Qatari Cash Turns Top Catholic University into Hotbed of Radical Islam
Explosive reports reveal how Jesuit school sold its soul to Islamic extremism for big bucks
A leading Catholic university, which has pocketed more than $1 billion from Qatar and other Arab nations, has become America’s “ground zero” for radical Islamist foreign influence, according to a bombshell report published by the Middle East Forum (MEF).
The July 8 report, Beachhead: Georgetown University (GU) reveals how the Jesuit school partnered with “malign foreign influence actors” from Qatar, Turkey, and Malaysia to brainwash academics, diplomats, and thousands of students with the ideology of extremist Islam.
The authors found that GU’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) was the epicenter for “fundamentally reshaping Middle East and Islamic studies” and creating an ideology “sympathetic to America’s enemies and hostile to U.S. interests.”
ACMCU, which is part of GU’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, was established, developed, funded, and staffed by the Safa Network, a Virginia-based nexus investigated by federal agencies for its links to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist outfits.
Over 30 years, the school’s ACMCU welcomed 40 faculty and advisory members with some past or present role in the Safa network, which “works to homogenize Muslim communities, theocratize education, and propagate Islamist ideology,” the report stated.
The center is named after a member of the Saudi royal family who donated $20 million to GU in 2005 “to teach about the Islamic world to the United States.”
Jesuit University Fudges Islamist Funding
A second report, published in June by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), found that GU significantly underreported its funding from Qatar to the U.S. Department of Education, despite a legal mandate to report do so.
According to “Foreign Infiltration: Georgetown University, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood,” GU reported $927,598,923 in Qatari funding to the feds, despite receiving $1,073 billion from Qatar as of October 15, 2024 — an underreporting of $146 million.
Moreover, undisclosed Qatari grants to Qatari students at GU-Qatar between 2005 and 2024 are estimated to be more than $102 million. GU also underreported approximately $8 million in Qatar Foundation contributions over these four years, the 135-page report revealed.
“Foreign financial and ideological influences have fundamentally reshaped Georgetown’s foundational Jesuit principles, diluted its commitment to diverse intellectual inquiry, and turned it into a prime example of foreign interference in American higher education,” the authors noted.
GU has also received funding from countries like Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, and Jordan. This has redefined its academic and cultural identity and “steered its intellectual discourse toward a distinctive pro-Islamist and anti-Israel orientation,” ISGAP warned.
GU’s graduates “frequently report hostility toward pro-Western viewpoints and heightened sympathy for extreme anti-Israel positions,” it noted, adding that the Catholic university’s medical students and faculty have publicly justified violence by Hamas.
Islamist Axis of Qatar, Muslim Brotherhood, and GU’s Antisemitism
A key finding of the ISGAP report focused on GU’s affiliations with “extensive networks linked to Islamist movements and entities associated with the Muslim Brotherhood,” one of the oldest and most influential radical Islamist movements founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is committed to destroying democracies, including the United States and Israel, and to replacing them with a distorted version of an Islamist caliphate,” the report noted.
It also explained how “Qatar has consistently positioned itself as both an ideological incubator and logistical facilitator of Islamist extremism” as a major funder of the translational Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian wing, Hamas.
“Under these circumstances, how can the Qatari regime be permitted to fund one of the most important and sensitive universities in the United States?” the authors asked.
The MEF also found multiple links between Qatar and GU, including Qatar’s grants and contracts with Georgetown worth over $927.6 million provided between 2005 and 2023, as well as 17 ACMCU faculty or fellows involved with Qatari regime organizations.
It noted that the Wahhabi theocracy of Qatar, in which flogging and the death penalty are sharia-based punishments, was part of a new global Sunni Islamist axis along with Turkey and Malaysia, fueling “the spread of extremism in the West, as well as funding and supporting terrorism in the East.”
GU’s Qatar campus continued to serve as “an important Islamist platform,” with its School of Foreign Service in Qatar touted as providing “ideal training” for the U.S. State Department, it added.
A major fallout of GU’s Islamist leanings has been “a pronounced increase in antisemitic activities, pro-Hamas demonstrations, and BDS-related activism,” which have been supported by faculty and students from the school’s Middle East–focused centers, the ISGAP report revealed.
Last September, The Stream reported that GU was promoting pro-Hamas propaganda and fomenting antisemitism through its Gaza Lecture Series. Israel slammed the school for inviting UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to deliver the October 28 presentation in the series titled “Anatomy of Genocide in Gaza.”
‘Catholic’ University Promotes Radical Islam
“It’s an odd location for a Jesuit school that is supposed to be rooted in Christian values, given Qatar’s support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood,” remarked Mitchell Bard, a foreign-policy analyst and author of 22 books, including the bestseller Death to the Infidels: Radical Islam’s War Against the Jews.
“Consider the irony of a Jesuit university hosting a center funded by someone from a country that discriminates against Christians,” Bard added. Georgetown is ranked #1 in the 2025 Niche Best Colleges rankings of “Best Catholic Colleges in America.”
The school was founded by the Society of Jesus and is the first and oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the U.S. It is also the nation’s first federally chartered university.
In 2020, the Department of Education’s Office of the General Counsel warned that ACMCU had “received criticism for deceptively labeling itself as pluralistic; according to critics, the “Christian” studies portion of the Center was a “misnomer” as there was no Christian representation.
GU currently tops the list of Catholic universities benefiting from Islamic funding and ranks second after Cornell University ($2.1 billion) for the largest gifts received from Arab Muslim donors, The Stream reported.
In March 2023, the Catholic university bragged that it had built what it called “the first-of-its-kind mosque” on an American college campus. “The Yarrow Mamout Masjid is the first mosque with ablution stations, a spirituality and formation hall, and a halal kitchen on a U.S. college campus,” a press statement from the university trumpeted.
“Georgetown was also the first U.S. university to hire a full-time Muslim chaplain, Imam Yahya Hendi, 24 years ago.”
GU did not respond to The Stream’s request for comment.
Dr. Jules Gomes (BA, BD, MTh, PhD) has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.