The Biden White House and Senate Democrats have touted their funding for an anti-terrorism initiative they say “has been critical to the security of Jewish institutions.” But the program has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months to mosques whose clerics have preached anti-Semitic hate, cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, and been accused of raising money for terrorist groups.
The Department of Homeland Security has awarded $150,000 in grants since November to Masjid Jamaat al Mumineen, the Islamic Society of Akron and Kent, and the Islamic Center of Bothell as part of its “Nonprofit Security Grant Program,” according to federal records. The program gives taxpayer funds to nonprofits and religious groups deemed “at high risk of terrorist attack” to help enhance security.
President Joe Biden touted the program last year as an example of the administration’s “aggressive” actions to counter anti-Semitism and “protect Jewish institutions.”
But the mosques have condoned the kinds of violence the grant program aims to prevent. In a sermon last month, Nader Taha, the imam of the Islamic Society of Akron & Kent, called the Oct. 7 attacks a “miracle” that “planted the seed of freedom in the heart of not just only the Muslim world, but the whole world.”
“The faces of the children of Israel will be so humiliated,” he said in the sermon reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute. Kent State University, where Taha works as a math lecturer, condemned Taha’s remarks as “anti-Semitic,” saying that “references to the October 2023 massacre are abhorrent and stand in stark contrast to our institutional commitment to peaceful dialogue, as well as our core values of kindness and respect.”
Masjid Jamaat al Mumineen, a South Florida mosque led by Imam Izhar Khan, promotes numerous books on its website that preach violence against Jews and Christians. In 2011, Khan was indicted alongside his father and several brothers on charges that they funded the Pakistani Taliban, a terrorist group aligned with al Qaeda. According to prosecutors, the Khan family funneled money back to the terrorist group to “further acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming” of Americans. A judge dismissed charges against Khan in 2013 after he served 20 months in prison, citing a lack of evidence. His father was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but he was released in 2019, shortly before his death.
The Islamic Center of Bothell, located outside Seattle, employs multiple preachers linked to violent rhetoric. Moosa Salie, the current imam of the mosque, served until last year as an official at South Africa’s Council of Muslim Theologians, which declared in September that “We are all Hamas.”
Another preacher at the Bothell mosque, Alaa Badr, was accused in a lawsuit last year of openly praising Hamas and cheering the murder of Israelis. Badr, an executive at Intel, was accused by a subordinate of creating a hostile work environment and pressuring subordinates to identify Israeli employees. Badr gives weekly sermons at the Islamic Center of Bothell.
It’s not the first time the Biden administration has awarded taxpayer funds under the Nonprofit Security Grant program to extremist mosques. The Islamic Center of Detroit, whose imam prayed to Allah to “eradicate” the “sick, disgusting Zionist regime,” received a grant under the DHS program in October 2022, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The imam of the Islamic Center of Hawthorne, which received $150,000 through the program on Feb. 9, 2023, has preached about “the malevolence of the Jews” and said “the media of the Jews” had influenced “weak Muslims.” An Islamic scholar at the Flint Islamic Center, the recipient of a $300,000 grant, asserted that Jews “literally live for the purpose of genocide” against Palestinians.
The Department of Homeland Security provides little insight into how it selects grant recipients. According to a DHS fact sheet, Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas makes all “final funding determinations” about which organizations will receive grants. The agency screens applicants for red flags by checking U.S. intelligence agencies for any “derogatory information.” The agency also prioritizes organizations that are deemed to be in “disadvantaged” areas.
The White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and the mosques did not respond to requests for comment.
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