NAIT: Owner of Broken Arrow mosque land

A concerning aspect of the proposed Broken Arrow mosque is its ownership. In a later entry, I'll get into the technicalities of the zoning amendment process and the grounds on which the Broken Arrow City Council might plausibly deny it, but the organization that owns the land is a topic that we explored almost 20 years ago here at BatesLine, in connection with the hostility endured by an anti-terrorist Muslim immigrant from Pakistan from the leaders of Tulsa's Islamic community.

The 15-acre property on the east side of Olive Street (129th East Avenue) just south of the Creek Turnpike has been owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) since 2014. The Islamic Society of Tulsa (IST) purchased the land from the Clarence E. Brooks Trust for $625,000, then later in 2014 transferred the title to NAIT, "to have and to hold said described premises unto GRANTEE as perpetual trustee (in Waqf)."

NAIT is also the owner of record of the former Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary School at 46th and Irvington, which is now home to a mosque and Peace Academy (a private school). The property on which the Muslim Student Association mosque at 4th Place and Florence sits is owned by the University of Tulsa; by contrast, the neighboring religious student ministry buildings on the same block are owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa and the Wesley Foundation, respectively.

September 19, 2014 Journal Record story about the construction of Masjid as-Salam mentions plans for a future Broken Arrow mosque:

The mosque serves about 1,000 Muslims each week, roughly double 1999 levels. Siddiqui said holiday activity now exceeds capacity, leading the Islamic Society to buy 15 acres in Broken Arrow for future development.

A 2006 controversy over claims of American Muslim support of international terrorism called public attention to Tulsa Muslim connections to an influential network of Islamic organizations.

Jamal Miftah wrote an op-ed, published in the October 29, 2006, Tulsa World, condemning terrorism in the name of Islam and calling on Islamic leaders in the US to join in that condemnation. He noted the complicity of some American Muslim organizations in financing worldwide terror:

Even mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S. and around the world have become tools in [Al-Qaeda's] hands and are used for collecting funds for their criminal acts. Half of the funds collected go into the pockets of their local agents and the rest are sent to these thugs.

For his courage, he was confronted at the Islamic Center of Tulsa by the imam and the leader of the operating council and banned. The situation received national attention. That conflict came to mind recently when Helen Pluckrose called upon liberal and reforming Muslims (that is, those who believe in freedom of conscience and don't demand the conversion or subjugation of all humans to Islam) to speak out against violent behaviors by their co-religionists. I called her attention to Miftah's experience to explain why more Muslims don't speak out.

I encourage you to read through that entire category of BatesLine articles, which expanded to include Gov. Brad Henry's barely-camouflaged attempt to give Islamic leaders in Oklahoma a special seat at the state government table.

As the story developed we learned that the Islamic Society of Tulsa is affiliated with NAIT and ISNA, part of a network of organizations that increasingly dominate Muslim community life in the US. Critics say that the organizations have roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and that significant funding from Saudi Arabia through these organizations has worked to shape the practice of Islam in America after the image of the strict Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam.

The name of one particular Tulsan illustrates the close connections between various national Muslim organizations and the Tulsa Muslim community: Mujeeb Cheema. At the time, Cheema was executive director of NAIT. He is currently listed as a board member of NAIT. Cheema is also currently on the board of the American Halal Institute. He was an incorporator of the Islamic Society of Tulsa at its founding in 1997. In 2003, as chairman of the Islamic Society of Tulsa, he hailed the construction of the Muslim Students Association mosque on the University of Tulsa campus as possibly "the first building constructed on an American college campus for the specific purpose of serving as an Islamic mosque."

In 2006, the NAIT website said about itself (emphasis added):

The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) is a waqf, the historical Islamic equivalent of an American trust or endowment, serving Muslims in the United States and their institutions. NAIT facilitates the realization of American Muslims' desire for a virtuous and happy life in a Shari'ah-compliant way.

NAIT is a not-for-profit entity that qualifies as a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. NAIT was established in 1973 in Indiana by the Muslim Students Association of U.S. and Canada (MSA), the predecessor of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). NAIT supports and provides services to ISNA, MSA, their affiliates, and other Islamic centers and institutions. The President of ISNA is an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees of NAIT.

NAIT holds titles to mosques, Islamic centers, schools, and other real estate to safeguard and pool the assets of the American Muslim community, develops financial vehicles and products that are compatible with both the Shari'ah (Islamic law) and the American law, publishes and distributes credible Islamic literature, and facilitates and coordinates community projects.

A February 8, 2004, front-page feature story in the Chicago Tribune recounts a battle over the Bridgeview, Illinois, mosque, which was founded in the 1950s by Palestinian immigrants, but taken over by newcomers, funded by Kuwaiti donors and Saudi and UAE governments, and deeded to NAIT in the 1980s, over the objections of long-time members. (Here is the article on Newspapers.com: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Beitunia farmer Khalil Zayid arrived in 1939 and rented a room along 18th Street in the heart of the Arab community on the South Side.... Like many in the Islamic world at the time, Zayid and the other Beitunia immigrants practiced a form of Islam that allowed Muslims to socialize freely.

They viewed their religion as an important part of life, but not all of life. Men and women could mingle. The women wore short sleeves and did not cover their hair. The men sometimes ran liquor stores even though many Muslims believed Islam forbade selling alcohol. While they wanted to succeed in America and fit into society, they also wanted a place of their own to practice their religion and hold on to their culture.

But in all of Chicago, there was no real mosque or official religious leader for Arab Muslims. In 1954, about 30 families from Beitunia, including Zayid's, decided that something needed to be done. They formed the Mosque Foundation and started raising money for a formal place of worship. Zayid stepped forward to become the group's first prayer leader, holding services in a storefront. He had no formal Islamic training, but he considered himself a religious man....

Most of the Beitunia immigrants who had dreamed of their own mosque are now gone.

The congregation's first prayer leader, Khalil Zayid, worshiped there until he died in 1988. He was never allowed to lead prayers at the new mosque. Many of the early leaders' children attend other mosques or pray at home. Leila Diab, the daughter of a founder, rarely prays in Bridgeview. She said she tried to meet with Sheik Jamal several years ago, but he insisted that she cover her hair, and she refused....

Sheik Jamal and other [Bridgeview] mosque leaders still pursue a controversial agenda. In March 2002, the mosque hired a new assistant prayer leader--the same man who had run the local office of an Islamic charity until it was closed by the federal government for alleged terrorism ties. Even a few board members questioned whether he should have been hired so quickly. At a prayer service last May, Sheik Jamal raised $50,000 for Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida who is charged with being the U.S. leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

To rally donors, the sheik called Israel "a foreign, malignant and strange element on the blessed land." Al-Arian denies the charges against him. Oussama Jammal, the mosque president, defended the fundraising for Al-Arian. "We raised for his legal defense. That's allowed under U.S. law," he said.

"If people were against this, they wouldn't have paid." In December, at an Islamic conference in Chicago, Sheik Jamal said that Muslims should not listen to contemporary music and that women should not travel long distances without chaperones. He also praised Sayyid Qutb, whose writings helped lay the foundation for Muslim Brotherhood beliefs. The mosque remains so conservative, several former leaders said, because more and more mosque officials are Brotherhood members. Mosque leaders declined to comment on the Brotherhood, but director Bassam Jody noted that most of the mosque's 24 directors belong to the Muslim American Society--a group with strong ties to the Brotherhood. The mosque vice president runs the society's local chapter.

Stephen Schwartz, an academic, a journalist, and a follower of Sufism, testified in 2003 before the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee about the spread of Wahhabi influence in the American Muslim community through NAIT and related organizations:

Wahhabi-Saudi policy has always been two-faced: that is, at the same time as the Wahhabis preach hostility and violence against non-Wahhabi Muslims, they maintain a policy of alliance with Western military powers -- first Britain, then the U.S. and France -- to assure their control over the Arabian Peninsula.

At the present time, Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslim community leaders estimate that 80 percent of American mosques are under Wahhabi control. This does not mean 80 percent of American Muslims support Wahhabism, although the main Wahhabi ideological agency in America, the so-called Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has claimed that some 70 percent of American Muslims want Wahhabi teaching in their mosques.1This is a claim we consider unfounded.

Rather, Wahhabi control over mosques means control of property, buildings, appointment of imams, training of imams, content of preaching -- including faxing of Friday sermons from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- and of literature distributed in mosques and mosque bookstores, notices on bulletin boards, and organizational solicitation. Similar influence extends to prison and military chaplaincies, Islamic elementary and secondary schools (academies), college campus activity, endowment of academic chairs and programs in Middle East studies, and most notoriously, charities ostensibly helping Muslims abroad, many of which have been linked to or designated as sponsors of terrorism.

The main organizations that have carried out this campaign are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which originated in the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), and CAIR. Support activities have been provided by the American Muslim Council (AMC), the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, its sister body the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and a number of related groups that I have called "the Wahhabi lobby." ISNA operates at least 324 mosques in the U.S. [as of 2003] through the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). These groups operate as an interlocking directorate.

In a 2002 Q&A with National Review, Schwartz had this to say about Wahhabist influence over American mosques (emphasis added):

Unfortunately, the U.S. is the only country outside Saudi Arabia where the Islamic establishment is under Wahhabi control. Eighty percent of American mosques are Wahhabi-influenced, although this does not mean that 80 percent of the people who attend them are Wahhabis. Mosque attendance is different from church or synagogue membership in that prayer in the mosque does not imply acceptance of the particular dispensation in the mosque. However, Wahhabi agents have sought to impose their ideology on all attendees in mosques they control.

How many mosques are held in trust by NAIT is hard to determine. The list on their website is empty. NAIT's self-proclaimed role as a guarantor would allow it to step in should local mosque leadership choose to reject Wahhabism and embrace a more liberal, American-flavored version of Muslim life. This is a similar dynamic to that of liberal Christian denominations who owned local church property; conservative congregations seeking to leave a liberalizing denomination like the Presbyterian Church USA and the Episcopal Church, because of their objections to the denominations' embrace of left-wing ideology and rejection of the Bible, were forced either to abandon their long-time homes (e.g., Falls Church, Virginia) or to pay a hefty ransom to retain the facilities built with the sacrificial gifts of local members (e.g., Tulsa's Kirk of the Hills).

A current NAIT webpage describes the organization's power to override local mosque leadership when the property is held by NAIT in waqf:

In the United States, corporate culture has permeated all spheres of life, and religious world in to immune to its influence. Under the influence of this prevalent corporate culture, most mosques are governed by a Board of Trustees/Directors. Such a governing board may be tempted to act as if its reach of governance is unfettered to the extent that it can change the use of the property, use it as a collateral for a loan, prohibit some universally accepted mode of worship, permit an un-Islamic activity, etc. None of such actions would be feasible if the property is part of the NAIT Waqf Family of Islamic Centers.

On a different (newer?) website, NAIT mentions a Tulsa situation in passing as it describes the benefits of waqf:

In addition to this main goal, being a part of the NAIT family of centers provides a platform for the unity of Muslims, which Islamophobic forces are aiming to subvert. The centers might benefit in other ways when it entrusts its property to NAIT. Such benefits include the fact that center's assets are protected from liabilities arising from its organizational activities, such as lawsuits by a disgruntled individual or due to the mistakes of its officers.

NAIT has advanced millions of dollars in interest-free loans to centers to complete their infrastructure projects. Relationship with NAIT (e.g. the case of Tulsa, Oklahoma) can help in inducing the signing of construction contracts in the face of limited immediate availability of construction funds. Affiliation with NAIT helps in obtaining and renewing property tax exemption, and in dealings with the IRS.

Discover the Networks has detailed and lengthy articles on the North American Islamic Trust and its parent organization, the Islamic Society of North America, carefully and precisely documenting their connections to terrorist-linked organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Holy Land Foundation.

A financial subsidiary and "constituent organization" of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was founded in 1973 in Indiana by members of the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. & Canada. NAIT is a tax-exempt nonprofit endowment that not only subsidizes the construction of new mosques in the United States, but presently claims to hold the mortgages on more than 325 existing mosques, Islamic centers, and Islamic schools in 42 states. Some sources indicate that NAIT holds the mortgages to about 27% of all U.S. mosques, which is roughly consistent with the Trust's own claim; other sources place the figure much higher, at somewhere between 50% and 79%.

Because NAIT controls the purse strings of these many properties, it can exercise ultimate authority over what they teach and what activities they conduct. Specifically, the Trust seeks to ensure that the institutions under its financial influence promote the principles of Sharia Law and Wahhabism....

At the 2007 trial investigating allegations that the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development had engaged in the illegal financing of terrorism, both NAIT and ISNA were named as "unindicted co-conspirators" and as "entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood." Prosecutors presented copious evidence that ISNA had used NAIT to divert funds to leading Hamas officials like Mousa Abu Marzook, and to a number of Hamas-run institutions (such as the Islamic University of Gaza and the Islamic Center of Gaza, the latter of which was founded by the late Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin).

The designation of NAIT as an "unindicted co-conspirator" was upheld in 2009 by a federal judge, though that judge ruled against the previous public disclosure of the designation. Many media outlets have repeatedly mischaracterized this as a lifting of the designation.

There is one non-NAIT mosque in Tulsa: The Tulsa Islamic Foundation, located on 61st Street east of Mingo, is a Shia mosque affiliated with Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya and Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani of Najaf, Iraq.