Taxpayers have for years funded a controversial religious group that plans to build a Muslim city in the Texas heartlands, the Daily Mail can reveal.
The city of Plano, Texas, has quietly handed over $220,000 to the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) and its hardline ‘hate preacher’ Yasir Qadhi, its resident scholar, official filings show.
Qadhi has a past record of anti-Semitism, holocaust denial, and calling for gay killings. EPIC is building a 400-acre Islamic city in northeastern Texas.
Crucially, Plano, a northeastern suburb of Dallas, kept funds flowing to EPIC even after Texas officials launched probes into the group for alleged discrimination.
Sam Westrop, a Dallas-based researcher at the Middle East Forum, a conservative non-profit that tracks Islamists, says Plano voters were let down by their council.
‘From all the messages I’ve already received, I know that Plano taxpayers are outraged that their money is funding radical institutions,’ Westrop said.
Plano has in recent years wired millions to EPIC and other local Muslim groups whose leaders have called ‘for the killing of homosexuals, justify spousal abuse, and support violent international Islamist movements,’ he said.
‘Islamist groups in the West subsist on the foolishness of public officials,’ added Westrop.
Born in Texas, educated in Saudi Arabia and Yale University, Yasir Qadhi has a record of homophobia and anti-Semitism
The group runs the East Plano Islamic Center in the Dallas suburbs and has plans for a bigger ‘Muslim city’ to the northeast
Plano officials did not answer the Daily Mail’s request for comment. Qadhi has reportedly walked back his past rhetoric, and his group brands itself as ‘diverse and open’ nowadays while decrying ‘misinformation’ about their goals.
The case raises tough questions about Texas’ fast-growing Muslim population, Islamophobia, and whether the hardline views of clerics put the faith at odds with modern Western values.
Plano, a wealthy city of 285,000 in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, has handed over more than $220,000 to EPIC since 2016, city records show.
The files do not show why EPIC, which has since 2015 run a busy mosque and community in East Plano, received the funds.
Crucially, the most recent grant, of some $142,921, was provided on 9 May 2025 — just weeks after EPIC came under the scrutiny of state investigators.
Texas Gov Greg Abbott, a Republican, opened multiple probes into the mosque and its ‘affiliated entities’ for ‘potential criminal activities.’
He accused EPIC of developing a Muslim-only community with Sharia law and directed the Texas Rangers and other state agencies to investigate it.
Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn has said the project is also being probed by the Department of Justice; Attorney general Ken Paxton has opened a criminal investigation. The probes are ongoing.
EPIC made headlines in February 2024 when it announced plans to build a 402-acre ‘EPIC City’ focused on Islamic culture some 40 miles northeast of downtown Dallas.
The megaproject of 1,000 homes, a mosque, Islamic schools, clinics, stores, parks, and a nursing home is planned on a site straddling Collin and Hunt Counties.
Qadhi’s group, EPIC, has plans for a city northeast of Dallas focused on the Muslim faith
Plano’s centrist city council has doled out millions to flagged Islamic groups in recent years, according to the Middle East Forum
Organizers say the first round of properties sold out fast and have since announced ‘ranches’ of bigger homes nearby. Construction was set to begin in 2026 or 2027.
But residents of Josephine and other towns near the site say they are worried about austere ‘Sharia’ laws on their doorstep.
EPIC brands itself a ‘multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multilingual, non-sectarian, diverse, and open community’ with opportunities for men and women that are open to non-Muslims.
But cleric Qadhi’s comments over previous decades cannot be further from the liberal values espoused by his organization.
In one recording provided by the MEF, apparently of Qadhi preaching in the US in about the early 2000s, the scholar describes the wide array of vices that mandate executions under Islam.
‘This is a part of our religion, to stone the adulterer … and to kill, by the way, the homosexual. This is also our religion,’ he says in the recording.
His comments appear to pre-date the Islamic State group, which imposed harsh Sharia law in Iraq and Syria in the 2010s and flung gay men off buildings to their deaths.
In a particularly revelatory comment, Qadhi tells his followers that his austere version of Islamic law was not suitable in the West.
‘This doesn’t mean we go do this in America,’ he says.
‘No, we’re not allowed to do this in America, you know? But I’m saying if we had an Islamic State, we would do this now.’
EPIC has purchased 402 acres of land north of Josephine, Texas, for its ‘Muslim city
Qadhi, 50, a Pakistani-American who was born in Texas and studied in Saudi Arabia and Yale University, and ranks among the most influential conservative Muslim scholars in the US, claims to have changed his ways.
His controversies were reported on in the 2000s by The Daily Telegraph, a UK newspaper, and The New York Times.
He has walked back his comments as a ‘one-time mistake,’ saying he fell down a ‘slippery slope’ into extremism when he was ‘young and naïve.’
Nowadays he offers in public a gentler and more tolerant version of the religion of some 2 billion people globally.
Still, some of Qadhi’s more recent comments recall his previous radicalism.
He has spoken in defense of Afghanistan’s ultraconservative Taliban rulers, the Hamas 7 October 2024 attacks on southern Israel, and convicted al-Qaeda operative Aafia Siddiqui.
The organizers of EPIC City did not answer our request for comment.
On social media after Abbott launched investigations of EPIC, the group decried a ‘misinformation’ campaign against the mosque and a rise in ‘hate and attacks on our community.’
‘We are proud Texans, Americans, and Muslims,’ says the statement.
In his public appearances nowadays, Qadhi offers a more tolerant version of the religion of some 2 billion Muslims
Qadhi in 2016 posted in defense of the actionds of the Taliban, then an Islamist insurgent group
The 50-year-old scholar once said that gay people and adulterers should be put to death under Islam
‘We are committed to doing things the right way — legally, ethically and peacefully. And our doors remain open to anyone who wants to see the good we do with our own eyes.’
EPIC is not the only concerning beneficiary of Plano’s largesse.
Records show how officials signed off on payouts totaling $3.8 million to seven Islamic groups flagged by MEF in recent years.
Plano handed over a dozen grants worth more than $1 million from 2017 to 2020 to the Islamic Association of Collin County (IACC), and its hardline imam Arsalan Haque, the filings show.
Westrop provided a video of Haque delivering a sermon to mostly male IACC followers about how husbands can beat their wives.
Sensationally, Haque says beatings must be undertaken in the correct ‘context’ and only ‘to bring her back to her senses.’
Haque in another sermon elsewhere in Dallas urges his followers to not beat their wives ‘to the extent that they die.’
The IACC did not answer our requests for comment on the controversy, which raises tough questions about the elevated rates of spousal abuse among America’s Muslim immigrants.
Westrop says officials in Plano and beyond too readily fund such groups as EPIC and IACC without knowing enough about their recipients.
‘Public funding not only enriches these groups, but gives them legitimacy and power,’ said Westrop, whose group has faced criticism for being anti-Muslim.
‘Public funding helps radicals assert extremist leadership over once-moderate Muslim communities.’
