We have recently written quite a lot about Nouman Ali Khan. After looking through some of his sermons, we found this Salafi imam from Texas preaching that prostitutes and pornographic actors are “filth” and that “you have to punish them ... They’re not killed; they’re whipped. And they’re whipped a hundred times.” He has also declared that God gives men “license” to beat unfaithful wives and that Muslim women are committing a “crime” if they object to the religious text that he says permits this abuse.
Khan’s latest offering is a post on his Facebook page, helpfully listing all the Islamist clerics he “loves” and “respects.” He includes a photo of himself with each one. He decided to publish this post, Khan tells us, “to defend some people.”
Whom, then, does Nouman Ali Khan want to defend? Whom does he “love”?
Dr. Zakir Naik
Zakir Naik is an Indian televangelist who endorses the death penalty for apostates and homosexuals. Naik believes that the Jews “control America” and are the “strongest in enmity to Muslims”. Further, Naik has expressed praise for Osama Bin Laden and declared that “every Muslim should be a terrorist.”
Naik was banned from the UK and Canada because of his Islamist rhetoric and incitement to violence. The Indian government recently shut down his NGO, the Islamic Relief Foundation (IRF), after law enforcement discovered that it had awarded Rs 80,000 ($1200) to ISIS operative Abu Anas.
Dr. Farhat Hashmi
Khan confesses in his post, “I’ve listened to hours of Dr. Farhat Hashmi, Maulana Tariq and Javed Ghamdi Sahib. They’ve each benefited me tremendously and uniquely.”
Dr. Farhat Hashmi’s radicalization of young Muslims through the Al-Huda school network she runs has catalyzed multiple terrorist acts, including the San Bernardino shooting carried out by one of her former students, Tashfeen Malik. Hashmi supports Osama bin Laden, describing him as a warrior, and rejects the concept of marital rape because sex is a “man’s right”.
Tariq Jamil
Tariq Jamil is a leader of Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), an extreme Deobandi group with hundreds of connections to terrorism cases. Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer of the July 7th, 2005 London bombings were among TJ’s ranks. More recently, one of the 2017 London Bridge attackers, Youssef Zaghba, has been linked to Tablighi Jamaat as well.
The TJ organization rejects “modernity as antithetical to Islam, excludes women, and preaches that Islam must subsume all other religions,” ideology which aligns closely with the eschatological beliefs of the Islamic State. According to Pakistani media, Jamil refuses to issue fatwas condemning terrorism and, specifically, suicide bombings in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and the Palestinian territories.
Dr. Yasir Qadhi
Yasir Qadhi has been linked to the underwear bomber via a conference held in 2008 (referred to as Jihad U), which taught “messages of religious extremism, racial bigotry and advocacy of jihad and militancy.” Furthermore, Qadhi is a Holocaust denier, and a defender of convicted inciter of terrorism, Dr. Ali al-Timimi.
Qadhi also endorses the killing of homosexuals. In a recorded sermon (at 66:26 in the linked audio), he said, "...to kill, by the way, the homosexual – this is also our religion. The fiqh rulings say that the homosexual be killed, OK? ... This is all a part of our religion. This doesn’t mean we go and do this in America... but I’m saying if we had an Islamic state we would do this.”
Mufti Menk
Khan writes: “I wholeheartedly love Mufti Menk. He’s officially the coolest human being I know and the personal gift he’s given me (that shall remain personal), I will be indebted to him so long as I live.”
Ismail Menk is one of the most extreme Islamist preachers active in the West. He has stated: “With all due respect to the animals, [gay people] are worse than those animals.” He further claims they are “filthy” and worse than “dogs and pigs.”
Menk has also proclaimed that women who have pre-marital sex should be stoned to death. He declares that this punishment is stated clearly in the Quran and so “there is no debate.”
Dr. Tariq Ramadan
Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, was banned in 2004 from the United States for six years after giving $1300 between 1998 and 2002 “to Association de Secours Palestinien, a Swiss-based charity designated by the Treasury Department as a front group for Hamas.”
Additionally, he was “banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris"; had “routine contacts” with Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for al-Qaeda activities; and is suspected to have “coordinated a meeting at the Hôtel Penta in Geneva for Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy head of Al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, now in a Minnesota prison,” among many other instances of links to terrorism.
Recently, Ramadan expressed support for Shaker Elsayed, an imam at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Virginia, after Elsayed recommended female genital mutilation (FGM) to help women avoid “hypersexuality.”
