Collin Anderson of the Washington Free Beacon reports disturbing news about a professor at a major midwestern university.
Northwestern University describes journalism professor Ibrahim Abusharif as a “former book publisher” who “has been involved in projects to translate—from Arabic into English—the Quran.” It does not give examples of those projects, perhaps because they include the Quranic Literacy Institute (QLI), an organization Abusharif cofounded that raised and laundered money for Hamas and was forced to pay damages to the family of a teenaged terror victim.
Abusharif is a Chicago native who received his master’s degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and worked as a senior lecturer at the university’s Evanston campus in 2008. From there, he moved to Qatar, where he’s served as an assistant and then associate professor of journalism at Northwestern’s Doha campus for more than 17 years.
But Abusharif has not always worked in academia. From 1990 to 1998, he served as cofounder and treasurer of the QLI, an organization in suburban Chicago that ostensibly worked to “translate and publish sacred Islamic texts.” It was actually a “money-laundering clearinghouse” for Hamas, as revealed in an early 2000s lawsuit from the family of David Boim, a 17-year-old American killed in a 1996 Hamas terror attack in Jerusalem. A federal court found QLI liable for the attack in a 2004 ruling that provided the Boim family with $156 million in damages. That ruling was re-affirmed in 2008.
Abusharif’s status as a Northwestern Qatar professor is one example of how the university’s partnership with the Gulf State “contributes to the creation of a hostile environment for Northwestern’s Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students,” according to a recent Middle East Forum report.
Abusharif teaches the “Doha Seminar,” a required course for Northwestern students who spend a semester in Qatar before returning to Evanston.
