While much-needed attention has finally been placed on the outsized and once-underreported influence of foreign regimes such as Qatar on public education in Texas, a broad array of domestic Islamist organizations, making use of America’s easily-exploited 501(c) nonprofit system, are funneling money and injecting influence into public schools and universities across the state, a review of Form 990 tax return data has revealed.
In 2016, Texas A&M gladly accepted a multimillion dollar gift from the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council (IFANCA), a leading halal certification body. Since then, IFANCA has handed over $5.4 million to the public university, including a recent 2024 grant of $300,000 to establish a new “Dean’s Excellence Scholarship.” On its face, the partnership appears benign, with the funds serving to “establish a program in food diversity” and “prepare the next generation of globally aware food scientists.”
However, each year, IFANCA, which boasts a war chest of over $132 million of declared assets, provides millions of dollars to some of America’s leading Islamist organizations, including Salafi, Deobandi, Qutbist and Jamaat-e-Islami networks.
In 2024, IFANCA’s $2.2 million of disbursements included Texas A&M among a slew of radical organizations, such as $500,000 to Helping Hand for Relief and Development, a Michigan charity with Texas offices, that in 2017 partnered with the U.S-designated terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba. Helping Hand is the U.S. charitable arm of Jamaat-e-Islami’s Pakistan branch. Over the past decades, Jamaat-e-Islami branches and death squads have conducted acts of terror and mass killings across Pakistan, Kashmir and Bangladesh.
Other IFANCA grantees for 2024 include the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated as a state terrorist organization in November 2025; as well as the Institute of Islamic Education, a Deobandi madrassa where, one study notes, “a general pattern of social isolation from the broader American society” is the “norm.” Mufti Yasir Wajidi, a lead teacher at the IFANCA-funded institute, is an enthusiastic supporter of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, and a leading American admirer of the Taliban.
IFANCA’s partnership with Texas A&M continues today, including through additional scholarships and joint events.
IFANCA is not the only example of Islamist financiers also funding public institutions in Texas. Two Virginia charities, the Mirza Family Foundation and the Altalib Family Foundation, have together given at least $35,000 to the University of Texas at Dallas. Both foundations are components of the Safa network, a Virginia-based collection of non-profit and for-profit entities accused by the federal government of involvement in terror finance activities in the 2000s. The Safa network’s flagship institution, named the International Institute of Islamic Thought, is considered the leading Muslim Brotherhood think tank in the West, and maintains close relations with the Islamist governments of Malaysia, Qatar and Turkey.
Yaqub Mirza, who established the Mirza Family Foundation, is a University of Texas graduate. A 1988 FBI memo listed Mirza as a Muslim Brotherhood member. In 2003, Mirza’s home was among the Safa network entities raided by federal agents investigating the network’s terror operations. The website of the University of Texas at Dallas separately lists both Mirza and his foundation as donors.
Another University of Texas at Dallas donor, the Plano-based M B Ahmed Foundation, has given at least $315,000 to the university since 2021. Other foundation beneficiaries include the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Muslim Aid USA, an important U.S. branch of the global Muslim Aid franchise, which, just like Helping Hand, was established by members of the dangerous Jamaat-e-Islami movement. In 2010, Muslim Aid’s U.K. parent organization was found (and admitted) to have funded front organizations for the terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The Texas-based Meah Family Foundation, meanwhile, has given over $700,000 to the University of Houston, and another $21,000 to the Brazosport College Foundation, a fiscal sponsor of the Brazosport College, a public community college in Lake Jackson, Texas. Along with the Beijing-linked leftist beneficiary CodePink, other grantees of the foundation include the radical Islamic Society of Greater Houston as well as the U.S. branch of the terror-tied Islamic Relief franchise.
Other 501(c) nonprofits have pursued a more in-person role in Texas public education.
In February, Texas activists expressed alarm after it emerged that an Islamist proselytization group, WhyIslam, had established an operation at Wylie East High School without approval. WhyIslam is yet another project of the Islamic Circle of North America, the chief U.S. branch of the violent Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami.
WhyIslam’s own website approvingly cites Khurram Murad, the late vice-president of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, while its literature notes the “crimes” of “apostasy” and alcohol drinking, excuses “retributive killing for murder and the chopping off of a limb for theft,” and even explains the correct method for stoning someone to death:
“…the person was held fast in a fixed position, and a stone or rock that it took two men to lift (i.e. was heavier than one man could lift alone) was to be dropped to crush the head – it was not someone tied to a post and rocks hurled at them, although this has been done in some cultures. The point was that if someone really had to be executed, it was to be done swiftly, with as little torture as possible, and usually publicly so that no vindictive person could do further nasty things behind the scenes and get away with it.”
In March 2026, conservative activists questioned Humble Independent School District’s decision to organize a school-day field trip to Centro Islamico, a mosque controlled by a dawah group named IslamInSpanish. This organization partners with several leading Texas Islamist groups, such as leading Salafi seminary AlMaghrib Institute, whose officials 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].”
At the IslamInSpanish event, a representative of the state-designated Islamist group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, reportedly addressed the high school students.
Another leading Salafi-leaning Texas seminary, the Islamic Seminary of America, shows that its “partners” include the University of Texas-Arlington Muslim Students Association (UTA-MSA), through which the seminary “provides full tuition scholarships to eligible Muslim students.” The seminary is run by Yasir Qadhi, the radical imam of the controversial East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) mosque in North Texas. Qadhi has recommended that a sharia state should “stone the adulterer” and “kill … the homosexual.” EPIC is also an official partner of IslamInSpanish.
The Islamic Seminary of America is not the only Texas Islamist nonprofit funding scholarships at public institutions. Another seminary partner, A Continuous Charity, is an Irving-based entity which provides sharia-compliant loans to Texas students, in collaboration with other nonprofits such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Austin-based Qard Hasan Foundation. A Continuous Charity provides these funds to advance a radical ideological agenda. One fund, co-organized with CAIR, earmarks money for students who lost scholarships because of “advocacy” for Palestine.
Faizan Syed, director at A Continuous Charity and a top CAIR Texas official, has declared:“We can use that money to invest in our students and our kids, who are going to become the changemakers of tomorrow … To train those Muslims of our community and our background, who are going to go into these fields, go into these positions of power and break the hold that Zionists hold on this country. It is a systematic approach. It is a long-term approach. But once it has been started there is no way to stop it.”
“Let’s get our kids in political science, government, media, journalism, and other fields, and over time replace the people in power. Replace the people in the news. Replace the people at universities. That is my intention. That is the goal that we are gonna take.”
In 2016, members of the hostile regime-aligned Islamic Education Center in Houston established the Jafari No-Interest Credit Union, which offers college tuition loans to members of “certain [Shia] community centers in Houston, Dallas and Austin.”
Other Shia Islamist 501(c)s are found across Texas. As previously noted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Texas-registered Camp Arafah, for instance, organizes student retreats across the country, promoted by University of Texas Shia student groups. Seemingly in violation of U.S. Treasury sanctions, Camp Arafah claims to collect khums [a tithe] on behalf of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, an act for which it must have secured an ijazah [license] from Khamenei’s office. Camp Arafah instructors include Iranian-trained operatives and clerics, such as Samira Rizvi, a University of Houston graduate who moved to the regime’s clerical base in Qom in 2012.
Several charities accused of involvement in terror finance operations also operate in Texas institutions. Helping Hand for Relief and Development, for example, is the charitable wing of the Islamic Circle of North America, and the chief U.S. charitable arm of the violent South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami. As mentioned above, Helping Hand partnered in 2017 with the U.S-designated terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, and has also openly admitted to hundreds of joint projects with Al-Khidmat, the official “welfare arm” of Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan. Al-Khidmat publicly works with Hizbul Mujahedeen, another U.S-designated terrorist group, and has openly financed the terrorist organization Hamas.
At Texas A&M, Helping Hand operates openly on campus, partnering with a student organization. Helping Hand has also served as a sponsor of the MSA Lone Star Council, a collection of Muslim Student Associations at public and private colleges across Texas.
The Lone Star Council exposes students to other terror-aligned charities. In 2024, the student coalition organized a fundraising operation for Islamic Relief USA and Baitulmaal. In Gaza, Baitulmaal works openly with Hamas proxies such as the Unlimited Friends Association, which has promised to “free Al-Aqsa Al-Sharif from the filth of the most dirty Jews.” Baitulmaal’s head, Mazen Mokhtar, is reportedly a former fundraiser for the Taliban and other jihadist groups.
Islamic Relief USA, meanwhile, was established as a branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood charitable franchise, Islamic Relief. In 2020, the U.S. State Department condemned the “blatant and horrifying anti-Semitism and glorification of violence exhibited at the most senior levels of Islamic Relief Worldwide,” Islamic Relief’s U.K. headquarters. Staff at Islamic Relief’s U.S. branch have included Khaled Lamada, who once circulated text on social media praising the “jihad” of the “Mujahidin” for “causing the Jews many defeats,” while another staff member, Yousef Abdullah, praisedthe killing of Jews, among other anti-Semitic remarks. Today, Abdullah works for Baitulmaal.
At the University of Texas at Dallas, Islamic Relief USA (which recently renamed itself “IDEA”), operates its own student chapter.
Another Islamist charity, United Mission for Relief (also known as United Muslim Relief), claims to be a student-led organization with chapters at three Texas public colleges: the University of Houston, University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Texas at Austin. Former top officials of United Mission for Relief included Omar Shahin, a former fundraiser for the since-designated Texas terror charity, the Holy Land Foundation. In 2002, Shahin preached: “You will keep on fighting with the Jews until the fight reaches the east of Jordan river then the stones and trees will say: oh Muslim, oh (servant) slaves of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.”
In Gaza, alongside Baitulmaal, United Mission for Relief has supported the Unlimited Friends Association, a local charity that has long worked closely with senior Hamas terror leaders, rewarded the “families of martyrs” in Gaza with cash handouts, and promoted violent rhetoric across its social media pages.
Clearly, a broad array of radical nonprofits belonging to dangerous Islamist networks is imposing ideological and financial influence over Muslim and non-Muslim students, as well as an oblivious faculty, at public institutions across Texas. Public institutions, by accepting donations or legitimizing radicals as public partners, not only risk the radicalization and miseducation of students, but also sanitize extremists and shift the politics of Muslim communities in favor of Islamist control.
As the Texas Legislature works to defeat both malign foreign influence and radical nonprofit infrastructure in Texas, public educational institutions will undoubtedly continue to serve as a key battleground. School districts and public universities could be doing more, right now, to divest from these radical influence operations.
