Al Qaeda Ex-Wife Blames Qatar for Campus Radicalism
Al Qaeda Ex-Wife Blames Qatar for Campus Radicalism
The News
Yasmine Mohammed, an ex-Muslim writer who says she was forced into an abusive marriage with Egyptian al Qaeda operative Essam Marzouk, says the ideology she escaped is now being financed inside American universities.
She made the claim in an interview with Fox News Digital published Sunday, syndicated the same day by the New York Post and Yahoo News.
Mohammed, co-director of the Clarity Coalition and author of the book "Unveiled," told Fox that radicalization is happening "in all of these Ivy League universities" and that the largest share of foreign money behind it comes from Qatar.
The interview is her account. None of the three articles includes any response from Marzouk.
Timeline
Essam Mohamed Hafiz Marzouk arrives at the Richmond, British Columbia airport and tells Canadian authorities he was persecuted in Pakistan, CBC News reported. He was granted refugee status and lived for a time with his lawyer, Phil Rankin, who described him to CBC as "unobtrusive" and said, "He wasn't a raving lunatic."
Marzouk married a Canadian and had a child, was watched by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and was questioned after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to CBC. Separately, Mohammed says her forced marriage was to Marzouk and that she had a daughter with him.
Marzouk is believed to have left Canada, and his family, without explanation, CBC reported.
A BBC reporter found papers marked with a Surrey, B.C. address in al Qaeda's Kabul office, CBC reported. The address belonged to a rented mailbox registered to 4-U Enterprises, an import-export business Marzouk had registered in Canada. CBC reported that the Egyptian government said Marzouk belonged to the terrorist group al-Jihad and that he was serving 15 years in an Egyptian prison for terrorism.
Fox News Digital publishes Mohammed's interview. The New York Post and Yahoo News carry it the same day.
Reactions
Mohammed described the marriage in blunt terms. "I had to accept being beaten by him, being raped by him and my mom would give me religious justifications… [She would] tell me why I had no right to complain when he was doing these things because I'm his property," she told Fox News Digital.
She said the breaking point was her daughter. "I ended up getting pregnant, of course, because I can't say no to him, and I had a little girl… [then] he started talking about taking her to Egypt to get FGM [female genital mutilation] performed on her… There was nothing I could do except to get out. I had to get away from him and I had to get away from my mom and I had to protect my daughter."
Naming her ex-husband, she said: "His name was Essam Marzouk, and he is an Egyptian terrorist."
On American campuses, she said: "Happening in all of these Ivy League universities, you're going to see by far the biggest foreign funding is coming from Qatar… and the reason why all of that funding is from Qatar is because it is bringing this ideology with it."
What's Next
Mohammed says she will keep using her platform and her books to teach Americans about Islamic radicalism and forced marriage. She is co-director of the Clarity Coalition and wrote "Unveiled."
Her charge about Qatari money lands in a live Washington fight over how much foreign cash flows into elite American universities and how much of it gets disclosed. The three articles do not report any university, Qatari or federal response to her claim.
More
Who she is
Mohammed says she was born and raised in a secular Muslim family and wore the hijab and the niqab at different points in her life. She points to her mother's radicalization as the key turn that led to the forced, abusive marriage.
Her theory of radicalization
Mohammed said Marzouk grew up in Egypt and struggled to adjust after his family moved to a "more upper-class neighborhood" for his father's job. She argues that his difficulty assimilating is why he was likely "radicalized" by terrorists — and that the same recruitment dynamic is at work on US campuses today.
What is sourced and what is not
The abuse allegations, the FGM threat and the Ivy League claim are Mohammed's statements to Fox News Digital, not findings by a court or an investigator. The details of Marzouk's time in Canada, his al-Jihad designation by Egypt and his 15-year terrorism sentence come from CBC News reporting.
Poll
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