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When a Jew-hating Islamist organizes events for public schools

Do educational institutions really want to be associated with Naima Khan-Ghany?

By Joe Kaufman, FrontPage Magazine

A radical activist who was forced off two Broward County, Florida School Board committees for her extremism has successfully worked her way back into public schools in the county, through activism on behalf of Islamist organizations with ties to terror.

The activist is Naima Khan-Ghany, and her exploits, which include anti-Semitic posts on social media, have been well-documented.

The activism is in the form of ‘Back to School Backpack Giveaways,’ which to unsuspecting schools most probably sounds innocuous and even admirable.

As of July 1st, Khan-Ghany was no longer affiliated with the School Board. In June, she was suspended from the two School Board committees she had served on, the Diversity Committee and the Human Relations Committee, the latter of which she chaired.

Her suspension took place, after an article this author had written was published concerning Khan-Ghany’s affiliations with extreme Muslim groups and her own promotion of anti-Jewish bigotry.

Khan-Ghany has worked with a number of Islamist organizations, including the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the South Asian terror-linked Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).

She has hosted shows for Al-Hikmat TV, the media arm of the Darul Uloom Institute (DUI), a past haven for high-profile al-Qaeda militants and whose imam/founder has been thrown off several Broward community boards for his hate-filled talks against homosexuals.

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Khan-Ghany is an advisor to local chapters of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), an entity originally started by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Broward County MSA Council. She has used the group to promote extremists, including an imam who has called for violence against Jews and urged his followers to provide funding to Hamas.

Khan-Ghany has targeted Jews and Israel, herself. In May 2021, she made a series of posts on social media questioning Israel’s right to exist and calling for Israel’s outright destruction. She wrote that Israel’s claim of “self-defense” was a “usual excuse.”

She posted a call for prayers for the “liberation of Palestine… from the river to the sea.” She called for a boycott of Israeli products. And she promoted videos equating Jews with Communists and Satanists and spewing age-old Jewish libels.

The amount of proof about Khan-Ghany’s extremism is overwhelming. Yet even with all this – as well as the fact that she was inauspiciously removed from her Broward County School Board positions – it has not stopped Khan-Ghany from organizing events at Broward County public schools.

This past July, the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF), an umbrella organization for South Florida’s many radical Muslim outfits, announced on its website that Khan-Ghany’s MSA Council along with Friends of Humanity International, Inc. (FHII), in collaboration with SFMF, would be holding backpack giveaways at three mosques and three public schools, all of which were listed by SFMF. Khan-Ghany and FHII Treasurer Yunus Ismail were displayed as “contacts” for the program.

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The US and Pakistan-based FHII is the brainchild of Mohammed Javed Quereshi, the man who allegedly introduced Islam to convicted terrorist Jose Padilla, prior to Padilla joining al-Qaeda and plotting to set off a radiological bomb in the US. Khan-Ghany has served on FHII’s Board of Directors, and her MSA Council has co-sponsored overseas ‘food box’ distributions with FHII, in Syria, Lebanon and Trinidad. Indeed, it appears that the MSA Council is part of FHII, as the council’s website is shown on the backpack giveaways flyer as “FHII.ORG/MSA.”

The mosques involved in the backpack giveaways, Masjid Al-Ansar, Masjid Al-Hijra and Jamaat Ul Muttaqeen, all have associations with Islamist groups. Each are members of the Muslim Federation. In May 2020, Masjid Al-Ansar held a ‘Liberty City Drive Thru Food Distribution’ sponsored by ICNA and Islamic Relief, a group that has been banned by a number of nations for terror-related activities. In February 2019, Jamaat Ul Muttaqeen honored FHII’s Yunus Ismail for receiving an ICNA Relief ‘Community’s HERO’ award, calling Ismail “our hero, role model and living example of sincerity.”

It is understandable for these mosques to be affiliated with FHII and the MSA Council’s backpack program – all of the entities are part of the Islamist movement – but what is not understandable is for public schools to have involvement in this. The three schools on the list are Watkins Elementary, Pembroke Pines Elementary and Miramar Elementary. Each of the schools fall under the guidance of the Broward County School Board, the same Broward County School Board that Naima Khan-Ghany was removed from her positions from.

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Why would Islamists tied to terror and bigotry wish to hold events at public schools, if not as a means to infiltrate the community under the guise of “charitable endeavors”? These seemingly benign activities, like ‘backpack giveaways’ and ‘food distributions,’ appear to be little more than dangerous public relations stunts.

Furthermore, is it not a conflict of interest to have Broward County public schools involved with someone who was just thrown off the Broward County School Board – and for promoting antisemitism yet? Is it not a conflict of interest to have public school children be associated with anything to do with radical Islam?

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