According to federal spending records, Fouad ElBayly, the imam at Islamic Center of Johnstown in Pennsylvania, was contracted by the DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons beginning last year to teach the classes to Muslim inmates at Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Md.

The records show that ElBayly has two contracts worth $12,900 to teach the classes and to provide the inmates “leadership and guidance.” One of the contracts is dated Feb. 20, 2014, and the other is dated Dec. 8, 2014. It was April 2007 when ElBayly, the imam at the Islamic Center of Johnston, protested Ali’s scheduled appearance at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown.

Ms. Ali is well known to regular readers of American Thinker as a fearless critic of Islam’s treatment of women. Born in Somalia and subjected to brutal surgical disfigurement, she left that nation and the faith of her birth (that apostasy alone is enough for the death penalty under Sharia law) and has criticized the subjugation of women, which what apparently triggered Imam ElBayly’s call:

“If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death,” the imam told a local newspaper ahead of her university visit.

Somehow, ElBayly passed the screening requirements of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and went on the taxpayers’ payroll.

Perhaps the highest hurdle for ElBayly to clear would be the program’s requirement to affirm, ”I do not endorse nor will I practice or use language in the institution that will support violence, terrorism, discrimination against other inmates.” The Daily Caller sought to interview ElBayly, but he didn’t not respond to an email request. A phone number listed for ElBayly was directed to a fax machine. The DC also wanted to find out more about how the DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons chooses who can teach religious classes to inmates, but the agency did not respond. The Cumberland facility also did not respond to specific questions about ElBayly’s classes.

Given the scripturally-sanctioned violence against non-believers practiced by a nontrivial proportion of Muslims, it is highly questionable that federal funds ought to be expended in instruction of Islam. Of course, such a position would fly in the face of the official ideology that all religions are the same, and that Islam is a “great religion.” While it is true that most Muslims practice their faith in peace, it is also true that the United States is under threat by people who use a historically prominent interpretation of the explicit wording of the Koran and hadith calling for subjugation of non-believers and imposition of a global caliphate. In Jutice Jackson’s words, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”

Hat tip: Clarice Feldman