A number of Muslim schools have now been approved for the Texas School Choice Voucher program after a lawsuit was filed by some Muslim schools and parents in response to their exclusion.
One of those recently approved schools is raising concerns after The Texas Scorecard reported that it may have links to top Hamas officials and that one of the school’s teachers was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial.
Michael Quinn Sullivan with The Texas Scorecard says the school also has financial ties to Iran, explaining: “The school received close to a million dollars from the Islamic Development Bank, which is an Iranian-funded entity.”
Sullivan also pointed out that there really wasn’t much of a reason for this school to even be approved, because the recent court order in the lawsuit relating to the program didn’t require it. “The only item out of the court from that lawsuit regarded keeping the application period open through the end of the month,” he said.
So why was the school approved? As of now, it’s still unclear. Sullivan suggested that it might have simply been a bureaucratic error, and he hopes that the school’s approval will be revoked by the next official full-time Comptroller of Public Accounts, who will replace acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock after the November elections.
Neither the Comptroller’s office or Brighter Horizons, the school in question, has commented.
The Comptroller’s Office – according to a report – has asked the Attorney General’s Office to shut down a Houston area school with alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, designated by the state as a foreign terrorist organization.