The Liberty Sentinel | by Alex Newman | May 14, 2025
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, just announced a $5 million “grant” funded by taxpayers to the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society of Philadelphia to expand its K-12 Muslim school. It is just the latest example of taxpayers being forced to fund “education” by Islamic and even Communist Chinese-linked organizations under various guises.
The massive grant to Islamic “education” in Philadelphia is aimed at helping the Muslim group expand its school from 300 students to 3,000, according to officials. The money will be used to build a dozen new classrooms, a gym, and much more. It is the largest state grant ever given to a Muslim organization, Gov. Shapiro’s office said.
That $5 million grant, which came from the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP), is in addition to various other taxpayer-funded subsidies already enjoyed by the school. These include scholarships and financial aid facilitated by programs such as the state’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program. Students are not required to pay tuition at the Islamic school.
Chairman Asif Hussain with the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society explained that the group’s Islamic school currently has a large waiting list. Apparently, with mass tax-funded immigration from Africa and the Middle East, there has been a rapid growth of the “community” in recent years. And so, with this taxpayer money, the “Al-Aqsa Islamic Academy” will become an “academic center of excellence” for those Muslim students going forward.
“The idea would be to have a primary, secondary, and high school all in one building, and for students who are enrolled in primary education to stay for graduation, and this become a very important part of their development and their future endeavors,” Chairman Hussain was quoted as saying in local media reports, adding that they expect thousands of students in the years to come.
The Islamic school was established almost 30 years ago. It teaches Islamic studies, Arabic language, and Quran classes, along with other standard academic subjects. The school’s mission, according to its website, is to “provide students with a safe, nurturing, and uplifting Islamic environment that will help them achieve academic excellence.”
Al Aqsa Islamic Society, founded by Arab immigrants in the late 1980s as a worship center, now includes everything from the school to a grocery store and tax-subsidized “affordable housing” for Muslims. The name Al Aqsa is a reference to the Islamic compound built on the old Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Ironically, many of the leftwing politicians, groups, and teachers’ unions that typically shriek about any public money going to Christian educational institutions are either supportive or silent about the Al Aqsa school funding. In fact, as documented by The Lion, some of the very same Democrats who slammed tax-funded “school choice” in 2023 helped secure the grant.
Lawmakers celebrated the move. “Institutions such as Al-Aqsa are more important than ever,” argued Pennsylvania Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia, who is (ironically) openly “LGBTQ+” and worked hard to stop “school choice” in the 2023 budget. “I worked hard to help secure them this funding and am so excited to see all that comes from it.”
Of course, this major grant is hardly the first example of Islamic entities getting millions of American taxpayer dollars to “educate” children under the guise of tax-funded “school choice.” Numerous “private” schools tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have also been raking in “school choice” tax dollars across the country.
In fact, the nation’s largest charter school network, spread across over half of U.S. states and teaching almost 50,000 students even a decade ago, was founded and run by an infamous Islamic cleric named Fethullah Gulen. Gulen, who passed away last year, was accused of financing his worldwide Islamic activities through U.S. tax money from his “schools.”
Meanwhile, the CCP-linked “Primavera Capital Group” has been buying up American private schools and tutoring companies and collecting taxpayer funds through them. In 2023, the Florida Department of Education dropped several private schools from its “school choice scholarship program” due to those CCP ties. But the problem remains nationwide.
“Through a thorough investigation, FDOE has determined that Lower and Upper Sagemont Preparatory Schools in Weston, Parke House Academy in Winter Park, and Park Maitland School in Winter Park have direct ties to the CCP and their connections constitute an imminent threat to the health, safety, and welfare of these school’s students and the public,” authorities said in the announcement.
Even in traditional government schools, Islam and communist ideology are increasingly being brazenly promoted to children, as this writer has documented for years. The U.S. Department of Education was even caught funding a group of Islamic extremists working with state education officials. Their mission: “infuse the curriculum” with “Islamic intellectual traditions” while eradicating “Christian privilege.”
With “school choice” legislation proliferating across the country, especially in GOP states, it’s only a matter of time before Islamic madrassas are exposed brainwashing children to wage jihad on the taxpayer’s dime. That means it is only a matter of time before governments, even in Republican states, begin imposing drastic regulations on “choice” programs.
Rather than getting the state more involved in education by creating universal tax funding of all education, conservatives should be working to separate school and state. Weaning more families off government should be the goal, not making more dependent. Unfortunately, as the huge grant for Islamic education in Pennsylvania shows, tax funding for schools is likely to end in disaster.