A Department of Justice lawsuit has compelled Hendricks County in Indiana to pay $300,000 compensation to Al-Hussnain Seminary after the county twice refused the institution permission to build a school and religious seminary.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declared: “Federal law prohibits local governments from making zoning decisions…on the basis of the religion of the developer or those whom they perceive might live at or worship at the development.”
Notwithstanding the complexities or fairness of zoning laws and federal discrimination rules, Indiana taxpayers may well balk at handing over public funds to a leading branch of a global extremist movement.
The Al-Hussnain Seminary, along with its two affiliated mosques in Indianapolis, is the U.S branch of Jamia al-Hasanain, a seminary in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad linked to the Deobandi movement, a hardline South Asian sect whose offshoots include the Taliban.
In particular, Jamia al-Hasanain is a key institution for Tablighi Jamaat, a global Deobandi missionary movement linked by security services to dozens of terrorism and radicalization cases.
Tablighi Jamaat seeks to insulate Muslims from the perceived wickedness and corruption of the West, with one leader declaring the aim of the movement is to “rescue the ummah [global Muslim community] from the culture and civilisation of the Jews, the Christians and enemies of Islam” and to “create such hatred for their ways as human beings have for urine and excreta.”
Jamia al-Hasanain was founded by Tablighi leader Tariq Jamil, along with Sheikh Ramzi al-Habib, a Tunisian cleric popular in Pakistan. Habib is listed as a current faculty member of the Indiana branch. And the Al-Hussnain Seminary in Indiana notes on its website that members of the faculty “have studied under the renowned orator Sheikh Tariq Jamil of Pakistan at his globally recognized institute ‘Jamia Tul Hassnain.’”
According to Pakistani media, Tariq Jamil has “refused to issue fatwas condemning suicide bombing because according to [his] viewpoint that would have discouraged the brutal campaigns of their fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Palestine.”
Other faculty members of Al-Hussnain Seminary include Mufti Yasir Nadeem al Wajidi, a popular Deobandi cleric based in Chicago with millions of online followers. On October 7, Wajidi praised the brutal Hamas attacks.
Freedom fighters vs. occupying terrorists
— Dr. Yasir Nadeem Al Wajidi (@Mufti_Yasir) October 7, 2023
"How many times has a small force vanquished a mighty army by the Will of Allah!"
Quran: 2/249#طوفان_الأقصى #Palestine
Wajidi is also an unabashed supporter of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, praising its theocracy as an “opportunity for the entire Muslim Ummah to see full-fledged complete Sharia being implemented.”
The Deobandi movement in the United States is powerful and growing, with its adherents openly fundraising and partnering with the Taliban and other violent foreign Islamist movements. The federal government has previously poured hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars into other Deobandi institutions as well.
Meanwhile, the international Al-Husnain seminary system claims to have trained over a thousand clerics; and there are a dozen additional Deobandi seminaries in the United States graduating hundreds more each year.
As the Department of Justice points out, federal law may well indeed prohibit local government from basing its zoning and funding decisions on the religious beliefs of applicants; but it is dangerous and self-defeating to turn a blind eye to radical political movements posing as benign religious institutions, backed by foreign extremists, able to exploit this affirmative tolerance so easily and train the next generations of Western Muslim clerics.
