Health and Human Services Hidden Handouts

Introduction

In both the Islamic world and in the West, Islamists implement social welfare projects to obtain political legitimacy and power. Through public works such as building and operating schools, hospitals, orphanages, and community centers, modern Islamists gain followers, position themselves as viable alternatives to the state, and sanitize the public’s negative perception of Islamist projects.

In the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) represents a perfect vehicle for realizing these goals.Tasked with “Improving the health, safety, and well-being of America,” per its motto, HHS is the largest distributor of grant funds among federal agencies, overseeing trillions of dollars in annual budgetary resources. The sheer breadth of HHS spending creates oversight vulnerabilities, and Islamist organizations are poised to exploit these gaps and capture their share of federal disbursements.

Following a rigorous audit of federal grants data and public records, the Middle East Forum found 14 terror-linked and extremist organizations received nearly $80 million in HHS funding. Beneficiaries of these taxpayer subsidies include American mosques, political advocacy groups, and charities, as well as foreign universities and an overseas Sharia council.

HHS funding of Islamist groups spans ideological factions, from classic Muslim Brotherhood civic groups to South Asian Jamaat-e-Islami charities and Salafist mosques. The modernist strains of each faction historically have exploited social unrest and government dysfunction, targeting vulnerable populations through humanitarian relief, professional associations, and other community outreach projects to win adherents as part of a process of religious indoctrination called “Da’wah.” As much a political theory as a form of proselytizing, Da’wah may be used to invite non-Muslims to the Islamic faith, but within Muslim-majority communities, the practice is more often about radicalizing or converting Muslims to adopt religiously conservative and politically extreme beliefs.

HHS grants to these radical organizations appear unobjectionable on the surface. Monies have been allocated to coronavirus relief, mosque renovations, and job placement services. Other funding programs are more controversial, such as providing cash assistance and legal services to Afghan and Iraqi refugees. These refugee assistance programs, which make up an overwhelming share of HHS funding described in this study, ensure that visitors hailing from countries with populations that are already exceptionally vulnerable to radicalization and violent extremism will grow dependent on radical organizations soon after arriving in the United States. This all but guarantees a process of orientation through radicalization.

American taxpayers may assume that HHS funds are intended to benefit only Americans, but this is not the case. Agency monies were sub-granted to an Islamic council that whitewashes Christian genocide in Nigeria, and to an Indian Muslim university that has harbored accused terrorist cells. An Islamist charity that faced funding cuts from governmentsaround the world also received a share of HHS-originated funding, even in the face of congressional opposition. Grants to five radical foreign groups represent more than $14 million in taxpayer-funded handouts.

For a subset of these HHS grants, the underlying rationale defies logic. For example, a Muslim women’s charity in Texas received more than $1.6 million to fight domestic violence, despite a history of platforming and partnering with ultra-conservative critics of women’s rights. HHS handouts went to a West African college to study the plight of homosexual Muslim men living with HIV, even though the school—where fundamentalist Salafi Islam has flourished—was the frequent scene of homophobic mobs hunting down suspected gay students. A Virginia mosque that taught that COVID-19 was divine punishment for countries like the United States and Israel received HHS cash for coronavirus relief, including to “dispel myths related to COVID and influenza vaccination.”

Fortunately, the agency is waking up to this threat and taking action. On June 9, 2026, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced an investigation into the proposed debarment of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, the top recipient of HHS funding in this report. Kennedy’s announcement was precipitated by a letter from Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and 12 House Republicans, calling for the agency to immediately suspend and propose CAIR’s debarment, and an administrative action that allows federal agencies to prohibit funding of former grant and contract recipients across federal agencies.

While these are commendable first steps, the task of identifying, investigating, and defunding terror-linked extremist groups has just begun. In every instance, federal grant dollars sent to Islamist groups—despite the noble intentions and the seemingly benign nature of these awards—represents an opportunity for extremist groups to enlist recruits, raise money from private sources, and even redirect revenue towards illicit purposes.

Disclaimer: Please note that the public government spending databases underpinning this study occasionally include errors and omissions that are consequently reflected in the report’s financial figures. Inconsistent updates to records, duplicates to sub-award data, and incomplete award descriptions are just a few of the shortcomings to government and grantee reporting. Prior to FY2022, agencies were only required to report obligated funds, or the contractually reserved amounts that are subject to change, rather than the outlaid funds, or the actual cash disbursements or electronic transfers paid out to fulfill those obligations. In every case where an outlaid amount was recorded, this study relies on these figures instead of the obligated total.

The Middle East Forum strives to provide an accurate and complete assessment of government spending and will continue advocating for greater oversight and transparency of public grants data.

The first of two foreign schools in this study, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) is a top higher education institution located in Uttar Pradesh, India, with strong state-funded programs in law, medicine, and engineering. Students and alumni from the school have participated in violent protests and faced investigations and arrests for involvement with U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

The General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, sub-granted $389,810 in HHS funds to AMU between 2016 and 2017 for cancer research.

On January 17, 2024, the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad arrested AMU student Faizan Bakhtyar for allegedly radicalizing youth through ISIS propaganda that called to establish an Islamic state in India. Bakhtyar’s arrest was part of a broader crackdown targeting suspected ISIS operatives belonging to Students of Aligarh Muslim University, a campus group that reportedly recruited former university students and accepted instructions from “ISIS handlers” to carry out terrorist attacks.

The previous year, Mohd Arshad Warsi, an AMU alumnus who studied mechanical engineering, was part of a group of scholars arrested by India’s Special Cell for taking an “oath of allegiance” to ISIS and plotting to carry out terrorist attacks. Also in 2023, an ISIS cell that included AMU graduate Rakib Imam Ansari was dismantled after the arrest of six individuals who first met at Students of Aligarh Muslim University, where they allegedly sought to recruit new members to ISIS.

AMU expelled three students and issued warnings to others in 2018 after they sought to hold funeral prayers for former AMU doctoral student Manan Bashir Wani, who defected from AMU to join the Hizbul Mujahideen before he was killed in a confrontation with security forces in Kashmir.

In 2022, AMU decided to drop course content on Islamist ideologues Maulana Syed Abul Ala Maududi and Syed Qutb Shaheed after a letter signed by 22 professors and activists accused AMU of “Jihadi Islamic course curriculum.” The letter reportedly accused Maududi of being the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, a violent Islamist movement that the co-signers claim is committed to the complete Islamization of India, and the core inspiration behind jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Taliban.

AMU is the birthplace of the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a radical student group with ties to Jamaat-e-Islami that was banned in India after 9/11, when its members openly sympathized with the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. SIMI is responsible for terrorist attacks across India and maintains links to several militant groups. Following his 2008 arrest, SIMI Secretary General Safdar Nagori claimed that Pakistani intelligence provided funds to SIMI.

In fact, an AMU alumnus with ties to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence was arrested in the United States in 2011 and eventually charged with conspiracy and tax violations in connection with concealing $3.5 million in contributions from Pakistani intelligence to influence American policymakers. After serving a two-year sentence, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai remains active in promoting Kashmiri separatism.

AMU students have engaged in violent protests that are often mobilized by Islamist class leaders. In October 2020, AMU student union leader Farhan Zubairi participated in a protest against France in the aftermath of the Prophet Muhammad cartoon controversy, when French schoolteacher Samuel Paty was beheaded for displaying an image of the Islamic prophet during a lecture on religious freedom. Calling for a boycott of French products, Zubairi told AMU protestors, “If anyone commits blasphemy, we will behead him.”

In December 2019, India was rocked by nationwide protests after the government enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act, a law that fast-tracked citizenship for religious minorities facing persecution in neighboring Muslim-majority countries. In clashes with police, AMU students injured upwards of 17 officers. The mob destroyed barricades set up to contain the protests, pelted law enforcement with stones, and fired on police with homemade firearms, according to Indian authorities.

Just one day after the deadly October 7, 2023, massacres in Israel, where around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 abducted, AMU students rallied in support of “Palestine,” prompting local police to lodge a complaint stating that demonstrators marched in “support” of a “terrorist group.”

Islamist undercurrents often drive protests at the university. Author Yanis Iqbal, a current student at AMU, argued in a 2025 essay that his classmates have learned to “Islamize protests,” weaponizing prayer as a tool for political confrontation. Even secular debates at the university, such as concerns over tuition increases or musical presentations, often take on religious dimensions driven by Islamist grievance politics.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) presents itself as a Muslim civil rights organization, but its track record tells a different story. Founded by individuals linked to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a known propaganda arm of Hamas, CAIR has long been dogged by allegations of extremist connections. Federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history. That same year, the FBI severed ties with the group, citing concerns about its relationship with Hamas.

Despite this, CAIR receives substantial government funding, including $40,663,468 in HHS funding to CAIR-California for Afghan refugee services, according to audits and reports obtained by the nonpartisan Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN). An additional $1.5 million in HHS sub-grants went to CAIR chapters in Washington and Oklahoma, federal data shows. Since July 2022, CAIR chapters have received nearly $42.2 million in HHS-originated grants that were sub-granted through state agencies and private organizations for Afghan resettlement.

On March 13, 2025, IAN filed a complaint with the Department of Justice alleging that CAIR-California misappropriated part of a $7.2 million HHS grant intended for refugee resettlement. The alleged financial irregularities included CAIR’s purported redirecting of $3.6 million in HHS funds to itself and affiliated CAIR chapters in violation of grant terms, the failure to deliver on agreed services, and neglecting to report millions in public funding on annual tax forms.

CAIR’s reported issues with HHS grants caught the attention of federal lawmakers. Joined by 13 House Republicans, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote an April 27, 2026, letter to HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calling for CAIR’s immediate suspension and debarment from federal grant programs, citing its alleged grant abuses and terrorism links. Kennedy responded by announcing a “review of allegations” stemming from the congressional letter and promised to act if evidence of “fraud, abuse, or ties to designated terrorist organizations” is uncovered.

In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored an anti-Israel protest outside the Israeli Consulate in Miami, where demonstrators repeatedly chanted, “We are Hamas,” “Let’s go Hamas,” and “Hamas kicked your ass.” Hussam Ayloush, the director of CAIR-Los Angeles, is known for his antisemitic screeds, such as comparing Israel to “Nazi Germany” and claiming that the country “does not have the right to defend itself.”

In recent months, these federally-funded CAIR chapters have found themselves increasingly shut out from government partnerships. In December 2023, the White House publicly disavowed CAIR after the group’s founder and longtime director Nihad Awad was recorded saying that he “was happy to see” the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. Two months later, the Florida House passed a resolution urging all state and local agencies to suspend contact with CAIR, joining legislatures in Arkansas and Louisiana that passed similar measures.

Since November 2025, governors in Texas and Florida enacted executive orders designating CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist groups under state law. After a district court placed a preliminary injunction on the Florida order, the state’s legislature responded by passing a bill that established the statutory framework for state-level designations. At the federal level, H.R. 8236 directs the Treasury secretary to list CAIR as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

CAIR’s notoriety extends to the international community. In 2014, the United Arab Emirates formally designated CAIR as a terrorist organization, grouping it alongside Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban. At least seven CAIR officials have been arrested, convicted, or deported for terrorism-related crimes. Ghassan Elashi, a former CAIR-Texas board member, is serving out a 65-year sentence for funneling $12 million in support to Hamas.

In February 2025, CAIR settled a lawsuit brought by a former employee after a judge ruled that the nonprofit must reveal its sources of foreign funding. In August that year, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Billy Long asking the agency to investigate CAIR’s tax-exempt nonprofit status in light of its ties to Hamas. Cotton followed this up with a September letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon warning about CAIR’s activities in public schools, including a course titled “American Jews and Political Power,” which he cited as an example of inappropriate educational materials.

Located in Dakar, Senegal, Cheikh Anta Diop University (CADU) is among the most prestigious schools in West Africa, named after a Senegalese historian and anthropologist renowned for his study of pre-colonial African culture. The university was founded in 1957, enrolls over 60,000 students at a time, and specializes in medicine, law, the humanities, and science. However, the secular and leftist ideologies that prevailed on CADU’s campus during its formative years have been gradually supplanted by fundamentalist Salafi and Wahhabi Islamic ideals imported from the Middle East—beliefs that conflict with Senegal’s traditional Sufi Islamic heritage.

In total, CADU has benefitted from $3.59 million in HHS sub-grants from U.S. colleges. The University of Washington was the top awardee, giving $1.66 million to the Senegalese university to study drug resistance in HIV-2 infections, and a separate study to find “high impact interventions” for HIV, malnutrition, and food insecurity.

CADU was the recipient of a $110,000 HHS sub-grantfrom the University of Rochester to study the stigma and treatment options of gay Muslim men living with HIV in Senegal. The results were predictable for an Islamic society that legally outlaws homosexuality; the study of 30 HIV-positive Muslim men found that they lived under extreme isolation, experiencing violence, shame, and oppression.

CADU was an unusual choice to carry out a study of homosexual Muslim men. The university remains a focal point for extreme anti-gay attitudes and violence against gay men, with several high-profile incidents of student vigilantism. Between 2012 and 2016, the human rights group Prudence counted 10 incidents of student mobs hunting down men suspected of being homosexuals. During an incident in 2016 that Mamba Online described as a “homophobic rampage,” a student mob set fire to buildings, destroyed an ATM, harassed workers, and vandalized a restaurant after campus security refused to release a suspected gay man to the vigilantes.

In the late 1970s, CADU’s revolutionary and secular student body gradually gave way to the Islamization of the university space. Student unions and campus clubs multiplied, with Senegal’s traditional Sufi order competing with reformist Salafi and Wahhabi organizations. With an infusion of cash from Gulf businessmen, and the influence of Saudi-educated preachers, the reformists prospered, eventually taking control of the grand mosque located on CADU’s campus.

Although Senegalese society generally holds negative views on homosexuality, Salafists in particular believe in strict punishments for sexual deviancy. The literalist school of thought is also characterized by the rejection of Western and secular opinions and puritanical views on family, law, and marriage. Although Senegal so far has avoided the rise of Islamic militancy, some of the country’s Sufis worry about the import of Gulf Arab fundamentalism, which led to jihadist terrorism in neighboring Mali.

Located in Falls Church, Virginia, Dar al-Hijrah is arguably one of the most prominent outposts for radical Islam in North America. Reports obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism through a Freedom of Information Act request and found on the Department of Homeland Security’s confidential databases stated that Dar Al-Hijrah was “operating as a front for Hamas operatives in [the] U.S.” and was connected to “numerous individuals linked to terrorism financing.”

Dar al-Hijrah has maintained a revolving door of resident sheikhs and imams known to promote jihadist and extremist views, from Anwar al-Awlaki, an imam who later became one of Al Qaeda’s most prolific recruiters before his death from a 2011 U.S. drone strike, to Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, the regional director for the Islamic American Relief Agency, which was later listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group for financing Osama Bin Laden.

HHS sub-granted nearly $860,000 in 2024 to Dar Al-Hijrah through the Virginia Department of Social Services. Most of these funds went to “Afghan support services” and were administered through a program that reimburses organizations for cash and medical assistance provided to refugees. Consequently, one of America’s most dangerous mosques was entrusted to assist newly arrived immigrants hailing from populations highly susceptible to radicalization.

This wasn’t the first time those connected to Dar Al-Hijrah helped newly arrived immigrants to settle in Virginia. Evidence from the “9/11 Commission Report” detailed how Eyad Rababah, a member of the mosque, assisted two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour, in finding an apartment. Al-Hamzi and Hanjour worshipped at Dar al-Hijrah in 2001 as disciples of Anwar Al-Awlaki, whom federal agents believe directed Rababah to assist the terrorist duo.

From 2021 to 2023, Dar Al-Hijrah received nearly $340,000 in HHS-originated grants to facilitate getting COVID-19 and influenza vaccines to racial and ethnic communities experiencing healthcare disparities and to “dispel myths related to COVID and influenza vaccination.” In the first weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, the Virginia mosque held a “Coronavirus and Faith Series” of webinars with Shaker Elsayed, a former imam at Dar Al-Hijrah who resigned in 2017 after publicly advocating for female genital mutilation. Elsayed stated that the coronavirus was divine retribution, possibly a punishment that was “earned” by “powerful nations” like the United States that have waged war on the “poorest of nations,” such as “Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Palestine.”

In a live lecture on the coronavirus, published on April 3, 2020, Elsayed repeated misinformation about COVID-19, claiming the virus caused “less damage than the flu.” To illustrate how the coronavirus was “earned,” Elsayed went on to discuss “the injustices of the Jewish community,” such as “devouring the money of the people,” and how the Quran promised “severe and painful torment” for the disobedient ones.

Certainly, a mosque that allegedly helped 9/11 hijackers to settle in Northern Virginia should not be entrusted to hand out cash to Afghan and Iraqi refugees, just as a mosque that promoted prominent speakers who espouse coronavirus conspiracies should never be selected to facilitate vaccinations. But there were many other issues that should have alarmed HHS officials and other pass-through agencies that funded Dar Al-Hijrah.

Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist who would go on to murder 13 Americans at a combat stress center in Fort Hood, Texas, was a congregant at the Falls Church mosque. (Hasan also attended the Muslim Community Center in Maryland, another HHS grantee.) Ahmed Omar Abu Ali grew up in Falls Church and attended Dar Al-Hijrah before he was convicted of joining Al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush.

Mosque officials also have been linked to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group responsible for the October 7 massacres in Israel. Abdulhaleem al-Ashqar was indicted in 2004 and later acquitted of charges alleging his involvement in a racketeering scheme that benefited Hamas. He was eventually sentenced to 11 years for obstruction of justice for refusing to testify against suspected Hamas financiers. Ismail Elbarasse, who helped found Dar al-Hijrah, was an assistant to Hamas Political Bureau chairman Musa Abu Marzouk, who once led the terrorist group’s foreign operations from exile in Northern Virginia.

The Islamic center’s imams have included Mohammed al-Hanooti, who called on his congregation “to be ready for the jihad” and stated that “the curse of Allah will become true on the Jews.” In 2001, the imam was the above-mentioned Anwar al-Awlaki, who later became one of Al Qaeda’s most senior leaders. Other imams and officials included Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, who also served as an official at an Al Qaeda front charity, and Johari Abdulmalik, who once encouraged attacks against Israel.

Dar al-Hijrah’s spiritual leaders even export their hate sermons beyond the walls of the mosque compound. Speaking to a Virginia high school in 2014, Imam Sheik Shaker Elsayed told an audience of young Muslims that “Muslim men” should be “first in line” to collect “arms for jihad.”

ICNA Relief serves as the domestic humanitarian branch of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), an Islamist organization that provides disaster relief, refugee assistance, and other community services. ICNA’s many institutional and ideological links to Jamaat-e-Islami have been extensively catalogued. Based on the teachings of Abul Ala Maududi, who sought the complete Islamization of society in the Indian subcontinent and beyond, Jamaat-e-Islami is a politically-active, violent Islamist movement prevalent throughout South Asia, with branches in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Jammu Kashmir.

During Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War, Jamaat-e-Islami cadres were responsible for the mass genocide and rape of secular intellectuals. During student-led uprisings in July and August 2024 that led to the ouster of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and its militant student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir were reportedly involved in a surge of violence and extremist attacks, including “recent massacres, destructive activities, and terrorist activities,” according to Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs (the pro-Islamist government that replaced Hasina quickly reversed the ban). Jamaat-e-Islami’s militant Kashmiri wing, Hizbul Mujahideen, is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

ICNA’s overseas humanitarian wing, Helping Hand for Relief and Development, is the subject of an inspector general review and has received congressional scrutiny over its ties to Pakistan’s Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

Despite these links, ICNA Relief has been appropriated $10.6 million from HHS, with a $819,000 grant in 2024 for a “Refugee Cash and Medical Assistance Program,” which often serves refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jamaat-e-Islami leaders have been executed on charges of genocide stemming from Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence. Ashrafuzzaman Khan, who helped establish ICNA and served as its vice president, was convicted in absentia in Bangladesh of torturing and murdering 18 intellectuals as part of a Jamaati execution squad.

In 2010, Pakistani authorities convicted five Americans belonging to an ICNA youth program who traveled to Pakistan, sent money to banned militant groups, and planned terrorist attacks. Other terrorists have histories of attending mosques or studying under clerics who are part of ICNA’s network. Erick Jamal Hendricks, who is serving a 15-year sentence for conspiring to support the Islamic State, is a former ICNA “youth coordinator.”
In addition to its Jamaat-e-Islami origins, ICNA has faced scrutiny over its connections to global extremist groups. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, ICNA’s websites previously contained links to Hamas, Hezbollah, and militant organizations operating in Afghanistan and Kashmir. ICNA even promoted the Islamic Society in Gaza, an entity that radicalized young children to support Hamas. An ICNA conference in 1990 featured speeches from senior Hamas commander Muhammad Siyam.

The Message, ICNA’s in-house magazine, includes interviews and articles promoting violent jihad. From a 1997 interview with a Hizbul Mujahideen commander, to articles discussing the religious obligation to participate in “armed combat” and provide weapons to jihadists, ICNA’s magazine is a clearinghouse for pro-terrorist ideologies.

Additionally, ICNA conferences have featured figures with connections to terrorist organizations. For example, one such speaker was Muhammad Siyam, a senior Hamas leader who addressed ICNA’s 1990 conference alongside Khurshid Ahmed, the deputy head of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. In 1995, Siyam appeared at another Islamist gathering in the United States, where he urged his audience to “finish off the Israelis. Kill them all. Exterminate them. No peace, ever.”

In 2023, ICNA Relief was removed from a California resolution honoring “American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month” after locals and counter-extremism watchdogs objected. Critics of the resolution pointed to ICNA Relief’s radical history, including a June 2022 speech in which ICNA president and former ICNA Relief chairman Mohsin Ansari promised his organization would not “justify LGBT issues,” and would say, “‘No’ to those perverted attitudes which the world has accepted.”

The Islamic Center of Detroit (ICD) is a Sunni Islamist mosque located in Dearborn, Michigan, with a history of promoting hardline Salafi clerics. Despite this, ICD has collected millions of dollars in government grants from multiple federal agencies, including nearly $10 million from the Department of Agriculture and smaller grants from the Department of Homeland Security. ICD was allocated $40,000 from HHS in 2022 for mosque renovations, and it was obligated a pair of $500,000 sub-grants from the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity in 2024 and 2025 to provide job placement services to refugees.

During a November 6, 2020, sermon at ICD, Dr. Achmat Salie warned about a plot to infect Muslims with the coronavirus. Salie insisted that the enemies of Islam were plotting to shut down mosques while keeping abortion clinics and bars open. He disputed basic germ theory and concluded that face masks actually cause more illnesses than they prevent.

Although ICD does not appear to be a recipient of HHS coronavirus funding, the mosque has received a grant from the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundation to provide coronavirus relief checks to undocumented migrants. ICD also distributed meals during the pandemic through a private grant, and city officials chose the mosque as one of nine public vaccination sites.

Sufian Nabhan, ICD’s executive director, was a board memberof the defunct Islamic Association of Palestine, a public relations nonprofit established to boost the image of Hamas in North America. This group was eventually shut down after it was found financially liable in civil court for Hamas violence. Nabhan then helped found the Islamic Association of Palestine’s alleged successor organization, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), where he served on the board for at least a decade. Nabhan was recently named in a Senate investigation into AMP’s links to Hamas, which are also being explored in a Virginia Attorney General’s investigation that began in 2023.

Imran Salha, the head imam at ICD, spoke at an October 10, 2023, event at the Ford Performing Arts Center that local media described as a rally in support of the Hamas massacres three days earlier. Salhareportedly told the crowd that Israel’s past actions have put “fire in our hearts that will burn that state”—Israel— “until its demise.” In May 2023, Salha had pushed his congregation at ICD to respond “amen” to his prayer that Allah “eradicate from existence” the “sick, disgusting Zionist regime.”

With branches in Chicago and Atlanta, the Inner City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) is a Muslim social welfare organization that annually receives millions of dollars in government funding from local and national sources, and it is one of the top recipients of HHS grants among Muslim American groups. These monies are used to fund a variety of Islamic and left-wing projects, including an anti-police initiative that sought to “fundamentally transform policing” through civilian oversight, and a “Black Jerusalem” tour that sought to acquaint participants with the “illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.” IMAN operates a health clinic and owns commercial and residential properties throughout Chicago.

IMAN has collected $6,443,783 from HHS in recent years, with most of the funding allocated towards upgrades to its health center and grants to improve access to coronavirus vaccines.

IMAN’s donors include some of the most prominent terror-linked Islamist foundations in North America, such as the Barzinji Family Foundation, and the Mirza Family Foundation. These two charities are apparent successors to individuals and organizations associated with the SAAR Network, a web of businesses and nonprofits accused of harboring numerous financial connections to entities involved with Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In addition, IMAN has partnered closely with the Islamic Society of North America, a group identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, which convicted charity officials for funding Hamas.

Rami Nashashibi is IMAN’s founder. He is also a co-founder and public relations specialist with the Pillars Fund, an Islamic charity that deliberately obscured its sources of funding to avoid scrutiny for bankrolling individuals and groups that could be accused of extremism. According to BuzzFeed News, which interviewed Nashashibi, “donors could make checks to the Chicago Community Trust” that were ultimately intended for Pillars Fund, “and rest assured they wouldn’t get linked to any Muslim group that might become controversial.”

A Facebook post published on IMAN’s account on April 27, 2024, shows Nashashibi speaking at an unlawful anti-Israel student encampment at Northwestern University.

Sameera Fazili is the committee chair of IMAN-Atlanta’s advisory board and the former director of IMAN-Chicago. Despite serving as the deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden, Fazili has a long history of association with extremist groups. She is a member of Stand With Kashmir, a group that advocates on behalf of violent jihadists and Kashmiri separatists. She used her political connections to try to free her cousin, Mubeen Shah, who lionized anti-India militants and agitated the public towards violence before his arrest on sedition charges. Fazili testified to Congress that “money, status, and family mean nothing in the face of Indian capriciousness.”

Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), the flagship of a global Islamist charitable franchise headquartered in the United Kingdom, presents itself as a leading humanitarian organization delivering disaster relief, health services, and development aid across more than 40 countries. Founded in 1984 by Muslim Brotherhood-linked activists, IRW maintains extensive ties to Hamas and the broader Muslim Brotherhood network, using its operations as a vehicle for Da’wah and political influence. The charitable conglomerate has faced multiple bans and designations for terror financing, as well as high-profile resignations and board upheavals over rampant antisemitism and glorification of Hamas.

Despite these links, IRW has received federal funding. HHS allocated $270,000 (as part of a sub-grant from a larger consortium project) for a global health security initiative in Kenya focused on strengthening capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. U.S. federal agencies have appropriated nearly $668,000 to IRW.

In 2014, Israel banned IRW, with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon declaring the group illegal in Israel and the West Bank after the Israel Security Agency determined it served as “a central player in the financing of Hamas” and funneled funds to the terrorist organization through its Gaza and West Bank chapters. The United Arab Emirates designated IRW a terrorist entity the same year, grouping it with Hamas-linked networks. Germany terminated all projects with IRW in 2020 over its “significant connections” to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Bangladesh banned the group from Rohingya refugee camps in 2017 to prevent radicalization.

IRW’s leadership has repeatedly promoted antisemitism and the glorification of Hamas. In July 2020, Director and Trustee Heshmat Khalifa was forced to resign after The Times exposed his social media posts labeling Jews the “grandchildren of monkeys and pigs” and calling Egypt’s president a “Zionist pimp.” Weeks later, the entire IRW board resigned after social media posts by new chairman Almoutaz Tayara were uncovered that described Israel as the “Zionist enemy” and hailed Hamas leaders as “great men” answering “the divine and holy call of the Muslim Brotherhood.” In November 2020, Network and Resource Development Director and former interim-CEO Tayed Abdoun resigned following the revelation of his 2015 Facebook post urging supporters to “Lay the bodies of the Jews on the top of the mountains, so that no dog in Palestine must suffer hunger.” IRW staff and partners also have been arrested for direct Hamas financing, including Gaza coordinator Iyaz Ali in 2006 for transferring funds to Hamas institutions and cooperating with operatives.

In January 2021, the U.S. State Department cut all ties with IRW, blasting the group for the “blatant and horrifying anti-Semitism and glorification of violence exhibited at the most senior levels of IRW.” In 2017, then-Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) proposed an amendment to the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act to permanently block U.S. taxpayer funds from reaching IRW or its affiliates due to their Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood ties. In 2018, seven Congress members sent a letter to the directors of the FBI, IRS, and Office Personnel Management requesting evidence of “criminal or extremist activity by Islamic Relief,” so that Congress could ensure “taxpayer money is spent wisely and … is not spent on entities that are subsidizing terrorism.”

The Middle East Forum subsequently filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Office of Personnel Management regarding communications related to IRW, and the request was denied on the grounds that the records were “compiled for law enforcement purposes” and “ongoing enforcement proceedings.”

IRW’s links to terrorism and extremist conduct are so concerning that its own American branch, Islamic Relief USA, filed a lawsuit in March 2026 attempting to sever its corporate relationship with the U.K.-based parent organization, citing multiple House Ways and Means Committee referrals to the IRS asking to strip IRW’s tax-exempt status.

Previously known as the Lebanese American Heritage Club, Leaders Advancing and Helping Communities (LAHC) is a prominent Lebanese Shi’a community organization and charity located in the Muslim-majority town of Dearborn, Michigan. LAHC’s $9 million annual budget funds a wide range of social welfare services, from mental health to employment and educational assistance. Senior LAHC leadership and board members, including its founder, have histories of making statements defending Hezbollah and have appeared at rallies in support of the Lebanese terrorist group.

In December 2020, LAHC received the first installment of a $616,184.90 HHS grant to fight substance abuse in Dearborn Heights and neighboring Inkster, Michigan. Next, HHS awarded $150,000 to LAHC to prevent underage drinking among middle and high school students at a local school district. Then, in March and October 2025, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services awarded LAHC two HHS-originated sub-grants, worth $71,717 each, to fight opioid addiction.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, LAHC canceled $500,000 in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding intended for so-called Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programming. These funds were approved during the last month of the Obama administration, and LAHC joined several Muslim American nonprofits that withdrew from the program voluntarily after facing a public backlash over reports that Trump planned to refocus the program on “Radical Islamic Extremism.”

LAHC was reportedly selected for the DHS grant because of its proximity to a community that “widely supported” Hezbollah. To win over government officials, LAHC apparently dropped its former name and transformed itself from a political and cultural organization to an organization set up for resiliency programs and deradicalization, largely to access federal funds from DHS. Despite turning down the federal grant, LAHC CEO Wassim Mahfouz received the FBI Director Community Leadership Award the following year.

Ali Jawad, the founder of LAHC and owner of Armada Oil, is allegedly connected to Hezbollah figures and openly sympathizes with the Iran-backed terrorist group. In 2008, he was kicked off John McCain’s presidential campaign after allegations surfaced that he was a “key agent” of Hezbollah. The accusations originated from counter-Islamist blogger Debbie Schlussel, who alleged without providing sources that Jawad visited the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, on a fundraising trip with then-Dearborn Mayor Michael Guido and Talal Chahine, Jawad’s associate who later fled to Lebanon as a fugitive and was subsequently indicted for conspiracy surrounding “unlawful transactions with a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.”

Schlussel claimed that Jawad maintained family and business ties to senior Hezbollah leadership. He took a separate trip to Lebanon in May 2003, Schlussel alleged, this time with Muthanna al-Hanooti, who was convicted of using his Michigan charity to evade sanctions and fund Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Imad Hamad, who once had an FBI award rescinded due to his alleged terrorist connections. During the trip, Jawad apparently met with Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah hostage negotiator and leader of the Hezbollah-aligned Amal militia, who today serves as Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker.

Incidentally, LAHC awarded scholarships this year in the name of Berri’s late son-in-law and former Fordson High School principal, Imad Fadlallah. A controversial educator who faced multiple lawsuits alleging anti-Christian employment discrimination, Fadlallah was also accused of being a cousin to the late Hezbollah spiritual leader Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who is often revered in Dearborn despite allegedly blessing those who perpetrated the bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks and embassy in Lebanon that killed more than 300 people.

Jawad’s supporters have called the evidence of Hezbollah ties “unsubstantiated.” In response to Schlussel’s claim that he met with Hezbollah party officials, Jawad replied that “he had met with a cross-section of Lebanese politicians with the knowledge of the U.S. embassy,” according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which added that Jawad “sees Hezbollah as a legitimate political party.” Moreover, LAHC’s founder appeared to sympathize with the terror group when he rejected evidence that Hezbollah kills “innocent people.” Ahead of parliamentary elections in Lebanon, Jawad bemoaned the purported unfairness that diaspora voters experienced over concerns that voting for Hezbollah candidates could violate U.S. laws regarding material support for terrorism.

Neither Jawad nor LAHC responded to a press inquiry asking about the specifics of his Middle East travel and associations.

Other LAHC leaders share troubling affiliations with Lebanese government officials. Wassim Mahfouz, the executive director and face of the organization, was part of an intimate delegation of Dearborn-area leaders who visited the headquarters for State Security in Beirut on September 20, 2023, to meet with General Hassan Choucair, Lebanon’s director general of State Security. The internal security agency where Choucair served as second-in-command was accused of multiple human rights abuses, including the alleged death-by-torture of a Syrian immigrant at the hands of State Security officials during Choucair’s tenure.

Choucair visited Dearborn in January 2026, this time as his country’s spy chief, and Mahfouz and other LAHC leaders were part of an intimate dinner party. Multiple reports identify Choucair as being affiliated with the Amal Movement, and the Directorate General for General Security (DGGS) that he currently oversees reportedly has been infiltrated by Hezbollah, according to the Alma Research and Education Center. The U.S. government recently sanctioned a DGGS official for allegedly providing intelligence to Hezbollah.

Hassan Ahmad, chairman of LAHC and the city council chair of Dearborn Heights, attended a “welcoming dinner” in 2024 with Lebanese Major General Abba Ibrahim, whom Ahmad praised for his “outstanding contributions to the well-being and safety of Lebanon.” Yet, Ibrahim was “closely associated with Hezbollah,” according to the independent newspaper Ya Libnan, which claimed in 2011 that the general “played a key role in coordinating [Lebanese] army activities with Hezbollah during his previous posts.” Before retiring in 2023, Ibrahim maintained access to top officials in both Hezbollah and Iran, acting as a back channel for Washington diplomats. The welcoming ceremony was held at Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America, a Shi’a mosque that memorializes slain Hezbollah fighters and echoes the terrorist group’s talking points.

Wayne County Commissioner Sam Baydoun, who was then an LAHC board member, spoke at a September 25, 2024, rally in Dearborn where locals chanted “Death to Israel” and cheered for Hezbollah’s terrorist leaders. Osama Siblani, who moderated the rally, called for Israelis to go “back to Poland” rather than reclaim their homes in northern Israel that were abandoned following Hezbollah rocket attacks.

As the owner of Arab American News, Siblani has published multiple articles sympathetic to and supportive of terrorist groups. He told the Chicago Tribune in 2006 that he is “willing to go to jail” to “support the resistance done by Hezbollah,” and he argued in 2003 that Hamas and Hezbollah are not “terrorists,” but “freedom fighters.” Nevertheless, Siblani is often photographed with LAHC leaders, and Mahfouz has said he is “great friends” with the publisher. In 2009, LAHC bestowed its Award for Excellence and Great Community Service to Siblani.

The Muslim American Society (MAS) in Sacramento is a part of the nationwide MAS organization, which is known as the American branch of Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, or the Muslim Brotherhood. MAS-Sacramento oversees a community center and social services foundation, and the latter program received $90,000 in HHS grants to collaborate with the University of California-Irvine and provide reproductive health literacy to Afghan and Syrian refugees.

Islamist scholar Hassan al-Banna established the pan-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the 1920s in response to rising secularism and colonialism, and it soon grew into an international socio-political movement that inspired organizations from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza to violent militias in Libya and Sudan. The Muslim Brotherhood is designated as a terrorist organization and consequentially banned or designated in multiple countries around the world, including Russia, Austria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. In January 2026, the Trump administration listed the Egyptian and Jordanian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, while chapters in Lebanon and later Sudan were labeled as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

In Egypt, the global headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, members have defended the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), or the deliberate cutting and sewing closed of all or part of a girl or woman’s external genitalia. The Egyptian Brotherhood has fought to decriminalize the practice and has even offered mobile clinics with low-cost FGM services. Mohammed Khateeb, the Egyptian Brotherhood’s former mufti, once called FGM “a duty for the protection of the honour of the believing woman and for the preservation of her chastity and purity.”

Shaker Elsayed (mentioned previously in the Dar Al-Hijrah profile) served as secretary general of MAS from 1997 to 2004. He was forced to resign as the head imam of Dar Al-Hijrah in 2017 after publicly advocating for FGM, without which, he claimed, “hypersexuality takes over the entire society and a woman is not satisfied with one person or two or three.”

Nevertheless, the University of California-Irvine selected MAS-Sacramento as a partner to implement an HHS-funded reproductive health literacy training program designed for Afghan and Arab women.

As the most extant, organized expression of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, MAS’s interests extend well beyond women’s health. Planning documents seized from a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood member in a 2004 FBI raid detailed the organization’s goals in Europe and North America. Written in 1991, the “explanatory memorandum” promised to bring about a “grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

With the goal of Islamizing society, MAS has established vast social and religious infrastructure across the United States. The Brotherhood network controls an immigrant justice center, a youth ministry, mosques, an Islamic council, and a political advocacy arm—among other projects.

In 2004, the Chicago Tribune published an investigative report that found that members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States voted early on to refer to themselves organizationally as MAS to hide their links to the Muslim Brotherhood, fearing that their support for Ikhwani offshoots like Hamas would attract undue attention from U.S. authorities. Nevertheless, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit—in a case involving the sentencing of an accused terrorist—stated in 2008 that “MAS was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” The United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. ally, designated MAS in 2014 as a terrorist organization.

In 2019, an MAS school in Philadelphia elicited a flurry of news reports in response to a leaked video that showed young children singing a popular Islamist anthem about Israel and the “blood of martyrs.” One girl recited a line about Jews: “We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque.” More recently, MAS held a fundraiser at its Brooklyn youth center in January 2026 where the group sold trinkets honoring Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, is a mosque and community center providing religious and social services in the area since 1976. As Maryland’s first mosque, MCC operates a food pantry, a health clinic, and a refugee assistance program. Despite these public works, the MCC has a long history of hosting and partnering with terror-linked individuals and organizations. And yet, in 2022, MMC was paid out $250,000 in congressionally directed earmarks through HHS to fund the expansion and upgrade of its healthcare clinic, which serviced 18,000 patients a year, according to the grant description.

In January 2000, MCC held a Benevolence International Foundation fundraiser for Chechnya, a year before the Treasury Department designated the charity as terror financier for funding Al Qaeda. Yahya Hendi, a Georgetown University chaplain who testified under oath that suicide bombings were religiously sanctioned, moderated the MCC fundraiser. Addressing the congregants, Hendi explained that those who donated to Benevolence would receive the same rewards from Allah as those who waged jihad on the battlefield, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

A previous version of MCC’s website reportedly included a pamphlet on Islam written by Pete Seda (a.k.a. Abu Yunus). Seda was an officer at the U.S. branch of a Saudi charity called the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, which was designated by the Treasury Department in 2008 for providing material support to Al Qaeda and several other terrorist groups. In addition, MCC hosted at least four talks with 9/11 “truther” Enver Masud, who teaches unsubstantiated conspiracies arguing that there was no “hard evidence” of Osama Bin Laden’s involvement in the attacks.

Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood mass shooter responsible for massacring 13 soldiers in 2009 at an Army medical clinic, attended Friday prayers at MCC while serving as an Army psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the nation’s capital. (Hasan also attended the aforementioned Dar Al-Hijrah in Northern Virginia.)

Golam Akhter, a congregant at MCC during the time Hasan attended, recalled debating him about concepts ranging from jihad to polygamy to foreign policy. Akhter sought to persuade Hasan and other MCC congregants “to reject rigid, literal interpretations of Islam,” according to Muslim American journalist Asra Nomani, who claimed in 2009 that the mosque was a place where loyalty to the Muslim community superseded other identities. For challenging these fundamentalist views, Nomani claimed an MCC board member accused her of causing “fitna,” or division, within the community.

Faizul Khan, MCC’s imam at the time Hasan attended, was reportedly “a friend” of the Army doctor. As with others at the Maryland mosque, Khan expressed shock after Hasan carried out his murderous rampage. For his part, Khan was a senior leader with the Islamic Society of North America, a Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Islamist group and unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial.

More recently, and after moving on from MCC, Khan renounced his participation at an interfaith iftar, or fast-breaking dinner, organized by moderate Muslim reformer Anila Ali and sponsored by the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. Khan insisted he was “deceived,” and he claimed he would never willingly participate in an event that appeared to “whitewash genocide” on behalf of Israel in Gaza. His statement earned plaudits from anti-normalization groups like CAIR.

Indeed, MCC frequently engages in strategic partnerships with CAIR. Examples include holding a “Know Your Rights” workshop with CAIR and hosting at least one of its press conferences. Nihad Awad, CAIR’s longtime director who said he was “happy to see” the October 7 attacks in Israel, reportedly gave a Friday sermon at MCC in November 2024, arguing for the need to “market Islam” like any other commercialized “product” to attract followers in the United States.

Khan may deserve credit for opening MCC to federal funding. While serving as the assistant secretary-treasurer of the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (CCMO), he participated in a special White House workshop under the Obama administration that promised to provide “direct access” and “cut through red tape” for “funding, government assistance and resources.” Based on CCMO’s list of member organizations, MCC and several American Muslim Brotherhood groups may have been present at the workshop, which was co-sponsored by HHS and other federal agencies.

The Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs is the central body representing mainstream Islamic organizations in Nigeria. Established in 1973 and led by the Sultan of Sokoto Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, NSCIA calls itself the “apex Islamic authority” in Nigeria, handling religious moon-sightings, supervising Hajj pilgrimages, and providing social services and educational programs.

Since 2009, Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province terrorists have attacked Christians in Nigeria’s Sharia-administered northeast, while Fulani Muslim herdsmen have slaughtered Christians living in the country’s Middle Belt. According to the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, more than 152,000 Nigerian Christians were killed in the past 16 years, while 19,000 churches have been destroyed or damaged by jihadists. President Trump called on Nigeria in 2025 to protect Christian minorities facing violence and persecution. He ordered Christmas Day airstrikes against Islamic State targets he said were responsible for the “slaughter” of Christian minorities.

Yet, NSCIA openly denies evidence of a Christian genocide, blaming the violence on everything from poverty and criminality to climate change and Nigeria’s solidarity with “Palestine.” NSCIA Secretary-General Ishaq Oloyede balked at Trump’s concerns over religious violence, telling local reporters last year that “the genocide narrative is being driven by far-right and pro-Israeli actors” to “distract global attention from the real genocide in Gaza.” The NSCIA leader further insisted that “lobbyists flood Washington with doctored videos and fake statistics” in a bid to “secure asylum funding.”

Notably, it was NSCIA that received U.S. government funding. A Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, chose the Islamist group as a grant partner in 2021, providing $80,387 in HHS-originated funds to study the effects of oral hydroxyurea treatments on patients with sickle cell anemia.

In 2018, the Christian Association of Nigeria accused NSCIA of “not doing enough” to denounce the anti-Christian “genocide” on the part of fellow Muslims. Even some Muslims opposed to Boko Haram have urged NSCIA to be more “proactive in educating the masses about true Islam.”

Yet, NSCIA appears more concerned with spreading Islam than denouncing its extremists. The Islamic council remains an advocate for the expansion of Islamic law throughout Nigeria, where Sharia courts exist alongside customary and common law courts in 13 northern states and the federal capital territory of Abuja. However, NSCIA would like to see Sharia courts established in Nigeria’s Christian-majority southern states, as well.

NSCIA’s Oyo state chapter sparked a public backlash when it distributed flyers announcing plans to install a Sharia court in the city of Oyo. The inauguration was postponed after the proposal was met with harsh criticism on social media, prompting NSCIA to backtrack and insist the plans were for a voluntary arbitration council. Next, NSCIA sought to establish a Sharia panel in Ekiti state, a Christian-dominated area where Muslims make up just 5 percent of the population. NSCIA published a press release decrying the “unwarranted resistance and objections from both political and traditional quarters” to establishing Sharia courts in Ekiti.

Yet, when Nigerian Christian lawmakers introduced a bill in 2016 to amend the constitution and establish ecclesiastical courts in Nigeria that mirrored the legal authority of Sharia courts, NSCIA called the move “a recipe for anarchy.”

“If you say because [Muslims] have Shariah court, you also want Christian courts, Muslims also have the right to say they … want Wednesday as Sabbath Day,” said NSCIA Secretary-General Is-Haq Oloyede.

Christian leaders in Nigeria have accused NSCIA of “Islamizing” the country through influencing judicial appointments to the federal court of appeals, which is a secular appellate system. Christian Association of Nigeria President Supo Ayonkunle claimed that under Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari “the judiciary was literally an appendage of [the] Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs because its members were in charge of its affairs,” an allegation that, despite the facts, NSCIA decried as “scurrilous propaganda.” The Christian organization subsequently released a statement implying that NSCIA under Buhari influenced Muslim appointments to around a dozen senior federal offices, such as the Ministers of Defence and Interior, and the heads of the National Intelligence Agency and Nigerian Immigration Service.

NSCIA argues that an Islamic state is “desirable in the eyes of every Muslim,” but acknowledges that Nigeria is not ready to fully revolutionize.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) was founded in 1993 in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah. As a think tank and polling operation, PCPSR surveys local populations for opinions on topics ranging from support for Palestinian political parties to attitudes on Western involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. PCPSR’s founder and director, Khalil Shikaki, previously maintained notable ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and some have questioned the integrity of his polls.

In 2023, the University of Notre Dame sub-granted $128,800 in HHS funds to PCPSR to provide research for a family support program for Palestinian parents and children.

The accuracy of Shikaki’s research was called into question in 2024, when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a document obtained in Gaza that appeared to show Hamas manipulated the results of a PCPSR survey from March of that year. PCPSR published findings indicating that 71 percent of Gazans supported the October 7 attacks in Israel, and 62 percent were satisfied with Hamas’s conduct of the war. The recovered document, a letter from someone named Abu Khaled, claimed the “results of the survey were corrected in accordance with the practice that existed in previous surveys.” The alleged “real survey results” showed 31 percent of Gazans supported the October 7 massacres, while only 32 percent were happy with Hamas’s war-time performance.

The IDF never explained exactly how the opinion polls were altered. Shikaki defended the accuracy of his data and promised to “investigate.”

Inaccurate PCPSR polls may have helped usher Hamas into power prior to the terror group’s 2006 election victory. Elliot Abrams, who served as President George W. Bush’s senior director for Near Eastern and North African Affairs at the National Security Council, claimed that the White House made a mistake by allowing the national elections to proceed that brought Hamas to power.

“If you look at what all the polls were saying, [Palestinian pollster Khalil] Shikaki, BBC polls, our own polls, they were all saying Fatah would win,” Abrams told the Jerusalem Post in 2011. He credited the polls for influencing the administration’s decision to allow the national elections to proceed, since it was widely believed that the rival secular Fatah party would win.

Despite these problems, Shikaki remains highly regarded as the foremost expert on Palestinian public opinion. Yet, the pollster’s involvement in a terror finance case and historical links to Palestinian Islamic Jihad should concern the journalists and policymakers who make use of PCPSR’s research.

According to a report from the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), Shikaki assisted PIJ during its formative years and was a close associate of its top leaders. Indeed, his brother Fathi Shikaki was one of the founders and first commander of PIJ. After settling in the United States, Shikaki became a professor at the University of South Florida in 1991, where he was a close associate of Sami Al-Arian, whom the FBI believed was the top PIJ leader in America. Shikaki’s name appears in multiple case exhibits from Al-Arian’s trial, according to IPT, which monitored the proceedings closely. Bank records and wiretaps from the investigation, which resulted in Al-Arian’s 2004 plea-based conviction for providing material support to PIJ, indicated that Shikaki was involved with transferring money among suspected PIJ members. He apparently grew reluctant to continue with the money transfer schemes after PIJ was designated as a terrorist group in 1995.

In letters released by the FBI between Shikaki and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who would go on to lead PIJ following the killing of Shikaki’s brother, there were references to “Abu Omar,” the nomme de guerre of Mousa Abu Marzook, Hamas’s then-political chief. Additional letters obtained by authorities showed how Shikaki used Shallah as an intermediary to transmit messages and operational materials to Fathi Shikaki, IPT’s Steven Emerson claimed in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee.

Shikaki was a senior researcher at the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), a think tank established by Al-Arian and other known and suspected PIJ members to advance the terror group’s agenda. During the deportation proceeding for a PIJ operative, Immigration and Naturalization Special Agent William West testified that WISE was established “for the purpose of providing financial support … to Middle East terrorist organizations.”

Today, Shikaki is a professor at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies, where he co-teaches a course on the Arab-Israeli conflict with Shai Feldman and Abdel Monem Said Aly. The trio are also co-authors of a book, Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East, which provides the Palestinian, Israeli, and Egyptian perspectives of each professor. Despite this balance, the book is replete with historical revisions and anti-Israel prejudices.

For example, Shikaki wrote that the grand mufti of Jerusalem’s support for Nazi Germany was “justified” and should not be considered “an endorsement of Nazi racist goals.” While a guest of Hitler, the mufti recruited Arab Muslims to join SS and regular military units, and his wartime broadcasts included comparisons of “Jewishness” to an “infectious disease.” Aly, Shikaki’s co-author, called Israel “gangsters and conspirators,” and the book accuses early Israeli settlers of expropriating Palestinian land.

Formerly known as the Texas Muslim Women’s Foundation, Peace in the Home Family Services (PHFS) offers trauma counseling and shelter services for the survivors of family violence, as well as legal services in the areas of family law and immigration. Despite these noble undertakings, PHFS has repeatedly promoted hardline preachers and extremist groups who contradict the organization’s peaceful messaging and pursuit of gender equality.

PHFS received more than $11 million in public funds between 2015 and 2025, making it the top recipient of government grants to Islamist-aligned groups in the state of Texas. At least $1.6 million of those funds came from HHS, mostly to fight domestic violence while offering shelter and counseling to victims.

In 2017, PHFS hosted Omar Suleiman, a leading Salafi imam, as a keynote speaker at its annual fundraising dinner. Suleiman was once recorded offering an alarming warning to Muslim women. “Sisters ... you know what happens with a really jealous Dad? He kills you and he kills the guy. You are offending Allah ... whenever you make yourself promiscuous or you open yourself up to a relationship,” he said. Suleiman has also referred to homosexuality as a “repugnant shameful sin,” while teaching Muslim youth that “guys and girls can’t be friends.”

PHFS has likewise partnered with the Muslim American Society (featured in this report), the U.S. representatives of the global Muslim Brotherhood network. In 2013, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood denounced a United Nations declaration on women’s rights, arguing that it would lead to the “complete disintegration of society” by granting women sexual freedom, prosecuting marital rape, and acknowledging equal rights to homosexual people.

In 2011, PHFS promoted an event organized by the Hamas-aligned Students for Justice in Palestine activist network.The event, called “Uncovering the Zionist Myth,” featured Samir Abed-Rabbo, an anti-Israel activist with a history of vile antisemitic and pro-terror comments on social media. Moreover, PHFS’s partners at the Muslim American Society regularly advocate for local criminals convicted of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas.

To end government funding of terror-linked Islamist organizations, the Middle East Forum recommends an integrated, multi-stakeholder approach of escalating legal remedies employing the “Four Ds to Defeat Radical Islam: Debarment, Delisting, Derisking, and Designating.” This whole-of-government approach applies as much to HHS as it does to other government grant-making agencies at risk of funding terror-linked and extremist groups, from municipal community awards to defense contracts.

In addition to this approach, policymakers must consider what makes HHS grants uniquely vulnerable to Islamist capture. Why has the agency failed, especially in recent years, to conduct adequate partner vetting and pre-award screening?

As a federal agency that deals with health policy and social issues, HHS faces unique risks associated with healthcare fraud and poor service delivery among grant recipients and sub-recipients. Indeed, applicant screening at HHS appears to focus on financial capabilities and expense management, not on extremist affiliations and foreign links. The results of this study clearly demonstrate the need for extreme vetting of certain HHS grant recipients.

This report determined that 87 percent of HHS funding to extremist groups—or $68.5 million—occurred between 2022 and 2025, suggesting these awards were approved during the Biden-Harris administration. According to a proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that would revise the regulations governing federal financial assistance, “Federal awards were often used during those years to promote a ‘woke’ policy agenda that did not reflect the values of the vast majority of the American public.” OMB claims that federal grants under Biden-Harris were “designed to advance unlawful identity-based ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ (DEI) policies and preferences across the country.”

This may explain the exponential rise in funding to Islamist organizations. OMB recommends a return to a merit-based selection process, with key updates in mind. If these new procedures are implemented, “agencies may consider an applicant’s history of questionable practices,” as well as “an applicant’s affiliations with organizations engaged in activities that violate Federal law, undermine public safety or national security, or advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government.”

HHS must adopt program-level specific vetting standards that apply to applicant screening and oversight. Other agencies’ lead grant programs require special vetting standards, such as foreign assistance grants to the West Bank and Gaza through the State Department, or the Department of Homeland Security’s counter-radicalization program.

HHS should require the same extreme vetting of grant recipients for sensitive programs. For example, beneficiaries of Afghan Legal Services Program funding are expected to assess whether their clients meet terrorism-related grounds for inadmissibility. Mandatory checks against government databases and terrorist watchlists would disqualify terror-linked groups from participating in these sensitive programs.

This study demonstrates that 70 percent of all HHS grants to extremist groups are distributed through pass-through entities, from state government agencies to private colleges and charities. These prime awardees bear responsibility for vetting and oversight of sub-awardees (and the granting agency is responsible for monitoring the prime awardees), according to OMB’s Uniform Guidance. General vetting is limited to evaluating a sub-awardee’s risk of fraud or noncompliance with grant terms; there is nothing requiring an assessment of the risks of diversion to terrorist or extremist groups.

Therefore, HHS must assume greater oversight of sub-recipient vetting. The proposed changes to federal assistance regulations requiring checks of prime awardees’ “questionable practices” and “affiliations” should also apply to sub-awardees. Currently, prime awardees are required to share only basic identifying information about their partners with the federal government. Any organization receiving taxpayer funds should be required to disclose names of board members, senior staff, and key employees involved with each grant program.

Finally, foreign awardees located in regions with terrorist activity should always be subjected to increased vetting standards to ensure sound Anti-Money Laundering/Countering Terror Finance (AML/CFT) practices.

HHS should pursue government-wide suspension and debarment of terror-linked and extremist grant recipients under 2 CFR § 180, the federal regulations ensuring that the government only conducts business with responsible partners. This federal action allows agencies to immediately prohibit funding while officials investigate whether certain conduct should disqualify an entity from receiving government grants and contract awards across federal agencies, for a period up to three years or longer.

The causes for debarment listed under 2 CFR § 180.800 include section (d): “Any other cause that is so serious or compelling in nature that it affects your present responsibility.” Suspension and Debarment Officials should consider debarment under this cause of action when awardees demonstrate links to terrorist groups, or when organizations exhibit a culture of bigotry and extremism.

Additional causes of action for debarment may apply to nonprofits in this report. For example, CAIR’s alleged grant abuses in California could trigger debarment under 2 CFR § 180.800(b): “Violation of the terms of a public agreement or transaction so serious as to affect the integrity of a Federal agency program.”

As the legislature awaits debarment actions from the administration, Congress can take matters into its own hands by prohibiting funding to terror-aligned groups in annual authorization and appropriation bills. This requires the use of limitation riders in the “General Provisions” section of the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which could mandate prohibitions against the organizations listed in this report. Congress could name specific groups, leaving nothing to interpretation for the executive branch, or the legislature could specify certain forms of disqualifying conduct that would trigger exclusions. For example, the HHS spending bill could prohibit funding to groups that are unindicted co-conspirators in any terror finance trial, or it could block grants to nonprofits that express support for terrorist groups.

Many federal funding programs are restricted to 501(c) nonprofit organizations. Take away an entity’s nonprofit status, and it will no longer qualify for certain HHS funding opportunities.

In recent years, Congress members have sought to revoke the tax-exempt status for terror-linked organizations. Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has sent multiple letters to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) commissioner referring Islamist groups for IRS review, including CAIR and Islamic Relief. Republicans in the House and Senate have introduced several bills attempting to amend the Internal Revenue Code to make it easier to revoke federal tax exemptions from “terrorist supporting organizations.”

Without a doubt, these are crucial reforms that deserve bipartisan support. However, they don’t stop federal grants to terror-aligned groups. While the IRS can revoke federal tax exemptions, it can’t take away nonprofit status, seize assets, or take control of an organization. Nonprofit incorporation is governed by individual state laws.

Consequently, the most direct way to ensure federal purse strings are closed to terrorist-supporting Islamist groups is to reform state corporate law. The Tennessee legislature did precisely this in April 2026, when State Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-District 64) and Senator Mark Pody (R-District 17) passed a bill that denies the issuing of any certification, registration, license, or permit to any entity that provides material support or resources to designated terrorist organizations. Tennessee’s H.B. 1884/S.B. 1956 should serve as model legislation to be adopted by multiple state legislatures.

Banks and other financial institutions face significant risks associated with money laundering and terror financing through the nonprofit sector, and the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 requires these companies to establish reasonable, risk-based programs to prevent the laundering of funds to support acts of terrorism. Risk and compliance officers must identify, analyze, and manage these threats through audits, policy management, and training programs.

In many ways, private-sector financial institutions lead the government in detecting risk. After all, government agencies can fail due diligence checks repeatedly without facing criminal or financial consequences. Government-funded nonprofit organizations are more likely to face account closures, refusals to open accounts, and atypical document requests than privately funded nonprofits, according to one study. Banks play a key role in detecting illicit finance because they operate at the point of transaction. While federal agencies lag behind in partner vetting, the finance industry is adopting increasingly sophisticated AML/CFT measures, from artificial intelligence-driven transaction monitoring to advancing specialized training and compliance programs.

Pro-Islamist nonprofits and coalition groups have weaponized the issue, arguing that attempts to monitor and regulate terror finance through derisking represents “Islamophobia” in response to “banking while Muslim.” An influential lobby has emerged that seeks to dismantle threat management and financial derisking analysis. Charitable conglomerates such as InterAction, an umbrella organization consisting of over 170 member groups, openly urge Congress to undermine financial de-risking, placing humanitarian projects above money laundering and terror finance concerns.

The humanitarian aid lobby has ensured that the U.S. government now recommends policies of “inclusion” over strict de-risking. The Biden-Harris administration’s “2023 De-Risking Strategy” prioritized fewer restrictions on the moving of “remittances,” or foreign workers sending their income overseas, and removing delays to the “unencumbered transfer of international development funds,” while urging financial institutions to avoid broad de-risking measures.

Yet, financial institutions face enormous costs for failing to address terror finance threats. Binance, the world’s largest crypto-currency exchange, agreed to pay $4.3 billion in connection with a plea agreement with the Justice Department in 2023, after it failed to stop actors concealing the movement of funds to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. TD Bank agreed to pay over $3 billion in penalties to U.S. agencies for failing to implement basic “Know Your Customer” and AML/CFT protocols, compliance lapses that led to billions of dollars in illegal funding tied to drug cartels, human trafficking, and terrorist groups.

Therefore, lawmakers should resist efforts to prohibit financial de-risking, especially when dealing with NGOs that operate in high-risk countries. Banks should be free to conduct risk assessments based on a client’s affiliations, location, and business sector, and the government must preserve the confidentiality of AML/CFT screening, especially the filing of Suspicious Activity Reports, to avoid tipping off terrorists.

Federal policy should support public-private partnerships in financial risk analysis. In 2012, Islamic Relief Worldwide lost its account with investment banking giant UBS, and the charity reported that it experienced delays or cancellations on a daily basis for transactions across the financial sector. The British charity also lost its HSBC account prior to 2015. Both closures occurred before HHS sub-granted more than a quarter-million dollars to Islamic Relief in February 2016.

The U.S. government applies terrorist designations in extreme cases, with the appropriate sanctions regime depending on whether the target is a foreign group engaged in violent terrorism or one providing material support to designated terrorists.

The Secretary of State designates Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Providing material support to an FTO carries severe criminal penalties, and FTO members are barred from entering the United States and may face deportation.

Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13224 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This order authorizes the Treasury and State Departments to designate Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs)—individuals or entities who own, control, or provide support to terrorist networks. The Office of Foreign Assets Control blocks their assets, and U.S. persons who do business with them risk civil or criminal penalties.

In short, FTO designations primarily impose criminal penalties on violent overseas terrorist groups, while SDGT designations use civil asset freezes and secondary sanctions to disrupt terrorist financing and support networks. Both designation regimes may impact the humanitarian aid sector.

For example, recent designations of Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Sudan could implicate U.S. and European Muslim Brotherhood groups that provide material support or resources to these foreign networks. Designating Jamaat-e-Islami, the South Asian Islamist movement responsible for recent violence in Bangladesh, could bear consequences for ICNA Relief.

So far, though, Brotherhood-aligned nonprofits like the Muslim American Society and Islamic Relief Worldwide have avoided legal entanglements with their parent organizations. Although the federal government has listed at least nine U.S. charities or nonprofits as SDGTs for providing support to foreign terrorist groups, most of these domestic designations occurred in the first three years after 9/11, with the last listing happening in 2009. Since then, the Treasury Department has apparently stopped designating domestic groups as SDGTs, despite the legal precedent.

Policymakers must reverse this trend. First, the Treasury secretary should list as an SDGT any domestic charity that meets the statutory requirements for designation. Decades-old connections and institutional origins are not enough. Unclassified guidelines from the State Department on designations recommend using “recent evidence—ideally within about the last two years,” to build cases against government targets. Additionally, material assistance can include providing financial and technological support, providing goods and services, and even offering or participating in training.

Second, the State Department should designate violent overseas extremist groups, especially those with a significant foothold in the United States. Targeting foreign militias and political organizations for designations—such as Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Jammu Kashmir, and the Amal Movement in Lebanon—could dislodge them from their American proxy networks. Similarly, the Treasury Department should list specific foreign individuals as Specially Designated Nationals who are involved with terrorists and entangled with U.S. Islamist groups. Domestic groups will be forced to sever ties with these designated people or face terror sanctions.