Second graders are learning that non-Muslims are “the worst of all creatures” at the Brighter Horizons Academy near Dallas, Texas, according to a recent report by the Middle East Forum. The curriculum review also exposes the extremist views of the school’s principal and staff, along with textbooks that stress the importance of holy war and praise the work of terrorist-linked charities.
Is it a surprise that the school received funding from an institution partly bankrolled by Iran? And which also sent millions of dollars to the families of Palestinian terrorists?
And Brighter Horizons is only one of a network of dozens of private Islamic K-12 schools across the country that are getting money from the same source.
This sort of funding is not illegal. There are no laws to stop Iran, China, or other malign foreign entities from pouring money into schools and influencing curricula for our children at their most impressionable.
Brighter Horizons received $995,000 from the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), a multilateral bank in which Iran (a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism) has a seven percent voting share. Members of IsDB’s current leadership have purportedly engaged in corruption, covered up money laundering operations, assisted Iran and its proxy Hezbollah to avoid U.S. sanctions, and supported Islamist terrorist organizations.
The Treasury Department sanctioned a current member of IsDB’s governing board, Sudanese Islamist leader Gebreil Ibrahim Mohamed Fediel, for collaborating economically and politically with Iran and his involvement in human rights abuses that left 150,000 people dead. Another member, Anwar Ibrahim, purportedly allowed Hamas to operate and raise funds through the Palestinian Cultural Organization in Malaysia (PCOM). Under the leadership of another governor, Ali Ahmed Al-Kuwari, the Qatar National Bank funded the Islamist terrorist groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Nusra Front, according to recent U.S. and UK lawsuits.
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Moreover, IsDB directly funded terrorists during the Second Intifada, in which Palestinian terror attacks left 1,000 Israelis dead in the early 2000s. IsDB collected money for, managed, and distributed payments from two Arab League funds established at the League’s October 2000 summit. The first of the two, the Al Quds Intifada Fund, was “to be allocated for disbursement to the families of Palestinian martyrs fallen in the intifada.” IsDB used this fund to funnel millions of dollars annually directly to the families of terrorists who had been killed, injured, or imprisoned, as well as for subsidies to support their education, vocational training, and medical expenses.
The second fund, the Al-Aqsa Fund, played an even more critical role in sustaining the violence. It streamed hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of a financially teetering Palestinian Authority (PA) that was orchestrating the Second Intifada. IsDB prevented this collapse by transferring $251 million by April 2001 and $490 million by April 2003, largely to the PA.
By 2006, IsDB had transferred $609 million to the PA, supporting 664 families of terrorists who had been killed and 201 families of terrorists who had been imprisoned, according to human rights expert Edwin Black’s 2014 congressional testimony.
The case of Brighter Horizons and IsDB raises a critical question: How is it that institutions with a membership, leadership, and legacy such as that of IsDB are funding our schools?
As federal and state governments have become aware of the involvement of China, Qatar, and other foreign entities in our K12 educational system, they have grappled with ways to address this challenge.
At the state level, Florida is currently best positioned to do so. It has laws in place that require public schools to report gifts of $50,000 or more from foreign sources and that prohibit public schools from accepting “anything of value conditioned upon participation in a program or other endeavor to promote the language or culture of a foreign country of concern.”
Neither of these laws would directly impact the $1.2 million that IsDB has given to Florida K-12 schools because they are private. However, Gov. Ron DeSantis could potentially apply a 2023 law that prevents Florida from issuing vouchers to private schools affiliated with foreign governments of concern — as he did for four private schools operated by Spring Education Group, which is controlled by a Hong Kong-based company founded by a senior advisor to the Chinese Communist Party.
Congress has also demonstrated concern about the absence of any law that requires K12 schools to report the foreign funding they receive. Last December, the U.S. House passed the CLASS Act, which requires K-12 public schools to report foreign funding in excess of $10,000 — but it has not cleared the Senate and does not include private schools like Brighter Horizons.
It is time to improve funding transparency and oversight for our K-12 education system — or if regulating malign foreign influence out of our K12 education is not feasible, then perhaps we need to prohibit foreign countries and institutions from funding our children’s education altogether.
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