Southeast ICNA director schooled in Al-Qaeda-linked mosque

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Southeast Director of ICNA Relief and DUI alum, Shamikh Sahadat. Being a part of just one of these entities would be a problem, as both have associations with terror. Writes Joe Kaufman

The latest issue of Al-Hikmat, the quarterly magazine put out by the Pembroke Pines, Florida-based Darul Uloom Institute (DUI), profiles the Southeast Director of ICNA Relief and DUI alum, Shamikh Sahadat. Being a part of just one of these entities would be a problem, as both have associations with terror. Sahadat’s involvement in the two (and at least one other dangerous group) should be seen as an even bigger concern, and he and his groups need to be exposed, investigated and shut down.

Sahadat is originally from the South American country of Guyana, where he was introduced to radical Islam at an early age. In August 1996, when he was 13, Sahadat received certificates of accomplishment from the Department of Education & Dawah of the Guyana-based New Amsterdam Muslim Youth Organization, a division of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). WAMY has been accused of being a front and financier for both al-Qaeda and Hamas. A 1991 book published by WAMY entitled Tawjihat Islamiya (Islamic Views) contains the line, “[T]each our children to love taking revenge on the Jews and the oppressors…”

Two years after his stint with WAMY, Sahadat began imam school at the Darul Uloom Institute, under the tutelage of the mosque/school’s founder, Shafayat Mohamed. DUI has been a haven for high-profile al-Qaeda-related terrorists. “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla, who plotted to set off a radiological bomb in the US, like Sahadat, was a student of Mohamed’s at DUI. Now-deceased al-Qaeda commander Adnan el-Shukrijumah, who conspired to blow up New York’s subway system, was a prayer leader there. Others at the mosque plotted to wreak havoc on Jewish businesses and South Florida’s power grid.

Sahadat also learned under English Quranic scholar Abdul Jaleel Khan. Both Mohamed and Khan have been affiliated with Darul Uloom Deoband, the institution where the hardline Sunni Deobandi movement arose and which produced the militant Taliban. Mohamed graduated from there, and Khan was a student and teacher there. And much like the Taliban, Mohamed has come under fire for his strong views against homosexuals. In fact, he has been thrown off a number of county boards for his anti-gay rhetoric, even suggesting that natural disasters, such as tsunamis, are caused by gay sex.

Today, Sahadat is the Southeast Director of ICNA Relief, the social services division of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), where he works on such things as resettlement of Afghan refugees. ICNA has its roots in the South Asian Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami. As a result, ICNA has links to organizations related to terror. ICNA has promoted and held events with a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai massacres, and for 30-plus years, ICNA has harbored a death squad leader, Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, who allegedly was responsible for the murders of 18 people during the 1971 Bangladesh genocide.

In his position as ICNA Relief director, Sahadat has been pushing his own troublesome rhetoric, riling up people by making the dangerous claim that racism is rampant throughout the US. In June 2020, he told a crowd, “We look around and we see a system of brutality… It’s not only about George Floyd [or] Ahmaud Arbery… It’s about a systemic racism that’s been going on for over 400 years.” Sahadat claims that he did not know what racism was, until after arriving in America. Yet, just as the US, Guyana had and profited from its own African slave trade for around 200 years, and racial tensions between ethnic groups in Guyana never ceased.

In May 2020, Sahadat posted video footage from an Atlanta anti-police protest, Sahadat offering the message “ATL RISE UP” with a graphic of a clenched fist. On the video, protesters are shown throwing bottles at police officers and repeatedly yelling “fk the police” and “fk you” to the police. Following the firing of two black Atlanta officers for using excessive force during the arrest of two college students, Sahadat used the offensive term “pigs” to describe police. He wrote, “And y’all wonder why everyone is mad at the police… I am just in awe how much these pigs can get away with.”

In May 2021, Sahadat participated in an anti-Israel rally held in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he repeated the Hamas-inspired chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” at least 30 times. Protest signs included maps of Israel covered completely in Palestinian flags. Other offensive signs compared the situation of Palestinians to the Holocaust and made then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu up to look like Adolf Hitler. One of the rally organizers was former President of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of South Carolina (USC) Dana AlHasan. AlHasan has used social media to glorify convicted PFLP terrorists.

In April 2021, Sahadat praised deceased Pakistani Muslim leader Israr Ahmad. Ahmad was the founder of Tanzeem-e-Islami, an offshoot of Jamaat-e-Islami and a group whose activists have been linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda. In September 2015, the Islamic TV network, Peace TV Urdu, agreed to no longer air two inflammatory lectures made by Ahmad, where he referred to Jews as: “cancerous,” “evil,” “poisonous,” a “cursed people,” and a “cursed race.” Ahmad’s speech titled ‘How Jews Control the World’ is still found online. Regarding Ahmad’s last dua (prayer) prior to his death, Sahadat wrote, “What a Dua. The heart shakes and the eyes filled with tears.”

Shamikh Sahadat, an anti-America, anti-Israel, anti-police Islamist, who is affiliated with several radical Muslim institutions, is a danger to the security of both the local community and the nation in general. Given the persons and groups he has worked with and their links to terror, Sahadat should be investigated and removed from any action related to resettlement of Afghans or anything to do with foreign entities. We must ask ourselves why someone like this man is in the US and what measures can be taken to ensure he is not a threat. The proper course of action is to make certain he discontinues the spread of his toxic ideology to others and send him home.

Joe Kaufman is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Chairman of the Joe Kaufman Security Initiative. He was the 2014, 2016 and 2018 Republican Nominee for U.S. House of Representatives (Florida-CD23).

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

This report is republished from FrontpageMag

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