A new report from the Middle East Forum details the links between a top Hamas official and a Dallas-area private school. The Brighter Horizons Academy, which has reportedly been funded with cash from Iran, is now eligible to receive payments from Texas’ new school choice program.
Based in Garland, the Brighter Horizons Academy was founded in 1989. The school’s website notes work in “Quran & Islamic Studies Subjects” ahead of academic coursework. It describes its mission as “to develop practicing Muslim Leaders” and be “a model Islamic educational institute.”
Brighter Horizons Academy is affiliated with the Islamic Services Foundation. ISF produces and distributes textbooks for Islamic schools throughout the United States. Several of the textbooks reviewed by the Middle East Forum teach young children open hatred towards non-Muslims.
One title in ISF’s catalog explains that, “Those who reject (truth), among the People of the Book and among the pagans, will be in the Hellfire, to stay there. They are the worst of creatures.”
Among the school’s founders was Rasmi Almallah, who served on the board of the Holy Land Foundation. HLF was the largest terrorism financing operation in the United States’ history. As reported recently by Jewish Onliner, Almallah was listed by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 HLF terror trial.
One teacher in the school is the niece of a Hamas leader; her father is a convicted terrorist collaborator. Other staff members have reportedly had alleged or documented ties to terrorists and terror organizations.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has reported that Brighter Horizons Academy received up to $995,000 from the Iran-affiliated Islamic Development Bank. The Islamic Development Bank has spent more than $13 million on at least 44 K-12 schools in the United States.
As reported by the Houston Chronicle, Brighter Horizons was recently added to the schools eligible to receive funds through the Texas Education Freedom accounts school choice program. Other Islamic schools that have been added to the list include Bayaan Academy (Galveston County), Excellence Academy (Dallas), and the Houston Quran Academy.
Other ISF textbooks used by Brighter Horizons and other campuses teach that “those who disbelieve in Allah will suffer the punishment of Hell, which is a terrible place to be in.” ISF leaders include individuals linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which last year was designated as a foreign terrorist organization under state law by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Calls seeking comment from Brighter Horizons Academy were not returned.
