Sam Westrop Testifies Before the Texas House on Sharia Finance and Foreign Influence

0:00 Thank you, Chairman Hefner, Vice Chairman Lopez. Thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Sam Westerrop. I am a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and director of Islamist Watch at the Middle East Forum. I'm here to testify on the subject of countering foreign financial influence and illicit networks. Islamism is a modern radical political ideology designed to reconcile theocratic expressions of Islam with the challenges and opportunities of modernity. The development of Sharia finance in the West illustrates this process. Islamist movements with links to violence overseas have worked to create banking, investment, insurance, and lending infrastructure that function within modern financial systems while ostensibly complying with Sharia rules, all in the pursuit of radical control over Muslim communities and the advancement of Islamist ideals. The purpose of our investigation into Islamist networks is never to restrict religious belief or ordinary commercial activity. The purpose is to ensure that financial institutions and nonprofit

1:02 structures are not used to expand extremist networks, conceal foreign influence, or build parallel political and economic infrastructure without adequate public scrutiny. The history of Sharia finance in the West has important Texas roots. Yaya Abdul Raman, frequently described as the father of Islamic banking, moved to Dallas in 1971 where he began developing the contractual and institutional foundations for Sharia compliant mortgages. Subsequent development in the field was led by scholars associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Pakistan's Jamaati Islami and Deabandi movements and financial bodies in the Arab Gulf and Malaysia who developed religious rulings authorizing new mortgage and investment structures. Islamists sought to control this growing industry. One conference on the permissibility of Sharia home financing held in Detroit in 1999 was chaired by Shik Yusf Alcaladawi, the late spiritual leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It was his last time in the United States. The federal government subsequently banned this Islamist leader, citing his open support for terrorism. Multiple clerics

2:06 at that conference today sit on the advisory boards of Sharia finance companies operating here in Texas where they sit alongside representatives of foreign extremist organizations. These include clerics associated with the dangerous Deobandi movement in South Asia such as Taki Usmani the top Sharia scholar of Pakistan. In his writings, Usmani declares that aggressive jihad must continue until the unbelievers are humbled or overpowered. Over a dozen Sharia finance companies today openly solicit in mosques across the state partnering with proxies and affiliates for the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaati Islami. They aband Salafi and Islamist movements active and other Islamist movements active in the United States.

2:45 The Sharia adviser to finance firm Jara CDC, for instance, is Munia Ahmed Akun, a hardline Deabandi cleric who warns against taking Jews and Christians as friends and is openly involved with Kathum and Nubat, a dangerous Pakistani movement dedicated to eradicating the Armadia, a moderate minority Muslim sect. The founders and officials of Ammano Mutual funds include leaders of the Sappa Network, a Virginia network accused by the federal government of open involvement in terror finance and which today maintains close relations with the Islamist governments of Malaysia, Qatar and Turkey. Islamist influence over both Sharia finance and the mosque pullpit in Texas is significant enough that ordinary Muslims are pressured to a stew ordinary financing in favor of Islamist aligned providers. Islamist control of institutions served to foster Muslim dependency on Islamist leadership. As noted by Dr. Zudi Jassa, a leading Muslim voice against Islamism, Sharia compliant financing is neither about religion nor about God. It is about Islamist control and collectivization of

3:49 Muslims. Sharia finance carries explicit political agendas. A continuous charity, a firm based a nonprofit based in Irving, provides interestf free educational loans in partnership with the Council on American Islamic Relations with which it shares officials. The charity's head, Faizen Sed, says its loans will serve to quote, "break the hold that Zionists hold on this country." He's also frank about entreism. Let's get our kids into political science, government, media, journalism, and other fields. And over time, replace the people in power.

4:22 Replace the people in the news. replace the people at universities. That is my intention. Sharia finance in Texas is not exclusively the domain of Sunni Islamists. In Houston, in 2016, members of the Islamic Education Center established the Jafari Nointer Interest Credit Union. This mosque is openly aligned with the Iranian regime. Its imam is directly appointed by Iran's Supreme Leader. In March 2026, as Iranian forces were working to murder American troops in the Middle East, the Houston mosque published a statement mourning the martyrdom of the regime's supreme leader. Foreign Sharia Finance firms pose an additional concern. The Islamic Development Bank, a multilateral bank whose major shareholders include the governments of Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, has financed schools, mosques, and endowment projects in Texas. Projects include $7 million of financing for a large commercial and residential development in Irving, implicitly built just for Muslim residents to provide long-lasting rental income to the radical Islamic center of Irving, a key component of the modernist Salafi movement and whose imams have

5:24 expressed support for convicted al-Qaeda terrorist Afia Sadiki. Existing federal nonprofit disclosure rules do not adequately reveal such arrangements. Additionally, some Sharia finance products place an intermediary between the lender and the recipient, further obscuring the source of financing. Texas should consider stronger state level transparency requirements for foreign loans, Sharia finance arrangements, and financial relationships involving nonprofit institutions. The state should consider creating a Texas angle list, a sanctions and transparency mechanism identifying individuals and organizations connected to terrorism, extremist activity, corruption, or hostile foreign influence. Thank you.