In Texas K-12 Public Schools, Qatari Money Funded Jewish Conspiracy Content
Foreign influence is reaching into our children’s schools in Texas and around the United States. Kids are being exposed to lesson plans and textbooks stained with propaganda and even antisemitism.
Who is providing this tainted largesse? China for one, certainly. But less talked about is the money coming from the deep pockets of the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar.
Qatar supports terrorist groups like Hamas. It also supports schools in Austin and Houston, giving substantial sums of money to hire Arabic language teachers, buy curricular materials and pay for classroom observers.
The charity arm of the Qatari royal family, called the Qatar Foundation International (QFI), has funded Arabic language and culture programs in public K-12 schools across the United States since 2009. Because QFI is not a registered nonprofit there isn’t much information readily available that details how many schools have worked with QFI or what the Qatari-funded Arabic programs teach. The foundation also repeatedly argues that its K-12 program has a small footprint. In January, Sheikh Meshal Bin Hamad Al-Thani, ambassador of the State of Qatar to the United States of America, posted on X : “In the US, Qatar Foundation International has a single, narrow philanthropic mission: to provide grants to schools and teachers engaged in Arabic language instruction. That’s it.”
Public documents in Texas show QFI has given more than $1.5 million since 2015 to the public-school districts in Austin and Houston. QFI-issued grant contracts show funding for teachers’ salaries, classroom observers and textbooks from overseas — including one from Saudi Arabia that’s rife with conspiracy theories about Jews.
In Austin, QFI spent more than $462,000 from 2016 to 2022 to fund the Arabic Language and Culture program in the school district. QFI paid for Arabic instructors at Austin High School and at Burnet Middle School, the contracts show, along with curricular materials, and instructional resources. Arabic is still listed as a language offered on the school district’s website.
When asked to provide copies of teaching materials used in the QFI-funded Arabic program, the school district shared hundreds of electronic files: including textbooks and workbooks from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, and Qatar.
In an all-Arabic textbook published in 2008 by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Higher Education, the introduction advances a conspiracy theory stating that Jews are trying to control people in the West. “A man’s ignorance of Arabs and Arabic may lead him to hate Arabs, avoid them, or stand in the ranks of their enemies; this is precisely what we see today from many Westerners whose ignorance of Arabs allowed Zionists to manipulate them,” Teaching Arabic for Non-Native Speakers says when translated into English.
In fact, the QFI-funded program offered so much Arabic-language content from outside the United States that Austin school officials said they needed to hire a translator for $50,000 before sharing any of the files. In an email, a school official wrote that they needed a translator to ensure the files contained no student information. Austin Independent School District administrators didn’t know what, exactly was being taught in the QFI-funded program.
The Texas attorney general’s office later intervened, and the materials were shared with FDD without Austin hiring a translator.
Austin’s QFI teaching materials also had multiple maps of the Middle East that falsely label Israel as Palestine. Multiple mentions of Islam were also found in the texts, despite the commitment of public schools to secular education.
One assignment provides students with greeting cards decorated with a mosque and text praising the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. Children are asked to attach a cutout of the Kaaba — the most sacred site in Islam — to the card.
Austin’s QFI files didn’t contain any other greeting card exercises, but this one seems sure to make young Jews, Christians, or atheists feel uncomfortable — at the least.
Another exercise found in an all-Arabic curriculum made by the State of Qatar, published in 2006, tells teachers that the lessons “are compatible with Qatari values and the Arab and Islamic culture.” Vocabulary words that second graders are told to master include Allah and emir, along with basic colors and various kinds of occupations.
An Arabic-language textbook, sponsored by the Obama administration-era U.S. Department of Education and found in Austin’s QFI files, asked students to read the poem, “Identity Card” by Mahmoud Darwish. The assignment fails to mention that Darwish was a high-ranking member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a terrorist group linked to attacks on Jewish targets, including Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics and airplane hijackings. It also doesn’t mention that other terror-tied groups, such as Al-Awda, have used “Identity Card” to advance their extremist views against Israel. The textbook, however, does ask students to journal about being victims of racism.
QFI grant contracts found in Houston show similar details to those in Austin, including the organization paying teachers’ salaries.
Both school districts have billion-plus dollar budgets, begging the question: why does the Qatari royal family’s charity have to pay the five-figure salaries for instructors? In Houston, QFI also paid for teaching consultants, an instructor to teach a traditional Arab dance that has become a symbol of Palestinian culture, called dabke, a veiled attempt to teach anti-Israel resistance to little kids along with “cultural activities and supplies.”
In Houston, the Qatari influence went beyond hiring teachers and providing learning materials as funding went to the Arabic Language and Culture program at the Arabic Immersion Magnet School (AIMS). The pre-K-8 school bills itself as the first such school in the United States. Classes such as art and PE are taught in Arabic, documents show.
Terry Grier, who served as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District when the QFI partnership launched in 2015, signed off on to allowing QFI staff and consultants to sit in on classroom instruction, according to the contracts. Although it’s common in American philanthropy for donors to visit the project sites that they fund, it poses a national security risk to have Qatari royal family’s charity telling teachers in U.S. public schools how to teach.
Foreign entities should not be allowed to observe American classrooms and influence what is being taught.
Houston’s superintendent signed off on a litany of QFI “teacher requirements,” including allowing them “to participate in regular meetings with a teacher trainer designated by the Foundation,” contracts show. Emails between Houston school officials and QFI show that the organization sent classroom observers to AIMS multiple times from 2017 to 2019. QFI asked to see teachers’ lesson plans in advance of the visit, one email shows.
Another email shows that a QFI staffer shared criticism with an AIMS teacher after the teacher had her classroom observed. The teacher was told she needed one-on-one coaching to ensure that she has a grasp of basic instructional strategies. A foreign entity conducting this level of on-the-ground monitoring raises the question of who teachers answer to: Houston, or the Qatari royal family?
The most invasive QFI endeavor involved the organization commissioning a study to track how low-income students are absorbing Arabic instruction in Houston and in three other QFI-affiliated schools in Baltimore, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles.
Not only did the 2023-published study collect student race and gender data, but researchers also counted how many children received free or reduced lunch and how many could do math or read English at or below grade level.
What they could use this information for is unclear. What is clear is that Qatar is deeply embedded in our education system.
Proposed legislation called the TRACE ACT would require schools to provide parents with copies of teaching materials and teacher trainings obtained using funds from foreign governments or a foreign entity of concern. It was recently passed by the House of Representatives and awaits Senate approval.
More steps are necessary to ensure transparency, allowing parents and others to act. The U.S. government should name the State of Qatar and its associated organizations, including QFI, and its subsidiaries, as foreign entities of concern. Keep in mind, Qatar is a major funder of Hamas and is home to their political offices, as well as those of Afghanistan’s Taliban. As such, its royal family has disqualified itself from funding a national Arabic language and culture program in American public elementary, middle, and high schools.
As Texas shows, action is needed, through Congress, President Donald Trump’s administration, states, and local boards of education. School districts should be compelled to disclose teaching materials already in use — especially those coming from countries overseas.
Qatar has already planted its roots in Texas. How many more classrooms across how many more states has QFI seeped its way into?
