Clarion Project has discovered that a private Islamic school in Dearborn, Michigan is linked to diehard supporters of Hezbollah and the Iranian regime. The school teaches students from kindergarten through 9th grade.
Great Revelations Academy was founded in 2015 by open supporters of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. By their own admission, the school’s founders are dedicated to spreading his message.
Fadlallah was a supporter of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and is considered to be a key inspirer of Hezbollah. Some go so far as to describe him as the terrorist group’s “spiritual leader.”
Fadlallah supported the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines (who were serving as peacekeepers) as well as 58 French troops and six civilians.
In 2005, he reiterated his support for suicide bombings against Israel. When he died in Lebanon in 2010, Hezbollah called for three days of mourning. Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei sent his condolences.
The Academy’s Stated Objective: Teaching a Radical Cleric’s Vision to Children
One of the academy’s founders, Fouad Bayoun, told Arab-American News that one of the purposes of creating the school was to pass along Fadlallah’s teachings to children in America.
[The school] follows the same philosophy, mission and vision of Sayed Fadlallah,” said the school’s principal, Sheila Bazzi-Charara.
On August 9, 2018, the academy posted an advertisement for an event it was holding with the Qaim Project, an organization led by the academy’s head of the Islamic Studies Department, Sheikh Mohammad Ayad (according to Qaim’s website).
In his bio on the academy’s website, Ayad writes:
“Serving as the religious educator at Great Revelations Academy gives me a great pleasure and it is an honor to continue what the Holy scholar Al-Sayyid Mohammad Hussain Fadlollah [sic] started ‘peace and blessings to his soul’. We want to endeavor to implant in the hearts and souls of our children the confidence that makes them proud of their Religion, and to maintain the power that Allah (SWT) has instilled in their souls to make them the leaders of the future–to uphold the flag of Islam.”
The bio states that Ayad studied Islamic Principles and Studies at Hawzat Arrasoul Al-Akram in Lebanon, an institution sponsored by Iran, according to the respected media outlet Al-Monitor.
Academy Initiative Exalts Youth Members of Hezbollah and Hamas
Ayad’s Qaim Project exalts Hezbollah, the Iranian-sponsored Lebanese terror group, as well as the terrorist group Hamas. Specifically, Ayad exalts the youth members of these two terror groups.
Particularly disturbing is the fact that the Qaim Project has a youth program.
On the project’s website is an article endorsing the Iranian regime, expressing an anti-American worldview and advocating for a Shiite-Sunni jihadist alliance (allied with Iran) against the West.
The article says:
“Consider the current situation of the Muslim countries in the world. Look at the situation of Muslims, who currently make up one fourth of the entire world population. However, their role in world politics, even in their internal affairs, is far less important than the role of foreign governments and superpowers with evil intentions.
“The fact that I constantly advise our people and my audience against foreigners is not just because superpowers are foreigners. Rather that is because they have evil intentions. They seek to dominate us. They seek to humiliate Muslim nations and force them into complete conformity.”
The article celebrates Hezbollah’s performance in the 2006 war against Israel, boasting that “Lebanese resistance forces and the youth of Hezbollah inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Zionist regime.”
The article also urges Shiite-Sunni unity in the jihad against the so-called enemies of Islam, with Hamas being pointed to as a worthy ally.
It celebrates “the victory of the Palestinian Resistance Movement over their Zionist enemies in Gaza. That was a great and glorious victory … In addition, the Zionist regime and its supporters, especially the US, were disgraced in the world. They were publicly disgraced. That was a great victory for all Muslims.”
The Muslim world, it says, faces “two major obstacles to unity and we must think of a way to remove them.” The first obstacle is sectarian divisions. The second is building the capacity to “stand up to these enemies.”
“Global powers are easily and openly trampling on the rights of the Islamic Ummah [Islamic world]. And the Islamic Ummah is not able to defend its rights,” it says.
The Academy’s Radical Guest Speakers
A review of the speakers chosen by the academy to come teach the students shows the same radical pattern.
On February 6, 2019, the academy held an event with Sheikh Usama Abdulghani, a D.C. native, who studied in Qom, Iran.
The Clarion Project published an expose in September that showed how Abdulghani is a fervent supporter of Hezbollah and the Iranian regime and preaches that Muslims should follow them.
On November 9-11, 2017, the academy hosted a series of lectures from Sheikh Amin Rastani, an avowed supporter of the Iranian regime and another student of the regime-friendly religious school in Qom, Iran.
In 2014, Rastani spoke at the Imam Khomeini Conference in London, named in honor of the original founder of the Islamic revolution in Iran. He praised Khomeini as the “complete package” to look for in a leader.
“Imam Khomeini shook the world and freed the world as we know it, he freed the masses,” he said.
Throughout his speech, Rastani was flanked by two giant pictures of Khomeini and Iran’s current leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
What are students learning from the Great Revelations Academy?
The public Facebook page of the academy features pictures that, at first glance, are innocuous until one looks closer.
For example, on February 16, 2018, a picture was posted to the Academy’s Facebook page that showed a student in a room with a picture of Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei on the wall behind him.
This picture was “liked” by Wafaa Beydoun, the academy’s daycare lead teacher. Her page indicates she is from Beirut, Lebanon.
Links to Holocaust Denier
The committee that founded the academy was from the Al-Mabarrat Charitable Organization, an organization that the academy holds fundraisers for.
Arab American News describes the academy as “the first Al-Mabarrat school of the west.”
The bio for one Arabic teacher at the academy, Maha Samhat, even refers to the Great Revelations Academy as “Almabarat G.R.A.”
Founded in 1992, Al-Mabarratt in America has Sayed Hassan Sobh listed as its principal officer.
In a Facebook post from February 14, 2017, Sobh said that the Holocaust was “greatly exaggerated.”
A post from Sobh’s Facebook page shows him meeting Fadlallah when he was much younger:
(There are many more pictures of Sobh with Fadlallah on his Facebook page as well.)
Other Links to Al-Mabarrat
The head of the Academy’s Arabic department and an Arabic teacher for children, Fatme Mroue, taught Arabic for 11 years at the Mabarrat School in Bint Jbeil, Lebanon.
Part of a Broader Problem
The academy is just one of the many Iran-linked Islamic schools in America that Clarion Project has exposed.
1. In Virginia, Clarion found that the Manassas Mosque held an event celebrating the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the regime to power. The event included “poetry and spoken word by our youth.” The Virginia mosque has a full-time private Islamic Community School with classes from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. It also has a Sunday School program for children as young as five years old.
2. In Maryland, Clarion Project reported in August that a radical pro-regime cleric runs the Jafaria Islamic School, which teaches children between the ages of five and 15. The cleric, Sheikh Abdul Jalil Nawee, also teaches classes on the Quran for children and teenagers at the Muslim Community School and Alim Academy.
3. In Texas, the Islamic Education Center of Houston was caught celebrating the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution and praising Supreme Leader Khamenei. The event included having a children’s choir lead the audience in dedication to the Iranian regime, singing “Allah Akbar! Khamenei is Our Leader!”
The Alavi Foundation, a front for the Iranian regime, has funded over 60 Islamic organizations in the U.S., including Persian and Islamic schools and mosques with private schools and classes for teenagers and children. The funding has continued in recent years, even though the U.S. government and Iranian dissidents have openly identified it as a front for the terrorism-sponsoring regime.
These findings help explain why the Iranian opposition, inside and outside of Iran, has had difficulty in organizing a successful revolution to topple the regime. The Shiite religious establishment in the West has been largely hijacked by pro-regime and pro-Hezbollah theocrats.
Today, the Iranian regime appears to realize that it has more support outside of Iran than inside Iran. On the outside, the results of its ideology and rule are most felt. Its network in America is likely viewed as a critical safety net—a way for the regime to survive if threatened and rebound if toppled.
On March 6, the leader of the Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Courts said that the regime would rely upon radical Shiite militias it supports in Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and presumably Lebanon and Syria to come to the regime’s rescue if its survival is threatened by a popular revolution.
This senior Iranian official thought he was reassuring his audience, but his boast revealed the regime’s deep anxiety and insecurity.
Today, the future of Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution is not inside Iran. It is inside America and elsewhere — places where ignorance (in the case of the West) or instability (in the case of Iraq, Yemen, etc.) has permitted it to spread and establish an infrastructure.
Source » clarionproject