All three members of the Florida Cabinet are questioning the legality of the state voucher system that has steered taxpayer-funded scholarships to private Islamic schools that they contend undermine “Western” values.
Attorney General James Uthmeier, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, all Republicans and allies of the governor, are wondering whether Florida’s universal school voucher system allowing Floridians to attend certain private schools at discounted rates can be properly extended to the Hifz Academy and Bayaan Academy, Islamic schools in Tampa now accepting these scholarships.
The Cabinet, although powerful, lacks authority to set policy or stymie funding from the state to specific schools. That power resides with the Department of Education, which did not respond to a request for comment. (See: “Your Tax Dollars Are About to Fund Religious Schools, Salafist Madrassas and Satanic Temples.”)
“Sharia law seeks to destroy and supplant the pillars of our republican form of government and is incompatible with the Western tradition,” said Uthmeier, who serves as Florida’s chief legal officer, on social media Monday. “The use of taxpayer-funded school vouchers to promote Sharia law likely contravenes Florida law and undermines our national security.”
However, his office declined to say whether he’d pursue an investigation.
In a statement to the Phoenix, Ingoglia said his office is looking into these schools through an audit.
“We have the ability. We’re already looking into it,” said the Spring Hill Republican, who’s led a statewide program of searching through the finances of local governments for potential “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Simpson, the former Florida Senate president who championed universal school choice, insisted in a statement to the Phoenix: “Schools that indoctrinate Sharia law should not be a part of our taxpayer-funded school voucher program.”
Of note, Florida’s school voucher program applies to 2,278 private schools, and 82% of participating students attend a religious school. Roman Catholic schools are the single largest religious recipients.
Cabinet members are elected statewide and independent of the governor. DeSantis appointed Uthmeier and Ingoglia earlier this year to fill vacancies.
‘No place in the USA’
This wouldn’t be the first time Florida has nixed voucher funds for schools.
Most recently, DeSantis in 2023 directed the education department to pull voucher funds from schools with alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Before that, the DOE in 2003 dropped voucher funds for Tampa’s Islamic Academy of Florida after two of its affiliates were charged (and later convicted) for terrorism ties.
The Republicans’ push to more closely examine the schools’ finances comes amid a broader push to crack down on Sharia Law, Islam’s legal system, derived from the Quran. This was largely sparked by the Oct. 7 massacre by the Islamic militant group Hamas on Israelis two years ago, which led to a war that has only just begun to wind down.
A Florida member of Congress has since filed a bill to outlaw enforcement of Shari’a Law in American systems, and a state representative months later filed nearly identical language in the Florida Legislature. Neither bill appeared to be based on any example of Sharia law in the U.S., but were described as preventative. Neither measure would apply to school voucher funding.
The governor’s office referred the Phoenix to a post by DeSantis in early October insisting that Sharia law “has no place in the USA” and is “incompatible” with the Constitution, and did not indicate that he would instruct DOE to pull their funding.
The word “Sharia” did not appear on the websites of either Hifz Academy nor Bayaan Academy.
Where did the controversy come from?
The RAIR Foundation, a right-wing media organization dedicated to opposing communism and “Islamic Supremacy,” last week published a lengthy article and two videos claiming that Florida’s school choice vouchers are being used to build “Sharia-run institutions” that “convert public dollars into permanent Islamic infrastructure.”
It pointed to two private Islamic schools in Tampa teaching both Islam and traditional school subjects at the K-12 level that accept school vouchers. Hifz was founded in 2011 and teaches 460 students at a rate of $9,600 per K-6th grader and $10,000 for every 7th-12th grader. Bayaan was founded in 2015 and teaches 200 students at a rate of $12,700 per K-5th grader, $14,700 per 6th-11th grader, and $7,350 per twelfth grader.
The article claims that Bayaan Academy’s principal, Magda Elkadi Saleh, is the daughter of the late Ahmed Elkadi, a founding member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. South Florida congressmen earlier this year attempted to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization for allegedly supporting terrorist groups.
Such scholarships for religious schools were first made possible by a 1999 law under then-Gov. Jeb Bush for low-income students searching outside the public school system. In 2023, the Legislature expanded the law to allow any Floridian, regardless of income, to apply for vouchers to go to private schools accepting these scholarships.
According to Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers most of the state’s scholarships, Florida’s school choice programs provide an average of between $7,700 and $8,500 to students attending non-public schools. More than 122,000 new students started using vouchers in the 2023-24 school year.
When asked for comment, the Council for American-Islamic Relations referred the Phoenix to a Huffington Post article on RAIR’s founder, Amy Mekelburg, documenting her controversial past; this includes calling former President Barack Obama a “jihadist,” attempting to free a man convicted of killing his girlfriend, and encouraging readers to follow a man known to praise Adolf Hitler.
Step Up for Students has yet to get back to the Phoenix about how much money the Tampa schools received from the student voucher programs.
–Liv Caputo, Florida Phoenix
Leave a Reply