Director of Middle East Forum's counter-extremism project
Joined May 2011
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Sam Westrop retweeted
I fled Islamism in Iran. Now American taxpayers are subsidizing it through tax-exempt nonprofits that the IRS won’t hold accountable.
My piece for @dcexaminer:
I fled Islamism in Iran. Now, American tax dollars are funding it in Michigan | OP-ED by Mahyar Entezari, a senior researcher at the Middle East Forum. trib.al/uNS0KCs
Sam Westrop retweeted
A foreign bank with Iran as its third-largest shareholder has given over $17 million to at least 50 Islamic private K-12 schools in the United States. Along with these grants, the Islamic Development Bank works with the largest Islamic K-12 school accreditation organization in the U.S., the Council of Islamic Schools based in North America (CISNA).
🏫 America’s primary and secondary schools have become targets of foreign influence campaigns.
Over $10M in QFI grants have reached nearly two dozen school districts, mainly supporting Arabic language and culture instruction.
@76brandy76, @JenRichmond & @SimoneJWei dive into how the American K-12 education system is vulnerable to foreign influence: fdd.org/analysis/foreign-fun…
I've been collecting radical sermons from one of @AbdulElSayed's favorite mosques, the Islamic Center of Detroit (ICD). From the hundreds of examples gathered, almost 50 include open praise for jihad and the mujahideen, along with open supplications for the slaughter of Israelis.
"Burn them" .... "kill them one by one" ... "tear them apart."
This is perhaps one of the most dangerous, concentrated collections I've seen in over a decade of counter-extremism work.
The ICD has been in the news recently because U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is reportedly a congregant.
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But more importantly: the federal government has given over $45 million of your money to this dangerous institution.
$31 million of this funding came from a single grant provided by the Biden administration - the single largest grant ever given to an American Muslim nonprofit by the federal government.
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Hello @jamestalarico (and other Texas state reps and mayors present). I would have hoped your advisors warned you against meeting with operatives such as Masoud Khayyat, who has praised terrorist attacks and openly expressed support for leaders of U.S. designated terrorist organizations.
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Sam Westrop retweeted
This is extremely useful. With it, Mansouri offers a long-awaited retort to Erdoğan's 2004 statement in Chicago about there being no much thing as "moderate Islam"; let's hope her honest statement cancels Erdoğan's mendacity.
“We are Muslims, not Islamists.”
Morocco’s first female prime minister, Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, has drawn widespread criticism for distinguishing her Muslim faith from “Islamist” politics.
A member of the secularist Authenticity and Modernity Party, El Mansouri has spoken about balancing Morocco’s Islamic identity with modernity and reform.
Interesting: Moazzam Begg of the U.K. Islamist group CAGE, admits that the Taliban regime is assisting his efforts to free Aafia Siddiqui, a.k.a. Lady Al-Qaeda.
CAGE works with a number of U.S. Islamist partners to advocate for a whole bunch of jailed jihadists, with Aafia as their flagship martyr.
Sam Westrop retweeted
A charity raised more than $33 million in its second year—then spent more on advertising than it granted overseas.
@kikas6652 examines the Human Development Fund’s filings: millions to unnamed foreign recipients, more than $1 million to organizations linked to its own leadership, and major questions about where the money ultimately goes.
meforum.org/fwi/fwi-research…
Fiyaz Mughal: We are at a historic juncture in the struggle for Islam’s soul and such people are part of the problem. Will our institutions choose to support those who fundamentally believe in the core defence and values of our country, or will they pander to those religious bigots who spin a yarn that they “speak for most Muslims”? thetimes.com/comment/columni…
1/ Islamist nonprofits tied to foreign extremist movements, are openly electioneering—endorsing candidates, soliciting campaign donations, distributing campaign literature, hosting campaign booths, and campaigning from the pulpit—in seemingly clear violations of federal law.
2/ Featuring CAIR, ISNA, and a bunch of the usual suspects. Read the new @meforum report at @FWIslamism, authored by Mahyar Entezari (@emahyar).
meforum.org/fwi/fwi-research…
At @FWIslamism , a project of @meforum, my colleague uncovered an apparent 501c election violation by the Islamist-founded ISNA. More examples of similar 501c violations on the way. Stay tuned!
🚨The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) reportedly engaged in prohibited activity on behalf of Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
I sent a letter to @SecScottBessent requesting the IRS investigate and complete a full review of ISNA’s tax-exempt status.
Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize a nonprofit acting like a campaign committee for the Red-Green Alliance.
The U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 started as the fires at Ground Zero still burned. The invasion of a South Asian terror state and the subsequent 20 years of protracted fighting should have introduced American policymakers to the question of South Asian Islamism. However, Deobandism, the Islamist ideology of the Taliban, remains largely unfamiliar. In Afghanistan, at least, America never learned whom it was fighting.
meforum.org/mef-observer/wha…
Oh no! A research organization that researches and writes, with its Muslim partners, on the diverse array of ideological forces affecting Muslim communities is using a database to track the diverse array of ideological forces affecting Muslim communities.
Important work from the Huffington Post.
Another good headline might have been: "Thinktank writes stuff down to save for later"
huffpost.com/entry/middle-ea…
!
"Most Muslims The Economist spoke to for this article said they had never met an Islamist, and knew little about the ideology. ... Shahid Ali, an imam, says, 'It is stupidity to want sharia law in England.' But on Facebook he castigates Muslims for not working harder to create a caliphate."
economist.com/britain/2026/0…
"Our country appears to have forgotten 9/11’s lessons. The Islamist threat didn’t disappear, it evolved. The same Muslim Brotherhood ecosystem became more professional and refined its tactics to exploit America’s open society, all while accusing America of being a hive of bigotry. Victimhood became the key pose, coupled with civil-rights rhetoric that confuses decent Americans. Exploitation of school boards, city councils, and the Democratic Party has enabled movement ideologues to achieve positions of power."
An important piece from the ever-impressive Zainab Al-Suwaij (@Zainab17)
wsj.com/opinion/to-help-musl…
Sam Westrop retweeted
For several years, I've been asking @WorldVision to come clean about the fact that their former Gaza director, Muhammad Halabi, syphoned off millions of dollars for Hamas.
Sadly, WV hasn't listened. The Trump Admin should reverse their embrace of WV.
wsj.com/opinion/trump-picks-…
