Islam and shari’ah in America,” employing methods “ranging from non-cooperation tactics to guerrilla war can bring about favorable policies from a governmental system, or even lead to the eradication of that system.”

Austin Peace Academy has collaborated closely with CAIR for several years.

Based in Austin, and closely involved with the North Austin Muslim Community Center, the Renaissance Academy has a persistent history of involvement with Islamist imams.

The late imam for the school, Islam Mossaad, who died unexpectedly in 2025, openly called for destruction of America, and for an alliance with Marxists to ensure that “Zion American Imperialism falls to its knees.”

Mosaad also encouraged his followers to “support CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations] to strategize and organize.”

Mosaad warned Muslims that “America is not your friend” and called for a “clear military statement from Pakistan and Turkey that stand for the Liberation of Jerusalem and that they stand with anyone pursuing that cause including our proud Persian Iranian brothers and sisters.”

Events organized by the Renaissance Academy included hardline Islamists such as Omar Suleiman, a prominent Texas Salafi who has expressed support for convicted Al-Qaeda terrorist Aafia Siddiqui and terror-tied Islamist preacher Zakir Naik. Suleiman has called for a third Intifada.

A project of the Eagle Institute in McKinney, TX, the Excellence Academy is involved with prominent Salafi imams.

A 2018 event featured radical imam Omar Suleiman as the keynote speaker. As noted in an above profile, Suleiman is an open supporter of convicted terrorists.

A 2021 event hosted by the school featured Yaser Birjas, an instructor at the extremist AlMaghrib Institute, a Texas based Salafi seminary. AlMaghrib’s late founder, Muhammad Alshareef, once wrote a paper titled “Why the Jews Were Cursed,” in which he claims Jews control the media and murder prophets. Other leading AlMaghrib clerics have included Abdullah Hakim Quick, who calls for the killing of homosexuals, urges God to “purify” Al-Aqsa from the “filth of the Yahud [Jews],” and “clean Afghanistan and Iraq” from the “filth of the Kafiroun [unbelievers].”

Birjas himself lamented the collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt, and declared the late Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, to be a “martyr” whose death he was “mourning.” Birjas seemingly declares criticism of the terror groups ISIS and Hamas to be an “attack” on Islam.

The founder of the Excellence Academy, Farhana Querishi, is involved with the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), a prominent Salafi mosque in North Texas whose imam was recently banned from the United Kingdom over his pro-terror rhetoric.

In Richardson, TX, the Salam Foundation (also operating under the name Salam Academy) appears involved with local Salafi mosques such as the East Plano Islamic Center.

The Salam Academy’s Islamic studies teacher, Shaheed Williams, promotes the radical activism of Salafi imams such as Karim Abuzaid, who calls for the stoning of adulterers. Williams studied at the International Open University, a hardline online Islamist education program founded by extremist Salafi imam Bilal Philips, an unindicted coconspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who has been banned from several countries including Great Britain, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Kenya, and Bangladesh for his “extremist views.”

Bayaan Academy is an online school whose corporate headquarters is listed as League City, TX. Bayaan Academy lists a number of Deobandi madrassas as its partners, as well as radical institutions such as the Khatme Nubuwwat Center in Virginia.

The Khatme Nubuwwat Center is a U.S. branch of Khatme Nubuwwat, a violent global Pakistani Islamist movement dedicated to the eradication of the Ahmadiyyah, a small, moderate Muslim sect.

Both Everest Academy & ILM Academy operate as subsidiaries of the Islamic Education Institute of Texas, itself a project of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH). The ISGH refers to CAIR as a “partner institution.”

In 2021, a Middle East Forum investigation found ISGH involvement with a Pakistani Islamist network in Houston linked to Kashmiri jihadists. In fact, the ISGH’s Islamic Education Institute of Texas is registered at an address in West Houston used by an elaborate coalition of Pakistani foreign agents and Kashmiri jihadist operatives central to this network.

Along with the Islamic Education Institute of Texas, the ISGH network comprises over twenty mosques under its control across Houston and its suburbs. The ISGH network has a long history of extremism, frequently holding events with proxy organizations for the violent South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami, such as the Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), as well as Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD).

In partnership with HHRD and ICNA, in 2017, several ISGH mosques hosted Yusuf Islahi, a late leader of the Indian branch of Jamaat-e-Islami. Islahi reportedly claimed that Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks.

A detailed piece in the Daily Mail notes a long history of other extremism at the ISGH. Journalist James Reinl notes one former ISGH official was Algerian imam Zoubir Bouchikhi, who was later “arrested and then deported in 2011, reportedly for immigration violations.” In a 2020 sermon, Bouchikhi called non-Muslims “the worst of Allah’s creations, even lower than animals are those who disbelieve and refuse to [believe].” MEMRI reports that another ISGH imam, Eiad Soudan, claimed in 2023 that Jews “seek to control of the economy wherever they go.”

In 2024, the ISGH hosted, in collaboration with the radical Muslim American Society (profiled above), Nida AbuBaker, a Texas-based activist who backs Palestinian “resistance” and Palestinian “fighters.” AbuBaker is the daughter (and advocate for) convicted terror supporter Shukri AbuBaker.

Staff at schools across Texas operating under Islamist parent organizations appear to move easily between Islamist schools. The ILM Academy principal, Abdullah N. Muhammad, for instance, is a former principal at both Brighter Horizons Academy and Iman Academy (both profiled above).

Based in Irving, the Radiant Stem Activity appears involved with the Jamaat-e-Islami movement’s Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) as well as multiple partnerships with its terror-tied sister organization, Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD).

In 2017, the Middle East Forum revealed that HHRD organized a conference at a government-run college in Pakistan in collaboration with the charitable and political wings of the Pakistani terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. In Pakistan, HHRD’s chief partner is the Al-Khidmat Foundation, with which it boasts of partnering at least 214 times. In 2006, Al-Khidmat announced it had “presented a cheque of six-million rupees from the people of Pakistan to Khaled Meshaal, head of politburo Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)” to finance their “just Jihad.”

In 2015, the Radiant Stem Academy brought students to a lobbying day at the Texas Capitol organized by CAIR.

The Islamic School of Irving, along with Tanzeel Academy and the ICI Sunday School, are projects of the Islamic Center of Irving (ICI), a leading mosque in the DFW metroplex.

The current imam, Kashif Ahmed, is a teacher at the DFW campus of Darul Qasim, an Illinois-headquartered madrassa run by the Deobandi movement. In 2009, Darul Qasim’s founder and current head, Shaykh Amin Kholwadia, explained that the punishment for acts of homosexuality is death: "[Prophet Muhammad] did say that you should kill that person ... there’s no prescribed method of killing or executing those people. The issue was just to, if you do find them guilty, then you best remove them from sight.” Amin repeated this advice in another Darul Qasim talk in May 2022, during a talk about the punishment of homosexuals, declaring that the punishment for extramarital sex is to be “stoned.” Kholwadia has also given sermons at the Islamic Center of Irving.

Other Deobandi linked imams at ICI include Muntasir Zaman, who is an instructor at the extremist Deobandi Qalam Institute (profiled above); and Muhammad Saeed Khan, one of Pakistan’s top Deobandi officials, who taught a course for several years at ICI.

In 2019, another ICI imam, Zia ul-Haque Sheikh, was ordered to pay $2.5 million to a Texas woman who accused him of sexual exploitation. The woman in question reportedly alerted another imam, Nouman Ali Khan, the president of the ICI board, to Zia ul-Haque Sheikh’s behavior. However, Nouman Ali Khan reportedly discouraged the woman from reporting the behavior, stating it would harm his reputation as a “religious leader and family man.”

The ICI’s Nouman Ali Khan was complicit in a Muslim community sex scandal of his own, screenshots in 2017 revealed his apparent bribery, threats and sexual conversations with different women online. Khan studied under Israr Ahmed, the founder of radical Deobandi offshoot Tanzeem-e-Islami. As noted above, Israr Ahmed’s other U.S. student, Wisam Sharieff, once also involved with private Texas Islamic schools, was arrested in 2024 on child pornography charges.

The ICI has hosted many events with senior CAIR leaders.

Texas is the home for a powerful new modernist strain of Deobandism, a South Asian Islamist sect founded in the 19th century whose most famous offshoot is the Taliban. One leading Deobandi seminary in America, the Qalam Institute, is based in the Texas city of Carrollton, and operates multiple projects, including Qalam Academy, Qalam Seminary Inc and the Qalam Education Fund Inc.

The Qalam Institute has trained hundreds of new Deobandi imams now teaching at radical institutions across Texas. Qalam’s new school projects are now radicalizing generations of Texas Muslim children.

Qalam’s two leading officials, Hussain Kamani and Abdul Nasir Jangda, both trained at traditional Deobandi seminaries. In a talk titled “Sex, Masturbation and Islam,” Kamani explains that Muslim men may fulfill any sexual desires “with a female slave that belongs to him.” Those who commit adultery or have sex outside of marriage, Kamani explains, must be “stoned to death.” And when Muslim husbands are learning to “train their wives,” beating them, Kamani concedes, should only be a “last measure.” Kamani cites Quranic commentary to advise parents: “Order your children to pray at the age of seven. And beat them (lightly) if they do not do so by the age of ten.”

Western society, Kamani declares, is “filth. … We are surrounded by filth … our environment is full of this filth, everywhere we turn.”

Fellow Qalam founder Abdur Nasir Jangda, meanwhile, seemingly defended slavery as “superior morally and spiritually” to the Western slave trade, and justifies punishment of apostates and the execution of adulterers.

Qalam’s Jangda fundraises for CAIR.

Darul Uloom Texas is a Deobandi madrassa based in Sugar Land TX. Its social media posts disclose its officials meeting with Tariq Jameel, a prominent Pakistani Deobandi cleric and leader within Tablighi Jamaat, the terror-tied missionary movement of the Deobandis. The Jamestown Foundation records Jameel’s history of extremist rhetoric and contact with top jihadist leaders in Pakistan.

Events organized by Darul Uloom Texas have included multiple events with the late Junaid Jamshed, a prominent Pakistani Islamist; as well as Monzer Taleb, who was once found, reports the Investigative Project on Terrorism, “singing the words ‘I am from Hamas’ on video submitted into evidence during the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) trial.”

Darul Uloom Austin is another Deobandi school, which operates through three mosques in the Austin area, including the North Austin Muslim Community Center, which is closely involved with the Renaissance Academy (profiled above).

The principal, Faizullah Saleemzai, partners with other Islamists, including the South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami, through its U.S. branch, the extremist charity ICNA Relief, a listed donor to Al-Khidmat Foundation, the welfare arm of Jamaat-e-Islami named, which is closely involved with the Kashmiri jihadist organization Hizbul Mujahideen, and boasts of funding the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas for its “just jihad.”

Darul Quran is a school run by Madrasah Islamiah, a Deobandi institution in Houston. Events organized by Darul Quran have included speakers such as Tariq Masood, a prominent Pakistani Deobandi cleric known for his calls for jihad and for the killing of blasphemers.

The Al-Hadi School and the Al-Sadiq Islamic Academy are projects of the Islamic Education Center of Houston (IEC), a leading Iranian regime-connected mosque in the United States. A biography of the former IEC imam, published on a regime-aligned mosque in the United Kingdom, states that he “was directly appointed by the office of the Supreme Leader as Imam-e-Juma and Resident Aalim of IEC.” Other IEC leaders have held top positions in major Iranian regime front organizations around the world.

In 2019, IEC Houston celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, at which children sang: “Khamenei is our leader, we are his soldiers.” In 2020, the IEC organized an event memorializing Ayatollah Khomeini, in coordination with the AhlulBayt Islamic Mission, a British proxy for the Iranian regime.

In 2022, the mosque organized the filming and performance of a song by children at the mosque, pledging allegiance to Ayatollah Khamenei. The song’s lyrics, first documented by MEMRI, state that “[Khamenei] is calling on his children, his soldiers... In spite of my age, I will be your army’s commander...May my father and mother be sacrificed for you, I will sacrifice everything for you...I make an oath to be your martyr, Ali.”

Local media indicated the children in these videos were students at the schools.

A report from Program on Extremism at George Washington University notes: “The center organizes yearly celebrations commemorating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, convenes a yearly symposium on the day of Khomeini’s death, and commemorates [the regime-organized] Quds Day.”

The Wisdom Academy in Carrollton, Texas, appears to be another Khomeinist institution. A project of a nonprofit named the Al-Hadi Initiatives, the Wisdom Academy segregates children by gender from third grade.

An imam who has provided Islamic studies lessons at the school, Mahdi Rastani, studied at the regime-run seminary in the Iranian city of Qom, and was a student of senior regime cleric Ayatollah Sayyid Hashemi Shahroudi. Rastani is also a regular speaker at the Iranian regime-aligned Islamic Education Center of Houston.

Rastani urges parents to “cultivate political awareness” and teach “children about Palestine, Lebanon and beyond.” And indeed, events at the school have included “an end-of-the-year memorial in honor of the oppressed Palestinians,” in which children produced poems about the “bloodstained” land.

Speakers at the school have included Amin Rastani, an imam who openly takes part in Iranian regime-backed events such as the annual Imam Khomeini conference.

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There are, no doubt, a significant number of Christian and other religious private schools across the United States with theocratic leanings. But only America’s Islamic schooling industries are so extensively connected to multiple global networks controlled by hostile foreign states and violent extremist movements.

To inhibit the flow of public funds subsidizing these networks, the answer, it seems, is to rely not just on the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR, but to implement additional designations of groups from the other five major Islamist networks operating in Texas: the Deobandis, Barelvis, Salafis, Jamaat-e-Islami and Khomeinists.

If these schools are allowed to operate and grow, with support from public monies: other Islamist groups will flock to Texas; moderate Muslim opponents of Islamism will be squeezed out; and the state risks producing radicalized generations of children, who, as European governments now know all too well, serve as willing recruits for domestic extremists and foreign terrorists.