The school originally was founded as the International Muslim Brotherhood, which boasted of educational input from a radical cleric who was an associate of Osama bin Laden.
The institute's website promotes jihad "in the context of self-defense or guarding the sacred, holy lands of Islam."
The school is allied with a Muslim student association known for hosting anti-American extremists.
No, the school is not in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. It's based in Philadelphia.
The Quba Institute, a project of Quba Inc., is a full-time, state-accredited school that enrolls about 100 students from pre-kindergarten to the 12th grade. Quba also runs an adult weekend school and the Sheikh Nafea Muhaimin Quran School, named after the father of the main school administrator.
In 2003, Quba was approved by the U.S. Department of Education to engage in work-study programs.
'Armed warfare'
Quba's website contains its "religious philosophy."
The declarations include a rejection of "terrorism as [a] method for forwarding any Islamic or Muslim cause." No definition of terrorism is given.
The site also declares a rejection of "'jihad al-saif' (armed warfare) unless in the context of self-defense or guarding the sacred, holy lands of Islam."
The statements seem specifically designed to allow for jihad in Israel, Saudi Arabia or any other areas claimed by Islam as "holy lands."
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Islamic terrorists worldwide believe suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks against Jewish civilians are a legitimate form of "jihad" and are not considered terrorism.
Quba's administration did not return WND request seeking comment
Other statements on the website call for Muslims to "respect, observe, and abide by the laws of the United States of America" and strive to be good U.S. citizens. And to "adhere to the universal belief creed of ahl al-Sunnah wal Jamat, who constitute the majority of Muslims world-wide."
International Muslim Brotherhood
The school was founded by Quba Inc., which originally was known as a group calling itself the International Muslim Brotherhood, or IMB, an organization seeking to spread Islam across the U.S.
The IMB was founded in 1949 by Imam Nasir Ahmed, an African-American from Philadelphia. It works to build a network of Islamic social communities across the eastern U.S., with Muslim villages established in New Jersey, Ohio, New York, and Florida.
Quba also initiated other IMB expansions, including a funeral home, publishing company, Islamic arbitration center, and a community development corporation.
"In 1949, no one could have imagined that the Quba, Inc. (IMB) would serve as the nursery for many of today's American Muslim Scholars, its humble facilities mask the quality of the educational opportunities that have always marked a Quba experience," states the school's website.
The IMB claims on its website it is not affiliated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
However, another section on its website has been removed that previously described how foreign officials, including from Egypt, as well as a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated radical cleric, added their voices to the IMB's "educational agenda."
Stated the removed section: "Such educational and political luminaries as Hassan Turabi, the former president of the Sudan; Abdul-Hamid Abu Sulaiman, the director of the Islamic University of Malaysia and Medhat Hassanein, the minister of finance of The Arab Republic of Egypt have added their voices and their efforts to replenish and support International Muslim Brotherhood's educational agenda."
Despite the website's claim, Hassan al-Turabi is not the former president of Sudan. He is one of the country's political leaders as well as a hardline Sudanese cleric who praises terrorist attacks and has been dubbed by the European media as "The Pope of Terrorism."
The 9/11 Commission describes how Tubari was partnered with Osama bin Laden, and even tried to convince the al-Qaida chieftain to move his base of operations for a time to Sudan.
Tubari became a leader of the Islamic Charter Front, an offshoot of the Sudanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has been credited with helping to establish Shariah Islamic law in parts of Sudan.
Unindicted Hamas conspirator
Quba, meanwhile, has maintained a close, 40-year relationship with the Muslim Student Association, or MSA, at the University of Pennsylvania. Quba works with Penn students, including lessons for ethnomusicology graduate students to study Quranic recitation.
The MSA is the largest Muslim college student group in the U.S.
WND previously attended an MSA event at which violence against the U.S. was urged by speakers.
"We are not Americans," shouted one speaker, Muhammad Faheed at Queensborough Community College in 2003. "We are Muslims. [The U.S.] is going to deport and attack us! It is us versus them! Truth against falsehood! The colonizers and masters against the oppressed, and we will burn down the master's house!"
The Saudi-funded MSA in 1981 founded the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA. The two groups are still partners.
ISNA is an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to raise money for Hamas.
ISNA was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document – "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America" – as one of the Brotherhood's like-minded "organizations of our friends" who shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation, according to Discover the Networks.
Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz describes ISNA as "one of the chief conduits through which the radical Saudi form of Islam passes into the United States."
According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, ISNA "is a radical group hiding under a false veneer of moderation" that publishes a bi-monthly magazine, Islamic Horizons, that "often champions militant Islamist doctrine."
The group also "convenes annual conferences where Islamist militants have been given a platform to incite violence and promote hatred." Emerson cites an ISNA conference in which al-Qaida supporter and PLO official Yusuf Al Qaradhawi was invited to speak.
Emerson further reports that in September 2002, a full year after 9/11, "speakers at ISNA's annual conference still refused to acknowledge bin Laden's role in the terrorist attacks."
Also, ISNA has held fundraisers for terrorists, notes Discover the Networks. After Hamas leader Mousa Marzook was arrested and eventually deported in 1997, ISNA raised money for his defense. The group also has condemned the U.S. government's post-9/11 seizure of Hamas' and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's financial assets.
Meanwhile, Discover the Networks notes that recent speakers at Penn's MSA, partnered with Quba, have included:
- Sheikh Khalid Yasin (on October 11, 2006): A Malcolm X disciple who has candidly said that "if you don't have a people that is governed by Shariah, then you have a lawless people"; that a secular Islamic state absolutely "cannot work"; that Shariah should become the law of the land in all nations because Allah "is the best lawgiver"; that "[t]here's no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend;" that "[t]here has been no evidence that has surfaced, no bona fide irrevocable, irrefutable evidence that had been surfaced that showed that there is a group called al-Qaida that did the September 11 bombings;" that "we now know" that the World Trade Center fell not as a result of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers, but rather "from internal explosive charges, the same way it's done in a construction site"; and that homosexuals should be killed because the Quran mandates it.
- Raeed Tayeh, who is connected to the Islamic Association for Palestine and the American Muslims for Jerusalem, both of which had ties to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the now-defunct American fundraising arm of Hamas. Tayeh was also a research fellow for another Hamas front group, the United Association for Studies and Research. Tayeh worked for Rep. Cynthia McKinney until she fired him after he wrote a letter to the Hill complaining about the "pro-Israeli lawmakers" whose "emotional attachments to Israel" constituted an "Israeli occupation of ... Congress.” He also said: "Oh how I dream of that wonderful day, when our [Palestinian] flags are raised … [w]hen the refugees return, and when Zionism will die."
With research by Brenda J. Elliott
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