Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > SoFlo Muslim Federation Promotes Jihad While Launching ‘Mental Health Campaign' For Behavioral Health & Suicide Prevention
SoFlo Muslim Federation Promotes Jihad While Launching ‘Mental Health Campaign' For Behavioral Health & Suicide Prevention
The Myth Of Muslim Mental Illness - From ‘Conflict' Of Interests To Sudden Jihad Syndrome
June 11, 2026
South Florida Muslim Federation's Mental Health Jihad
Is the Muslim Federation offering suicide prevention or promoting suicide bombings?
June 3, 2026 by Joe Kaufman Leave a Comment
The South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF) is currently being praised for its mental health initiative aimed at addressing suicide and emotional struggles within South Florida's Muslim community. Through its Florida Muslim Mental Health campaign, the organization promotes counseling resources, suicide prevention workshops, youth outreach, behavioral health conferences, and discussions about breaking the stigma surrounding therapy.
On the surface, the effort appears admirable, receiving positive media attention. But beneath the carefully crafted image of compassion and healing lies a deeply disturbing reality. The very same federation and member organizations now presenting themselves as guardians of mental health have spent years promoting pro-Hamas conferences, platforming terror-linked figures, and spreading violent intolerance toward Jews, women, gays, and non-Muslims.
Following the October 7 Hamas massacre in Israel – where over 1,200 Israelis were murdered and hundreds kidnapped – the South Florida Muslim Federation did not distance itself from the extremism. Instead, it organized and promoted conferences that featured terrorist imagery and speakers who, in response to the attacks, had glorified Hamas murderers and kidnappers.
At the 2025 Florida Muslim Conference, held at the Coral Springs Center for the Arts, vendors openly sold merchandise honoring terrorists, including mugs bearing the image of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas mastermind behind the October 7 atrocities, and t-shirts depicting armed militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Conference promotional videos highlighted the items.
This controversy did not emerge in isolation. The prior year's conference had already generated condemnation after speakers were exposed praising Hamas and vilifying Jews. Concerns became so severe that the original venue, the Coral Springs Marriott Hotel & Convention Center, canceled the event days before it was to take place.
Now, many of the same institutions connected to those controversies are being used as hosts for the federation's mental health programming and webinars. One of them is the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR), a mosque with several ties to terrorist groups and violent antisemitism.
ICBR's founders include Hamas website designer Syed Khawer Ahmad and current ICBR Secretary and former assistant to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami al-Arian, Bassem Alhalabi. The founding imam of ICBR, Ibrahim Dremali, has encouraged followers to provide material support to Hamas and called for the annihilation of Israel's Jewish population. Dremali's replacement, Muneer Arafat, admitted during court proceedings that he was a member of PIJ.
The seed money for ICBR was provided by the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), an entity that was shut down by the U.S. government, following the 9/11 attacks, for financing al-Qaeda.
ICBR's website has been used to publish essays targeting Jews with violence. One, titled 'Why can't the Jews and Muslims live together in peace?' describes Jews as "people of treachery and betrayal" and "enemies" and says that a "Day of Judgement" will come when Muslims will "fight the Jews and kill them."
Another federation-affiliated mosque providing SFMF mental health webinars is the Islamic Foundation of South Florida (IFSF). IFSF has hosted speakers linked to terror, including Mazen Mokhtar, a former admin for the now-defunct al-Qaeda financing/recruitment site, qoqaz.net, and supporter of suicide bombings. The mosque's former youth director Abdurahman al-Ghani used social media to refer to Jews as "children of Satan" and praised Hamas as "the real hero."
Yet another SFMF mosque participating in this mental health initiative is Cooper City-based Nur-Ul-Islam (NUI). The former VP of NUI's children's school, Nur-Ul-Islam Academy (NUIA), and ex-member of the mosque's Islamic Affairs Council, Raed Awad, served as the Florida rep for the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). HLF was shut down by the U.S. government for raising millions of dollars for Hamas. NUIA also promoted the Hamas fundraising site, islamway.com.
SFMF's mental health campaign, as well, claims to address domestic violence. Yet, one of SFMF's mosques, Margate-based Masjid Jamaat al-Mumineen (MJAM) has an online library that contains religious texts sanctioning wife beatings. The MJAM texts further endorse female genital mutilation and death penalties for homosexuals and warn Muslims against befriending Jews and Christians, calling them "enemies of Islam."
MJAM's imam, Izhar Khan, was previously arrested and charged by the FBI for assisting members of his family with providing tens of thousands of dollars to the Pakistani Taliban.
Through its mental health campaign, SFMF is touting a video it is involved with, titled "Breaking the Silence: Muslim Suicide Prevention." Prominently featured on it is Waheeda Saif, a trauma center consultant. Less than two weeks after the October 7 massacre, Saif promoted groups "offering relief"to Gaza. One, Islamic Relief, was banned by a number of nations, and Israel has labeled it a front for Hamas. Another, Baitulmaal, is headed by Mazen Mokhtar (See above.)
Taken together, these facts expose the enormous hypocrisy behind the federation's public relations campaign. While SFMF now promotes "mental health awareness," it refuses to confront how the radical ideologies and terrorist influences – tolerated within much of its own network – contribute to those very problems they claim to address.
Suicide prevention and emotional support are exceptionally positive endeavors. But the federation cannot erase years of extremism, antisemitism, and associations with terror-linked individuals and groups simply by wrapping itself in the language of compassion and hiding behind the shield of a mental health campaign. Real compassion requires moral consistency – condemning terrorism without excuses and abandoning ideologies that demonize others.
Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/south-florida-muslim-federations-mental-health-jihad/
Printer-friendly version 
Email this item to a friend