Hezbollah-Aligned Mosque in Michigan Took Nearly $1 Million in U.S. Taxpayer Funds While Indoctrinating Children With Mecca Rituals and Iranian Regime Propaganda (Video)

While the American public is told that Islamic institutions are simply “places of worship,” a Shiite mosque in Michigan is proving otherwise. The Islamic Institute of Knowledge (IIOK) in Dearborn, a tax-exempt organization with documented ties to Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, recently hosted a mock Hajj pilgrimage for children as young as four.

Marketed as a harmless “educational” event by IIOK’s Women’s Committee, the activity simulated Mecca’s most sacred rituals: dressing in Ihram clothing, circling a model Kaaba, reenacting the story of Hagar, and symbolically stoning “Shaytan.” Children between the ages of four and ten were coached to recite Islamic prayers and mimic rituals from one of the most segregated religious zones on Earth. Mecca, where non-Muslims are banned by law.

This is not cultural enrichment. This is religious apartheid repackaged as childhood education and financed by American taxpayers.

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A Mosque Steeped in Terrorist Ideology

Founded in 1983 by Abdel Latif Berry, a Lebanese national and devoted disciple of Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, the late spiritual godfather of Hezbollah, IIOK was born out of a split from the Islamic Center of America. Berry called for stricter adherence to conservative Shia theology and soon attracted like-minded followers. He established IIOK as a religious stronghold for Iranian-style theocracy, complete with a giant portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, the architect of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, hanging prominently in the mosque’s main meeting room.

Berry wasn’t just inspired by Khomeini; he actively praised him. In 2009, IIOK hosted a 20th-anniversary memorial for Khomeini, where Berry honored the Ayatollah’s legacy. The next year, IIOK mourned the death of Fadlallah, Hezbollah’s spiritual leader. At the commemoration, IIOK cleric Sheikh Baqir Berry, son of Abdel Latif Berry, called Fadlallah’s writings “the true explanation of Islam.”

This is not innocent theology. It is the ideological lifeblood of Iran’s terrorist state and its global network of Shia militias.

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Publicly Calling for the Destruction of Israel

The same mosque hosting children’s simulations of the rituals in Mecca is also stoking international jihadist rhetoric, right from U.S. soil.

In April 2024, IIOK’s Sheikh Baqir Berry delivered a sermon where he parroted Iranian regime propaganda, comparing Israel to ISIS and calling it a “great imminent danger.” He concluded by calling for the “removal of Israel”—a sanitized, legally palatable way of inciting genocide.

This followed an October 2023 candlelight vigil at IIOK held after Hamas’s October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians. Rather than condemning the terrorist attacks, IIOK blamed Israel and likened it to the Nazis, a grotesque inversion of reality that aligns directly with Iran’s genocidal messaging.

So while IIOK reenacts Hajj for children in Dearborn, it echoes Khomeinist and Hezbollah narratives to its adult congregants; unapologetically, repeatedly, and with growing boldness.

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Taxpayer Funding for Terror-Linked Indoctrination

Adding insult to injury, this Hezbollah-aligned, Iran-glorifying, apartheid-simulating mosque has received over $851,000 in federal funding through the National School Lunch Program. IIOK is not just preaching an anti-American, anti-Israel ideology. It’s doing so with your money.

How is it legal for an American mosque to publicly honor terrorist icons, call for Israel’s destruction, and recreate apartheid religious rituals for children, while receiving U.S. taxpayer dollars?

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The Mecca Simulation: Apartheid Rituals on U.S. Soil

Let’s not sanitize what Hajj really is. The real pilgrimage takes place in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a city that is 100% off-limits to non-Muslims. Not symbolically. Legally. Entry is forbidden to Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists—anyone not born into or having converted to Islam. If caught, non-Muslims face immediate deportation or worse.

This is religious apartheid, codified in law and enforced by the Saudi state. No tourists. No pilgrims. No interfaith observers. No exceptions.

And yet, while you are banned from Mecca, mosques like IIOK are recreating it in Michigan, for children. Not just with playtime. With full reenactments of sacred rituals, complete with dress, chants, and behavioral indoctrination.

What other religion is allowed to simulate a ritual that the rest of the population is forbidden from witnessing?

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Colonization, Not Coexistence

This is not education. It’s ideological engineering. A religious supremacist ritual, modeled on legal exclusion, is being normalized under the banner of “faith-based community outreach.”

There is no reciprocal tolerance here. Christians can’t build a church in Mecca. Jews can’t even enter. Yet American towns are importing the rituals of these exclusionary systems—taught to young children, shielded by religious privilege, and enforced by fear of public backlash.

This isn’t coexistence. It’s conquest peacefully packaged, government-funded, and silently spreading.

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The Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher

If a Christian school taught its students that Jews were a “great imminent danger” and needed to be “removed,” there would be national outrage. If it hosted a reenactment of Jerusalem that excluded Muslims, lawsuits would fly. But when a Hezbollah-linked Shiite mosque glorifies Khomeini, praises Fadlallah, calls for the elimination of Israel, and simulates a pilgrimage that legally bars your family, it’s called education.

The Islamic Institute of Knowledge is not just a mosque. It is a mouthpiece for Iran’s global agenda. A threat to Jewish safety. A symbol of religious apartheid. And a warning sign of what happens when America confuses tolerance with submission.

The children of Michigan deserve better than Hezbollah theology in Hajj costumes, and so does America.

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