A Seattle teacher urged a colleague to wire money to a charity led by a radical Palestinian cleric who denies Hamas atrocities and says sex slaves are ‘permissible’, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Sobia Sheikh, a math teacher at Mariner High School, suggested a co-worker send funds to Waqforever late last year in an email thread about helping Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war.
The charity is fronted by Ali Hammuda, a bearded UK-based Islamic cleric, whose extremist views include endorsing sex slaves and denying Hamas atrocities in Israel on October 7.
Sheikh, who has served on the National Education Association (NEA) teachers’ union board, shares her own hard-line views, including Facebook posts that compare Israel to Nazi Germany.
Seattle area math teacher Sobia Sheikh urged a colleague to wire money to an extremist cleric
The Palestinian-British cleric Ali Hammuda fronts the Waqforever charity that helps Gazans
Her email was uncovered in a public records request by Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, a conservative group that works to keep politics out of classrooms.
‘It is shocking that an American teacher would tell a coworker to donate to a charity run by a man who denies that the 10/7 terror attacks took place,’ Neily told DailyMail.com.
Sheikh’s social media posts were ‘alarmingly antisemitic,’ added Neily, who probes links between teacher unions and anti-Israel sentiment.
Sheikh and Mariner High School, in Everett, Washington — part of Mukilteo School District — did not answer our request for comment.
The case spotlights tensions between parents and teachers in America’s culture wars, and raises tough questions about whether educators should float political ideas while at work.
District superintendent Alison Brynelson started the controversial email thread to her staff on October 27.
Mariner High School serves 2,100 students in Everett, Washington — part of Mukilteo School District
One of Sheikh’s posts shows Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which they make similar salute gestures
Another bears the phrase ‘Israel is the new Nazi Germany’ and says ‘Israel steals Palestinian organs’
She proposed donating to charity to ease suffering in the Israel-Hamas war, which began earlier that month.
Teresa Hoffman, a school counselor, then wrote to Sheikh, asking for recommendations for a charity.
Hoffman wrote: ‘I trust your judgement of where I can donate to support Palestinians needing emergency relief.’
Sheikh replied on October 30 with a link to Hammuda’s charity, saying: ‘You should be able to select US Dollar.’
On its website, Waqforever says it provides ‘food, disaster relief, and essential medical supplies’ in Gaza, where Palestinian health chiefs say more than 31,000 people have died in five months’ of war.
It is fronted by Hammuda, a Palestinian-born preacher connected to a mosque in Cardiff, Wales, who airs extreme views and was suspected of radicalizing teenage Muslims.
In a 16-minute YouTube video posted in October, Hammuda denied a ‘huge massacre’ of Israeli festival-goers occurred on October 7.
Hammuda made his controversial comments as ISIS fighters kept women captives as sex slaves in Iraq and Syria
The video has since been removed for violating the platform’s hate speech rules.
In it, Hammuda accused the media of ‘concocting stories… that a huge massacre took place at a rave where 260 people were killed as they were dancing and singing,’ according to the Daily Express.
‘Where is the evidence for all this? Where is the proof?’ the cleric asked his 161,000 YouTube subscribers.
‘How is this to be understood other than to say there was no massacre of 260 people, there was no mass rape that took place at all, there was not the beheading of a single child, let alone 40 of them?’
It’s not the first time Hammuda’s sermons courted controversy.
An undercover reporter recorded him preaching to teenage Muslim boys in 2014, saying that it is ‘permissible’ under Islam to have sex slaves, in a Doomsday interpretation of holy texts.
He told them: ‘Towards the end of time there will be many wars like what we are seeing today, and because of these wars women will be taken as captives, as slaves, yeah, women will be taken as slaves.
Radical cleric Hammuda denies the Hamas atrocities of October 7, though there is plenty of evidence that they did happen
Palestinians transport a captured Israeli civilian, center, from a kibbutz into the Gaza Strip during the Hamas incursion of October 7,
‘And then, er, her master has relations with her because this is permissible in Islam, it’s permissible to have relations with a woman who is your slave or your wife.’
Hammuda has since said those comments were taken out of context, that he was discussing scholarly texts, and that he did not support sexual enslavement.
‘I do not approve of sex slaves and consider it to be an abhorrent abomination,’ he later wrote.
Two young men and one 17-year-old who worshiped at Hammuda’s mosque, who became known as the three ‘Cardiff jihadis,’ travelled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS in 2014.
The mosque, Al-Manar, denied links with radicalism.
DailyMail.com asked Hammuda and his charity if any donations end up flowing to Hamas militants, but did not get a response.
Another of Sheikh’s social media posts suggests that schools are part of a broader political struggle
Sheikh, the Seattle teacher, has also courted controversy over the Israel-Hamas war.
On Facebook, she has shared posts that compare Israel to Nazi Germany.
One post shows Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which they make similar salute gestures.
Another bears the phrase ‘Israel is the new Nazi Germany’ and says ‘Israel steals Palestinian organs.’
Hamas’ raids on southern Israel on October 7 killed around 1,200 Israelis and saw 253 abducted.
The attack, and Israel’s devastating military response on Gaza, are divisive political issues in the US that could impact the 2024 presidential election.
Mariner High School serves 2,100 students and has witnessed a series of tragedies over the decades, including a drive-by shooting in 2018 and a pepper spray incident in the wake of the 9/11 attacks of 2001.