This report is part of RAIR Foundation USA’s series on Islamic Schools in America. See the list below.
HOUSTON, Texas – Dec. 4, 2025 – One of the most consequential Muslim Brotherhood-tied figures in America – a man almost no one has ever heard of – has been quietly operating in Texas for decades. Hamed Ghazali has spent more than three decades quietly shaping the Muslim Brotherhood’s multigenerational strategy to dominate Islamic education in the United States.
In fact, Ghazali is explicitly named in the Brotherhood’s infamous 1991 Explanatory Memorandum, the internal strategy document that laid out, in detail, how the organization planned to spread its influence in America through schools, mosques, youth programs, and community institutions. He spent over three decades inside the Muslim Brotherhood’s North American network, rising to lead its key institutions while building the primary pre-9/11 jihadi recruitment platform in the United States.
For over thirty years, Ghazali has been given unrestricted access to Islamic schools across North America. He has written curricula, trained teachers, advised administrators, solicited funds for terrorists, and helped build the institutional infrastructure that now forms the backbone of Islamic education in the United States.
As chairman of the Muslim American Society (MAS) Council of Islamic Schools (MASCIS), former Vice President of the Muslim Brotherhood-founded Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), founder of Alhuda University in Houston, former Superintendent of the Iman Academy of Houston, and current director of the Houston Quran Academy, Ghazali oversees a pipeline that drills Sharia into thousands of American children.
According to the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Hamed Ghazali has “extensive experience in Tarbiya [ideological formation] and classroom knowledge, having worked as the Principal and Superintendent of several Islamic schools all over the United States.” ICNA explicitly praises his expertise in Tarbiya – the Muslim Brotherhood’s own term for ideological indoctrination, not mere education.
Beneath the polished titles and academic veneer, a deeper examination of his record reveals a shocking history riddled with jihadi contacts, terrorist advocacy, documented fundraising efforts for Hamas and Al-Qaeda, and leadership of the primary pre-9/11 jihadi recruitment platform in America.
And yet, despite this background, Ghazali has managed to avoid federal scrutiny for decades, continuing to design curricula and advise Muslim schools across North America while shaping what young Muslims are taught about Islam, the West, and the role of Sharia in public life.
Pillaging Texas Taxpayers
Texas just handed Hamed Ghazali the keys to millions in taxpayer dollars.
For the first time in his 35-year career, the man named in the Muslim Brotherhood’s 1991 Explanatory Memorandum, the architect of its plan to control Islamic education in America, will receive direct, guaranteed state funding for every student who walks through his doors.
The vehicle is the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, signed into law in 2025, which provides funds to families for the 2026-27 school year. It delivers $10,800 per child, straight from Texas taxpayers, into the bank account of any accredited private school that wants it. For students with disabilities, the amount climbs to $30,000.
The requirements to get the money are minimal: exist for two years, hold an accreditation recognized by the state, and give a standardized test. Nothing about curriculum. Nothing about ideology. Nothing about ties to Hamas, Al-Qaeda, or the Muslim Brotherhood.
In a Houston Chronicle article earlier this year, Hamed Ghazali praised taxpayer-funded money for private schools. In fact, the money is so abundant for private schools that Ghazali intends to “increase tuition to the cost of a voucher” at his school, the Houston Quran Academy. This ensures that Texas taxpayers will fund his school at the maximum level allowed by law.
In plain terms: Texas has created a school-choice pipeline in which a man named in the Muslim Brotherhood’s own strategy papers, a man with a documented history of fundraising for Hamas-linked entities and promoting jihadist ideology, now stands to receive guaranteed, state-backed revenue to shape the next generation.
Hamed Ghazali Named in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Explanatory Memorandum
Hamed Ghazali was named in the infamous 1991 document “The Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America”. The plan stressed “civilization jihad”, i.e. laid out the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan to conquer the West, uncovered during the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s war plan, written by senior official Mohamed Akram, cited Hamed Ghazali by name:
“We have a seed for a ‘comprehensive Dawa’ [outreach] educational’ organization: We have the Daw’a section in ISNA + Dr. Jamal Badawi Foundation + the center run by brother Hamed al-Ghazali + the Dawa’ center the Dawa’ Committee and brother Shaker al-Sayyed are seeking to establish now + in addition to other Daw’a efforts here and there…”
To reiterate, Texas educator Hamed Ghazali is personally named in the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic blueprint. His center (presumably his “Ghazali Islamic Video” – see below) is listed as one of the core building blocks for the unified, nationwide Islamic education and outreach apparatus the Brotherhood intended to create.
The Explanatory Memorandum’s stated goal is “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house” through institutions – schools, accreditation bodies, youth programs, and community centers – that become rooted so deeply they eventually replace American cultural and legal authority.
Today, Ghazali’s accredited Islamic schools, his control over Islamic education standards, his taxpayer funding, and his alliances with Brotherhood-linked figures are the living fulfillment of the exact plan the Brotherhood circulated among its leadership in 1991, with Ghazali’s own center explicitly identified as a foundational component.
Texas is bankrolling one of the pillars in a foreign extremist movement’s written strategy to dismantle American civilization from within.
American Infrastructure for Jihad
Hamed Ghazali, during his time as president of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Muslim Student Association (MSA), produced and distributed video montages through his “Ghazali Islamic Video” (GIV) company.
The production operation was a powerful jihadist recruitment tool in U.S. Muslim communities pre-9/11. Some of these videos have endured through a little known YouTube page “Causing Fitna“, which accompanies their blog.
Some of the incredible revelations from the videos, edited by “Causing Fitna”, show beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hamed Ghazali was a militant Muslim Brotherhood radical who endorsed Milestones, the book that allegedly inspired the 9/11 terror attacks, interviewed the top aide to Osama bin Laden mentor and co-founder of Al-Qaeda, and solicited support for the “martyrs” in Palestine who are “fighting for [Allah].”
Support for Muslim Brotherhood Manifesto ‘Milestones’
One of Hamed Ghazali’s videos features Nabil Sadoun, a former board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), praising Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones as a “landmark book” (timestamp 1:22) that “stands unique in our century” (timestamp 1:57) for teaching Muslims “how to understand Islam and how to practice Islam.” (timestamp 2:02)
Milestones, which teaches Muslims to wage jihad to overthrow all jahiliyyah (un-Islamic) governments and systems worldwide and establish pure Sharia rule under a vanguard of true believers, has been described as the “inspiration for the 9/11 attacks”.
With conviction, Sadoun urged every Muslim to “read it and ponder upon” (timestamp 2:11) its revolutionary call to dismantle jahiliyyah and establish pure Islamic governance through jihad. Ghazali spotlighted Qutb’s “Unique Quranic Generation” chapter, (timestamp 1:11) celebrating the Sahaba’s [companions of the Prophet Muhammad] spiritual conquests as the blueprint for today’s believers.
Sadoun, who endorsed the Muslim Brotherhood scholar’s manifesto – written while Qutb was imprisoned in Egypt – was later deported after lying to immigration authorities about his connections to Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-linked organizations. Milestones remains the primary text of radical Qutbism, galvanizing the Muslim Brotherhood and countless jihadist movements worldwide, including al-Qaeda and Hamas.
A foundational Chicago Tribune article from 2004 described Sayyid Qutb’s “In the Shade of the Koran” and “Milestones” as books that “urge jihad, martyrdom and the creation of Islamic states.”
The video interweaves this Milestones endorsement with Ghazali’s own segments where he calls for funding Palestinian resistance – praising fighters who are “ready to get martyred for the sake of Allah”. (timestamp 3:35)
Watch:
Soliciting Support for Jihad
Hamed Ghazali repeatedly interviewed Tameem al Adnani, second-in-command to co-founder of Al-Qaeda Abdullah Azzam for “Ghazali Islamic Video”. Azzam served as a mentor to Osama bin Laden, and “reportedly influenced such notorious terrorists as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Anwar al-Awlaki“.
‘…we do have some Muslim Americans…to perform the duties of Jihad’
Among other things, Tameem al Adnani asks for “weapons support” (timestamp 5:53) in the video interview. The bin Laden mentor indicated that “Muslim Americans” were fighting in Afghanistan:
The Mujahideen [armed Islamic fighters] are from all kind of nationalities. Most of them are Arabs, and we have other nationalities … came to fight for the sake of Allah. Yes we do have some Muslim Americans who came on their own to perform the duties of Jihad with their fellow Muslims over there. And they have been trained in weapons, and now they are fighting with the Mujahideen.
The same Ghazali interview captures Adnani admitting:
“I was invited here to give some lectures in the Islamic centers all over the United States, like MAYA [Muslim Arab Youth Association]. I was invited, and yes, I am collecting donations, to help our brothers before the borders are closed.”
As an aside, one of the founders of MAYA was Osama bin Laden’s nephew, Abdullah. In 1993, Hamed Ghazali, was described as a “MAYA organizer”. At the same conference, senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders, Yusuf al-Qaradawi predicted that “Islam will occupy Europe once again.”
Osama bin Laden, of course, is best known for being the mastermind behind 9/11, the terror attack on American soil which claimed almost 3,000 innocent lives.
‘…it’s better to give blood’
In another 1988 video transcribed by the essential Investigative Project on Terrorism titled “Jihad and Its Taste in Afghanistan,” Adnani declares: “Jihad is Fard ‘Ayn [incumbent upon every Muslim] since we lost al Andalus, Spain, 496 years ago. … We are in deep need of money, but our need of men is greater … It’s good to give tears, but it’s better to give blood.”
Adnani further vows that after Afghanistan, the fighters “will go down to Palestine, to al Quds… Anybody stops in their way… we’ll go by force,” and boasts that the Afghans “will eat” the Israelis.
It is astonishing that such a notorious terrorist was allowed to sit in a studio in Kansas with Hamed Ghazali. In fact, al Adnani died of natural causes in Florida while touring America recruiting for jihad. Abdullah Azzam also toured America and met Osama bin Laden in Indianapolis, not in a remote cave in Afghanistan.
GIV Interview with Abdullah Azzam
Hamed Ghazali, the man that is celebrated for creating Islamic curriculums for children, also interviewed the man himself at the 1988 MAYA convention: Al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam. Azzam, however, handed the interview to an American Muslim convert, also named “Abdullah” who fought in Afghanistan.
The man, describe as one of Azzam’s guards, stated that he converted to Islam eight years earlier, and worked for three years at Masjid al-Farooq in New York and Masjid as-Salaam in New Jersey where he learned about jihad.
“Abdullah” explained that he was inspired by Azzam’s book “Miracles of Jihad” and a book by Sheikh [Abdulrab Rasul] Sayyaf. A former four-year U.S. Army soldier, he traveled to Afghanistan the previous year, and returned to America to collect money and spread the message that American Muslims must also fight jihad, countering claims it was only for Arabs or Afghans.
“And this is a very bad thing, and al Hamdulillah,” he said. “Thank you to Dr. Abdullah Azzam, he had encouraged the American Muslims now, that they are also a part of the Ummah of Mohammad, and are most pious in Jihad.”
Born in the Dominican Republic and raised poor, he declared that America is not his country and planned to return to the fight in a few weeks.
The Hamas Money Trail
The GIV videos feature complete and undisputed evidence that in 1988, Hamed Ghazali was encouraging Americans to fight for Jihad and soliciting funds for terrorists through his videos.
In one video, Ghazali openly solicited funds for Palestinian terrorism under the guise of religious duty. This quote can be viewed at the 3:26 minute mark:
“We have seen people standing in front of soldiers without nothing except a few stones, ready to get martyred for the sake of Allah. So it’s our duty to help them. And it’s our duty to help the Islamic Association for Palestine…. So please send your money to the Occupied Land Fund. We have the address written right now. It’s the Occupied Land Fund – send it to the Muslims. Give as much as you can. It’s our duty to help, and it’s our duty to remember that Allah asks us to – ordered us to help those who are fighting for his sake. May Allah give us his victory.”
Twenty years later, federal prosecutors would convict that exact Occupied Land Fund – later named the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) – of transferring over $12 million to Hamas terrorists during the First Intifada.
Ghazali’s words were a direct call to bankroll violence, cloaked in the language of martyrdom and divine command, exposing the calculated use of American mosques and Muslim organizations as fundraising conduits for jihadist terror during the First Intifada and beyond.
And now he is teaching American children, using taxpayer funds to do it.
Muslim Brotherhood ‘Board of Directors’
Hamed Ghazali sat on the Muslim Brotherhood “Board of Directors” in 1992 with, among others, Ahmed Elkadi. Elkadi was instrumental in establishing multiple key Islamic organizations in North America, including the Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), “the umbrella group for the Muslim Youth of North America and the Muslim Students Association”. He also served as president of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), described as “the investment vehicle for the U.S. Brotherhood”.
RAIR Foundation USA reports that Elkadi was pivotal in bringing Muslim Brotherhood education to Florida. In fact, his “Islamic Community School” (ICS) endures as the Panama City Advanced School (PCAS). Today, his daughter Magda Elkadi Saleh carries over the tradition of building and leading Islamic schools in Florida, also exploiting taxpayer funds.
Saleh is also directly connected to terror-tied schools, including the American Youth Academy. Initially named the “Islamic Academy of Florida (IAF)”, the school’s founders were connected to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror organization. One of the leaders, Sami Al Arian, was eventually deported. A teacher at the school, Ramadan Shalah, was a literal leader of the PIJ.
Spending time with Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi
According to an archived version of his resume, Hamed Ghazali spent four days with the late Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi. As reported at RAIR, the Qatar-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi founded the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) in 2004. Despite its lofty name, the IUMS “was officially placed on a terrorism blacklist in 2017 by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain.”
Hamas leadership was very close to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as well as his successor, Ali al-Qaradaghi. Under al-Qaradaghi’s leadership, for example, the IUMS issued a fatwa on March 28, 2025, declaring “armed jihad” against Israel an individual religious obligation for every capable Muslim and Muslim-majority state, demanding military intervention, economic boycotts, and an “Islamic military alliance” to besiege Israel by land, sea, and air – a decree echoing Qaradawi’s calls for global mobilization against the West and Israel.
Hamed Ghazali stated that in 1990, he “had the honor of being a special companion of Dr. Yousuf Al-Qaradawi for 4 days during his stay in the United States.” The man who is praised for his work with children gushed that his time with Al-Qaradawi “gave me an opportunity to discuss with him one-one [sic] different aspects related to my interest in the area of the Holy Quran and other areas.”
Defended Killing Salman Rushdie
In March 1989, just one month after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a global fatwa declaring Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses blasphemous and sentencing the author to death, Hamed Ghazali stood before a Muslim Student Association audience and endorsed the verdict.
Rushdie, he declared, must be punished severely for the sacrilegious language he used against the Prophet Muhammad. “I don’t blame anyone who says he should be killed,” Ghazali stated, adding, “I won’t feel sorry if someone kills him.”
In Ghazali’s view, Rushdie had committed apostasy – a capital crime under Islamic law – and had knowingly provoked his own death sentence. He added that Rushdie “was completely aware” and “fully conscious” of the consequences and that Islam does not permit speech that hurts others or uses sacrilegious language against the Prophet.
MAC’s ‘Pioneering Educator’: Platform Shared with Islamic Militants
Earlier this year, Hamed Ghazali was featured with militant Islamic radicals such as Muslim Brotherhood-linked Sami Hamdi, Tom Facchine, Siraj Wahhaj and Shaun King at the Muslim Association of Canada’s (MAC) annual convention (see here and here). It was during this convention that Ghazali received an award for being a “pioneering scholar and educator in Islamic education across North America”.
In announcing Ghazali, MAC president Abdullatif Bakbak gushed that he “has been instrumental in building the education system for Muslims in North America and has been instrumental even recently in helping build education and Quran education systems in Canada.”
According to the YouTube description, Ghazali “contributed significantly to Islamic schooling, curriculum development, and Qur’anic education, mentoring thousands of students who now serve their communities across the globe.”
Watch him receive his award here:
Siraj Wahhaj: Muslims do not want to Assimilate
Siraj Wahhaj and Hamed Ghazali go way back. Wahhaj was featured in two different segments of Ghazali’s “Ghazali Islamic Video”.
His core message, naturally, was anti-American.
Siraj Wahhaj declared that Muslims in America have a clear agenda: they will not assimilate or become like other Americans. “America, I want to remind you, brothers and sisters, that we as Muslims here in this part of the world have an agenda,” he began. “What we are not trying to do is assimilate into the American way. We’re not trying to be like other Americans. That’s not our agenda,” he declared.
Wahhaj called for Muslims to infiltrate politics collectively (timestamp 1:34), stating they should get involved not as individuals but to advance their Islamic agenda.
Wahhaj said he would prefer Muslim leaders – a true Muslim heading the U.S. Army, a Muslim president, senators, congressmen, or Supreme Court justices – over American leaders, whom he called enemies (timestamp :56). Wahhaj explicitly stated that Muslims would vote to implement Sharia (timestamp 2:19) if they became the majority and affirmed that their loyalty belongs to Allah, the Messenger, and the believers, not to the United States government.
He stated in part, “I do not believe that Muslims ought to get in politics because that’s the American thing to do. No. I think Muslims ought to get into politics for our agenda.”
Despite Siraj Wahhaj’s explicit calls for political infiltration, Sharia implementation, and rejection of assimilation, Hamed Ghazali platformed him decades ago through his GIV videos. Today, he continues his allegiance to Wahhaj’s ideology by appearing with him as a speaker at the Muslim Association of Canada’s (MAC) annual convention.
What the Ghazali Videos Reveal About America’s Mosques
As mentioned, Ghazali is celebrated in the Muslim Brotherhood’s infamous 1991 Explanatory Memorandum, which explicitly describes mosques and Islamic centers as the pivotal “stage” and “bases” for the Islamic Movement in North America.
It states:
- Mosques are to serve as “the axis of the Movement” and the “base for the Islamic da’wah and the Islamic Movement,” enabling the “Civilization-Jihadist Process” by building a loyal cadre, adopting Muslims’ causes domestically and globally, and presenting Islam as a civilizational alternative.
- “The stage of mosques and the Islamic centers” is when the movement must “expand the observant Muslim base” and use these facilities as the primary tools for recruitment, da’wah, unification, and political mobilization.
What the Ghazali tapes expose is the very reality RAIR Foundation USA has been warning about for years: mosques in the West are often used as operational bases for foreign Islamic movements.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly declared:
“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the believers our soldiers.”
Ghazali’s GIV footage from 1988 proves Erdoğan was not being metaphorical at all. He was stating the doctrine plainly.
Long before Erdoğan spoke those words, the Mujahideen operatives filmed by Hamed Ghazali were already using American mosques exactly as military outposts: moving from Islamic center to Islamic center, collecting money for fighters, distributing jihadist propaganda, recruiting young men, and urging American Muslims to “train in weapons” and join the battlefield overseas.
Ghazali’s own recordings show that the infrastructure was already here, operating in plain sight and using U.S. Islamic centers as staging grounds for a foreign militant cause. Erdoğan didn’t invent this mindset; he said out loud what the Ghazali tapes had already documented happening inside America’s mosques decades earlier.
Notably, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have long-standing, well-documented ties to the Muslim Brotherhood ideology and networks, though Erdoğan himself is not formally a “member” of the Egyptian-origin Muslim Brotherhood organization.
For example, after the 2013 military coup in Egypt that ousted Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated president Mohamed Morsi, Turkey under Erdoğan gave refuge to hundreds of Brotherhood members, granted them citizenship, and allowed them to operate media outlets.
Further, Senior Muslim Brotherhood figures (e.g., Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who lived in Qatar but was close to Turkey) repeatedly praised Erdoğan as a model Islamic leader.
And if this was happening in American mosques in 1988, caught on tape by Hamed Ghazali himself, then imagine what is happening right now inside the more than 330 mosques operating in Texas, many larger, better funded, and tied to powerful foreign networks. Imagine what is being preached and organized inside the Islamic schools that have exploded across the state. And now, thanks to Texas’s new voucher program, many of these institutions will enjoy state-guaranteed funding and a far greater ability to pull children out of the public system and into their ideological pipeline.
Watch this very short, exclusively translated video:
Texas Designates Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as Terrorist Organizations
On November 18, 2025, Governor Greg Abbott officially designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations under Texas law.
The proclamation bans them and all affiliates from buying or owning property in Texas, subjects their assets to forfeiture, and directs the Texas Department of Public Safety to open criminal investigations.
Texas Just Got the Evidence It Needs: Shut Down Ghazali’s Sharia Pipeline
This RAIR investigation into Hamed Ghazali provides Texas authorities with a ready-made enforcement roadmap:
- Ghazali is personally named in the Muslim Brotherhood’s 1991 Explanatory Memorandum as a core pillar of its “civilization jihad” education network in North America.
- He solicited donations for the Holy Land Foundation (later convicted of sending over $12 million to Hamas) and interviewed Al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam’s second-in-command calling for weapons support.
- His pre-9/11 videos promoted Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones – the ideological blueprint for 9/11 – and featured former CAIR board member Nabil Sadoun praising Qutb’s call for global jihad. Sadoun was later deported after lying to immigration authorities about his connections to Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-linked organizations.
- Ghazali sat on the Muslim Brotherhood’s North American “Board of Directors” in 1991 with Ahmed Elkadi and others.
- He spent four days in 1990 as the personal companion of the late Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who was banned from the U.S..
- Today, his Houston Quran Academy and other schools receive Texas taxpayer dollars through the ESA voucher program while teaching Sharia supremacy and anti-American ideology.
Abbott’s new designation gives Texas the legal tools to immediately:
- Freeze assets of Ghazali-linked schools and organizations.
- Block further property purchases or expansions by MB/CAIR affiliates.
- Audit and defund any voucher-receiving school tied to Ghazali’s Muslim American Society (MAS) network.
- Launch criminal probes into decades of documented terrorist fundraising and recruitment on Texas soil.
The Ghazali case is the smoking gun that turns Abbott’s proclamation from declaration into action: Texas taxpayers have been directly bankrolling one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s named architects as he builds the exact Sharia education pipeline the 1991 Memorandum ordered. With the new Texas designation in force, that pipeline can now be shut down.
RAIR Foundation USA will continue exposing these networks. Support our work to protect children and the future of America.
