Montgomery County’s beleaguered taxpayers are asked to fund all kinds of nonsense, as documented frequently at CleanSlateMoCo. At the same time, MoCo politicians talk incessantly about “combating hatred” and bigotry. There has been 18+ years of combatting “hate” through government proclamations and other public acts. Now, more investigations are turning up some really outrageous taxpayer funding of Montgomery County based Islamic Centers and Islamic schools with ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as just centers of “tolerance” that appear to be hosting pretty intolerable Imams as keynote speakers at a time when emotions in Montgomery County are raw following the terror attack in Israel.
Starting in Potomac, MD the Islamic Education Center (IEC) claims to have been established in 1998 and appears to be Shia oriented, but appears to have roots from the 1980s and onward, as per other reporting about its ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2019, the IEC was listed in a press release by Marc Elrich highlighting “faith-based organizations” that received “grant funding from the Faith-based Facilities Security Operating Grants program.” The IEC got $20,000 of MoCo residents tax dollars to fund “security staffing.”
But what is really concerning, more recently, is that the IEC was the subject of an investigative piece at the Middle East Forum entitled “Maryland Legislature Funds Pro-Iran Mosque Entangled in Terror Trials”. This piece, by Benjamin Baird, was published in just May of 2023. Excerpted, but you should read the entire thing:
IEC leaders have long maintained that the mosque’s relationship to Alavi is merely that of tenant to landlord. Yet, from the Islamic center’s founding, its leaders and benefactors have been die-hard Khomeinists, expressing complete loyalty and adoration for Iran’s supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini and promoting the regime’s image with revolutionary zeal.
The $115,000 in state of Maryland grants these orgs were assigned comes from the “2023 Legislative Bond Initiative” and they part of a package sponsored by MoCo-based state senator (Democrat – District 15, and shown below from his campaign site https://brianjfeldman.com/)
The IEC is tied as well to the “Muslim Community School and Alim Academy”. Part of the state-bond grant pushed by Senator Feldman is for the school’s playground:
The Alim Academy is the subject of another investigative piece by meforum.org and the Clarion Project, dated 2018. In the article, a radical sheikh with past sermons that discussed killing apostates is noted as a teacher at the Alim Academy (it is unclear if he is still with the school in 2023).
In one sermon, Sheikh Jalil preached that apostates—Muslims who convert out of the faith—can be executed if the apostate lives in an Islamic state (a country ruled by a sharia-based theocracy).
While Sheikh Jalil is not advocating killing apostates in the U.S., he is still teaching his audience that the ideal government for Muslims is a sharia-ruled theocracy — and in this context, apostates are executed.
(Ironically, even though Sheikh Jalil is an enemy of religious freedom, his mosque still participates in interfaith activities with Jews and Christians.)”
Montgomery County itself also announced it was giving the Alim Academy $16,000 in January as part of a $700K send out to “facilities at risk of being victim of a hate crime.” What is truly being taught at this academy with regard to geopolitics and world history and religious tolerance, and why do taxpayers and future taxpayers need to pay for its upkeep or renovations?
In another quick example of granting gone amok, the Islamic Center of Maryland, based in Gaithersburg, MD, also got $16,000 of taxpayer money in that same $700K spend-a-thon in 2022. The Islamic Center of Maryland seems more moderate and bills itself as a 501c3, but its events page includes the following:
The keynote speaker highlighted, Imam Suhaib Webb, appears to be a Boston-based Imam, an American who converted to Islam in 1992. On his Youtube channel, he has uploaded “shorts” (short video posts) including several in recent days on the ongoing conflict between the state of Israel and Hamas, as well as other neighboring states and organizations. Using pretty incendiary language, he dubs Israel an “occupier” and refers to the “Occupier’s Flawed Argument” (screen capture is below). He then talks about watching “this nonsense on the news”, presumably in regards to the Israeli response after Hamas militants stormed southern Israel on October 7th and killed over 1300 people, many of whom were civilians. The Imam appears to post frequently on Instagram as well – none of it seemingly pro-peace or reconciliation.
The Imam is free to his own opinions of course, and free speech and religious associations should always be protected in America (including at MCPS). But do Montgomery County taxpayers really need to subsidize institutions that host these kinds of ideologues?
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