A LoneStarTimes.com investigation has uncovered more extensive ideological and financial ties between militant Islamist groups and former Houston Rockets star Hakeem Olajuwon than have previously been reported.

Documents reviewed by LST indicate that since 1997 to the present, Olajuwon has served as a director of the El-Farouq Foundation and provided at least $450,000 to advance its mission.

Olajuwon’s El-Farouq Foundation is the parent entity and principal financial backer of the Masjid Al-Farouq, a mosque on Houston’s near west-side.

Masjid Al-Farouq was condemned earlier this week by Freedom House, a non-partisan human rights watchdog in Washington D.C., for distributing literature and Islamic study texts financed by Saudi Arabia’s extremist religious authorities that promote…

… a fanatically bigoted, xenophobic and sometimes violent ideology. These publications articulate (Wahhabism’s) wrathful dogma, rejecting the coexistence of different religions and explicitly condemning Christians, Jews, all other non-Muslims, as well as non-Wahhabi Muslims. The various Saudi publications gathered for this study state that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and warn against imitating, befriending, or helping such “infidels” in any way, or taking part in their festivities and celebrations. They instill contempt for America because the United States is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by totalitarian Wahhabi-style Islamic law. Some of the publications collected for this study direct Muslims not to take American citizenship as long as the country is ruled by infidels and tells them, while abroad, above all, to work for the creation of an Islamic state. The Saudi textbooks and documents spread throughout American mosques preach a Nazi-like hatred for Jews, treat the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact, and avow that the Muslim’s duty is to eliminate the state of Israel. Regarding women, the Saudi state publications in America instruct that they should be veiled, segregated from men and barred from certain employment and roles.

Tax records reveal that in 2001 the El-Farouq Foundation donated $6,781 to the Holy Land Foundation in Richardson.

HLF has been identified by federal authorities as the primary U.S. fund raising arm for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which is responsible for dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks in Israel that have killed scores of people and injured hundreds, including Americans.

Additionally, a Fort Worth Star-Telegram article (6/21/98) places Olajuwon at a 1998 HLF charity bowling tournament, thus establishing that his participation in HLF events occurred more frequently than on the single occasion previously reported by the Associated Press.

Federal authorities say they are not investigating Olajuwon for his charitable contributions and stress that terrorist-connected front-groups preyed on unwitting Muslim donors, especially pre-9/11.

Related Links

Original Associated Press report on Olajuwon contributions to terror-front groups

Freedom House report on Saudi Publications in American Mosques (pdf)