In Friday sermons streamed live on YouTube, two men let loose with a broad variety of Jew-hating invective.
Ghaith Arodaki, who identifies as an entrepreneur and recently graduated from San Jose State University, spoke on Dec. 29 for the Islamic Center of Frisco, Texas.
Citing the Quran, he said: “‘Those that You have cursed,’ they said it [is] meant to be the Jews. The people that are distributing corruption in the land, they have been doing it since Satan did that sin [of arrogance]. Satan is their guidance. Satan is their mentor. Satan is their teacher.”
Arodaki echoed the common antisemitic stereotype of shadowy Jewish control of institutions, saying “those cursed people, that is what they are doing, with the media, the financial system, the political and social system that they have been manipulating and controlling for the past two centuries at least.”
Arodaki said “what they are doing in Palestine—the purpose of it is not what they claim. It is not peace, it is not to return to the homeland. The true reason why they are doing what they are doing is to continue to spread corruption, interest, murder, stealing, fornication. That is the purpose of what they are doing.”
Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the founder of the nonprofit Institute of Advanced Usuli Studies delivered a sermon on Dec. 22.
Claiming that Jews repeated Nazi ideals and are now applying them to Palestinians, El Fadl claimed that “the rhetoric of the Germans is indistinguishable from the rhetoric that Israel uses about Palestinians and from the rhetoric that the United States uses about Palestinians.”
El Fadl also denied Hamas’s atrocities, saying Israel had engaged in similar human-rights violations against Palestinians. “Israelis executed Palestinians in front of their families. They had the women and children go to a particular building, on a particular floor, and involved that building, killing the women and children,” he said.
Referring to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel, he added that the United States lied about “beheaded babies” and “raped women.”
The Usuli Institute El Fadl leads and where he presents his sermons describes itself as “dedicated to research and education to promote humanistically beautiful and morally elevating interpretations of Islam.”