Islamist Appointed to School Board Human Relations and Diversity Committees – opinion

Naima Khan-Ghany promotes divisiveness, hatred of Jews, and the destruction of Israel.

By Joe Kaufman, FrontPage Magazine

Trinidad-born Naima Khan-Ghany, along with her signature hijab and glasses, wears a big smile on her face. But her friendly and grandmotherly appearance is deceiving, as she promotes vile antisemitism and the destruction of Israel and is involved with those tied to violence and bigotry, targeting Jews, gays and others. It is of major concern, because she has been appointed and recently reappointed to positions within the Broward County School Board that ironically deal with “diversity” and “human relations.” Will Khan-Ghany’s controversial exploits disallow her from further serving in such positions? Does the School Board embrace her radical activities?

Khan-Ghany is a public school teacher and adviser to local high school and middle school chapters of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), a youth group founded by operatives from the Muslim Brotherhood in 1963. She has sat on the Broward County School Board Diversity Committee, since January 2016. She is also the Chair of the School Board’s Human Relations Committee. She was recently reappointed to both by newly elected School Board member Jeff Holness, who is no stranger to Islamist gatherings. Previously, she was appointed by Holness’ predecessor Rosalind Osgood, who vacated her seat to run for Florida State Senate.

According to the website for Broward County Public Schools (BCPS), “The primary responsibility of the Diversity Committee is to make recommendations to promote diversity through the Superintendent, to the School Board, while maintaining a unitary school system.” And “The Human Relations Committee… makes recommendations to the Superintendent and the School Board on matters that foster mutual respect and understanding among people within BCPS. The committee further supports the work of the District as it pertains to policies related to diversity, educational/vocational equity, nondiscrimination, inclusion and character education.”

It would seem that the activities Khan-Ghany has been associating herself with fall in direct opposition to the missions of both the Diversity and Human Relations Committees and are huge conflicts of interest.

Khan-Ghany is a former host of Who’s Who in America, a show produced by the Al-Hikmat Islamic Network, the media arm of the Darul Uloom Institute (DUI). DUI has been a haven for high-profile al-Qaeda militants, including “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla and al-Qaeda Commander Adnan el-Shukrijumah. At Al-Hikmat, Khan-Ghany organized an event with el-Shukrijumah’s younger brother, Nabil el-Shukri. The leader and founder of DUI/Al-Hikmat is Shafayat Mohamed, an imam who has been thrown off several Broward County community boards for his talks against homosexuals. Mohamed has claimed that natural disasters are caused by gay sex.

In February 2015, Khan-Ghany was a speaker at a banquet for ICNA Relief, the social services division of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a group that has numerous ties to South Asian terror. In February 2019, Khan-Ghany was photographed with ICNA Relief USA’s Government Affairs Coordinator Syed Ammar Ahmed, who has previously joked about threatening to blow up a school. In February 2020, she was photographed with ICNA Relief USA’s Chief Operating Officer Abdul Rauf Khan, who has used his social media to promote the Muslim Brotherhood and anti-Semitic icon Louis Farrakhan and to target Jews and gays.

In May 2021, Khan-Ghany was a contact for and provided the introduction for an event featuring former South Florida imam Ibrahim Dremali, titled ‘LET’S TALK PALESTINE.’ The speech was co-sponsored by Khan-Ghany’s Broward County MSA Council. Throughout the lecture, Dremali incited against the Jewish community, telling the crowd, “The Jews… want to destroy the Dome of the Rock,” the Muslim shrine. Days prior to the event, Dremali urged others to fund Hamas; implored people to read the anti-Semitic fraud, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and said, “If the Arab leaders open the borders for Palestine… the Jews they’ll be inside that ocean.”

Khan-Ghany makes no secret of her own hatred of the Jewish state. In May 2021, she made a series of posts on her social media questioning Israel’s right to exist and right to defend herself and calling for Israel’s outright destruction. She wrote that Israel’s claim of “self-defense” was a “usual excuse.” She posted a call for prayers for the “liberation of Palestine… from the river to the sea.” She posted a video of similar statements from members of the condemned Jewish fringe group Neturei Karta, with one outrageously saying, “At the end of the day, the Palestinian flag will be on all of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

After Khan-Ghany posted the logos of over 60 popular US companies, writing, “Boycott these products!” she was called out by an ex-colleague. Former Broward School Board Student Representative Beau Simon wrote, “Ms. Khan I have the utmost respect for you and I enjoyed working with you at the School Board but you really should look into other ways to promote peace in the Middle East rather than ‘boycotting’ Israeli products. This post and advertisement solves nothing, if anything it divides us more. I highly suggest you reevaluate some things you may post and ask yourself ‘is this contributing to the solution or making the problem worse?’”

Khan-Ghany’s posts do not just target Israel with hate; some of them go after Jews themselves. Khan-Ghany has used social media to promote videos of notorious anti-Semite, TruNews host Rick Wiles. In one video, Wiles equates Jews with Communists, Bolsheviks and Satanists and refers to European (Ashkenazi) Jews as “so-called” Jews. In another, he spews the libel about Jews owning the media, asking, “Who planted into our minds, here in America, that we should hate and kill Muslims?… [A]fter 9/11… we were saturated with media propaganda. Who owns the media in this country?” On top of the video, one reads the message, “Make this go viral.”

With all of Khan-Ghany’s extensively documented involvement with militant Muslim groups that are related to hatred and violence and her personal promotion of bigotry and fanatical animosity towards Jews and Israel, one has to ask how she can remain so long on committees associated with the Broward County School Board. This is especially the case, given that these committees deal with diversity and human relations.

The extremists whom she aids and abets cynically view ‘human relations’ as a vehicle for promoting the advancement of Islamist causes and ‘diversity’ as a means of placing radical coreligionists in positions of power and influence. As Khan-Ghany herself stated, regarding her work in getting recognition of a “Muslim Heritage Month” in Broward County and a day off from school for Muslims placed on the Broward School Board calendar, “I am not in this for the name, fame or glorification; it is for Islam.”

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.