Florida private school tied to rabid antisemitism gets taxpayer-funded vouchers

Speaking at the school, Imam Fadi Kablawi has called Jews “the lowest of the lowest.”

By Joe Kaufman, FrontPage Magazine

Reviver Academy is a Muslim children’s private school based in Miami, Florida. The school is part of the North Miami Islamic Center (NMIC), which also includes a mosque whose imam, Fadi Kablawi, uses his pulpit to preach violence and target Jews, gays, Christians, women and fellow Muslims with the worst of bigotry.

This same school/mosque receives taxpayer funded vouchers from the state of Florida to lower tuition costs for its students. Given the violent and hateful nature of NMIC, its educational apparatus should cease receiving school vouchers and be forced to give back those vouchers it received previously.

Though Reviver and NMIC have separate corporations, they are essentially the same organization. According to the NMIC website, “North Miami Islamic Center is a non-profit 501(c)(3) Tax Exempt Corporation in Miami, Florida.

The Organization owns a Masjid (Masjid As-Sunnah An-Nabawiyyah) and an Academy (Reviver Academy, LLC).” The Reviver logo, many times, is presented with the words “Assunah AnnabaweyaRevivers” written under it. All three entities operate out of the same facility, located at 560 NW 165th Street Rd. in Miami, and prior to February 2015, they used the Miami address of 431 NE Circle Ter. #102-24.

The building housing Reviver and NMIC has three floors. The mosque is on the first level. The school uses the second floor. Currently, NMIC is actively raising funds to renovate the third floor to expand the school. Apparently, a good chunk of these funds are coming from Florida’s taxpayers.

Scholarships of $7,000 per student

As stated on Reviver school registration instructions, “We accept Step Up For Students Scholarship.” Step Up for Students is a Florida nonprofit organization that works with the state to provide scholarships to help pay tuition for private schools. The scholarships average around $7,000 per student.

During this past Ramadan, soon-to-be Reviver administrator Nabil el-Shukri told the NMIC congregation that he would help them get “vouchers” to assist them in paying for their children’s education.

For Reviver/NMIC to be involved in securing funding linked to Florida’s taxpayers is a huge problem, as it has significant links to terror and is involved in propagating the worst of violence and bigotry.

NMIC is an outgrowth of the Shamsuddin Islamic Center, where future al-Qaeda leader and Nabil el-Shukri’s brother, Adnan,was a congregant and their father, Gulshair, was a founding board member. NMIC originally operated from Shamsuddin’s address. It is not by chance that Shamsuddin’s ex-President, Shazam Mohamed, is now NMIC President and Reviver Manager. Mohamed is too Vice President of the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), a group condemned by the ADL for spreading “venomous” Jew hatred, whose President, Sofian Zakkout, was kicked off two anti-crime boards for promoting Hamas and Holocaust denial.

While Mohamed holds the organization’s top leadership role, the face of Reviver/NMIC is Jordanian-born imam Fadi Yousef Kablawi. Kablawi, whom the FBI believes has had involvement with ISIS and who has previously been charged with “making terrorist threats at an airport,” uses the mosque to verbally assault others. This includes Jews, Christians, Hindus, gays, women and even his fellow Muslims, who do not embrace his brand of extremism.

In December 2020, Kablawi told his congregants that Jews are “the lowest of the lowest.” He said that people “crack jokes about Jews being cheap” as “a punishment from Allah.” In January 2021, Kablawi stated that Jews “deserve the wrath of Allah… because he knows what the truth is… [H]e knows what’s right, but his intention is evil.” In May 2021, he said, “[T]he Jews cry… every minute about the Holocaust. And they make it the worst thing happen in history for any group of people… You didn’t suffer… When you come and say, ‘We want money for our great-grandfathers, who were burned by Hitler,’ you’re capitalizing, just as usual. You love money.”

‘I hate Christians’

In January 2019, Kablawi told the congregation, “If you look into the religions in the world, perhaps Christianity can compete for one of the first three places in stupidity.” In September 2021, he stated, “When I go outside to make dawah (outreach), I’m not going [up] to a Christian to tell him ‘I hate you’… but that does not deny the fact I do… I don’t hate him because his head is big or he’s skinny or fat or his skin color, but I still hate him as a being.”

In August 2021, during a speech to his mosque, he stated about America, “I’m a true believer in the fact that Allah has not destroyed this country yet, because we Muslims live in it.”

He declared the same for homosexuals, stating: “When Allah tortured Lut (Lot), they knew that what they were doing is wrong… So you want to tell me the gays of today are better? Yet, Allah is not destroying them. The only explanation I know of myself… is because we Muslims are here. So based on that, all gays and all lesbians in America should be standing outside this masjid to give us appreciation. But we don’t want it. Stay away from me.”

Amid this same August 2021 speech, while defending the Taliban’s treatment of women, Kablawi vilified female victims of sexual assault, impugning women for the crimes committed against them. He asked, “Can you tell me about rape?” He continued, “‘Oh, he’s one of them. Oh, he blame the women for the way they dress for getting raped.’ I blame them, but I don’t free the perpetrator.”

Kablawi has also preached violence. In July 2020, Kablawi stated, “[J]ihad is when you put your life on the line… Real jihad is not climbing walls. Real jihad is climbing over people’s necks and heads and skulls.”

At least one of Kablawi’s followers, then-Masjid As-Sunnah An-Nabawiyyah congregant Salman Rasheed, appeared to have taken Kablawi’s words to heart, when he was arrested for soliciting an individual to contact ISIS in a plot to murder the deans of both Broward College and Miami-Dade College. Rasheed posted on Facebook, “Americans Are Our Greatest Enemy After Israeli Yahuds” and “Americans will pay Inch by Inch For everything they have done to us…” Kablawi, who met with and spoke with Rasheed on several occasions, called Rasheed a “good brother.” Rasheed’s mother accused Kablawi of having brainwashed her son to commit terrorist acts.

Grooming children for the future

During Kablawi’s sermons, one can view several children roaming the congregation floor. This is deeply disturbing, as these innocents are taking in the hatred and violence that is being spewed by the Reviver/NMIC leadership.

Certainly, there is reason to believe that a number of ‘Salman Rasheeds’ are very well being groomed for the future, there. And what is more disturbing is that all of this is being assisted by the state of Florida and the Florida taxpayers, who willingly or unknowingly are providing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars to this wildly radical institution.

In July 2003, the Islamic Academy of Florida (IAF), a Muslim children’s private school not unlike reviver, was dropped from Florida’s state voucher program. Florida legislators had voiced concern that IAF had been named by the US government, in an indictment, as being part of a terrorist enterprise. According to the indictment, the school had been used to raise funds forPalestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and to harbor PIJ operatives. As a result of IAF being dropped from Florida’s voucher program, the school lost over $300,000 in vouchers.

Because of Reviver/NMIC’s association with violence and bigotry aimed at Jews, Christians, homosexuals, women and others, Florida legislators must do the same with Reviver Academy as they have with IAF and end the school’s relationship with Step Up For Students or any Florida state voucher program. Additionally, Reviver Academy should be made to pay back any vouchers that have already been received, as these vouchers were obtained while this institution was linked to said violence and bigotry.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

AntisemitismFloridaIslamic extremismRadical Islam