Top American Imam Charged with Child Pornography; Fired from Islamist Seminary in Texas

(AlMaghrib Institute)

Federal authorities have charged a prominent Islamist online educator in Alabama with conspiracy to produce child pornography. In a complaint issued on October 29, 2024, the FBI accused Wisam Sharieff, a Qur’an recitation instructor for the Houston-based AlMaghrib Institute, of encouraging a woman and her underage child, whom he had met at a conference in Georgia, to produce sexually explicit videos, which were transmitted via Telegram. According to an FBI affidavit, Sharieff’s wife called law enforcement officials in Alabama after discovering explicit texts and videos on her husband’s phone. The AlMaghrib Institute, where Sharieff led a dawah campaign called “Qur’an Revolution,” announced his dismissal soon after the charges became public, stating on X that the victim was not a student at the organization.

Damage Control Not Working

AlMaghrib officials also declared that “Allah’s religion is not reliant on any one individual, and the Quran Revolution program will continue with our students as scheduled.” They also reaffirmed the school’s “longstanding policy of zero tolerance for instructors having any romantic relationships with their students.”

The response backfired, eliciting hundreds of derisive comments on X. “This is a horrible reply,” one commenter responded. “This disgusting individual didn’t have ‘a romantic relationship’ He took advantage of a minor. This isn’t a policy violation but a CRIME against both ALLAH and the LAW.”

The prominent Islamist publication Muslim Matters, which had previously promoted Sharieff’s ideas, also issued a statement expressing its horror over the charges against the imam, declaring the “alleged actions are an unspeakable betrayal of trust and an abhorrent abuse of power, violating the core values of our faith, our community, and basic human decency.”

Former Islamist Ismail Royer addressed the scandal on X, praising Sharieff’s wife for reporting the abuse. He also mocked prominent Muslim organizations for erasing their ties to the now-disgraced imam from the internet and condemned Muslims intent on sweeping the scandal under the rug. He has also condemned AlMaghrib Institute for failing to address how it put “a manipulative abuser in a position of trust” in its public statements.

Texas Islamist Abu Najim Bin al-Iskandar has also weighed in on the controversy, declaring on X that the problem is not, as some alleged, AlMaghrib’s failure to maintain gender segregation in its programs, but a pervasive tendency to protect abusers in Muslim institutions. “Wisam Sharieff has been a darling of American Muslim organizations in the USA for over a decade,” Iskandar stated. “It’s simply not possible that he is guilty of the charges mentioned in the affidavit while no one suspected his proclivities. What I know of American Muslim organizations is that they constantly cover for members of their networks and clubs.”

AlMaghrib’s Other Controversies

Sharieff’s arrest represents one in a long line of controversies for the AlMaghbrib Institute, a Houston-based Salafist educational organization established by Canadian-born scholar Muhammad Alshareef in 2002.

AlMaghrib, which promotes itself with the slogan “A Life Changing Experience,” describes itself as the largest academic center in the Western world focused on classical Islamic sciences, offering bachelor’s degrees in Islamic studies.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate an explosive device he hid in his underwear to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane in 2009, attended classes offered by the institution.

Salafist imam Yasir Qadhi, who served as academic dean for the institute for 15 years, once declared that Jews and Christians “are the most evil of all evils.”

Sharieff himself reportedly studied with Pakistani imam Israr Ahmed, who founded the extremist South Asian movement Tanzeem-e-Islami. Ahmed, a leading supporter of the Taliban and other violent extremists in South Asia, has spoken before Western audiences, referring to Jews as a “cancer” and an enemy of Islam, who “do not take advantage of the opportunity to repent, which is why they are afflicted by great calamities, and the example is what happened to them at the hands of the Germans.” The head of Tanzeem-e-Islami’s branch in the United States, the Islamic Organization of North America, openly supports the imposition of sharia law and the destruction of liberal democracy. In 2017, an undisclosed number of women accused another of Ahmed’s followers, prominent Islamist imam Nouman Ali Khan, of “using his position to lure and groom women into sexual relationships under the guise of secret marriages.”