#2804: Fouad ElBayly

This is some old bullshit, but we feel compelled to mention him in case he should crawl out of the woodwork again in the future: Fouad ElBayly is the former president of the Islamic Center in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a position from which he was forced to step down after he issued a fatwa, a death sentence, against activist and former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali in 2007: “She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith,” said ElBayly, and if you have “defamed the faith” by leaving Islam or not agreeing with ElBayly on theological issues, the sentence is death: “If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death.” The context for the fatwa was that Ali was scheduled to speak at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown. ElBayly’s and Islamic Center of Johnstown founder Mahmood Qazi’s attempts to pressure the university to cancel Ali’s appearance failed miserably, however.

 

The incident received renewed attention in 2015, when the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Bureau of Prisons contracted ElBayly to provide “leadership and guidance” to Muslim inmates at Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. And although the Islamic Center in Johnstown officially had distanced themselves from his 2007 antics, it turned out that ElBayly was – of course – still on their payroll in 2015.

 

In 2016, ElBayly was also behind a petition in Somerset County challenging the results of the presidential and U.S. Senate races. The petition, which was quickly quashed, asked for “a forensic analysis of the software and media inside the (voting) machines” based on ElBayly disliking the results and no evidence whatsoever but non-specific rumors of hacking and cyberattacks – basically the same sort of nonsense that would define the Stop the Steal conspiracy theories and antics four years later from the other camp.

 

Diagnosis: A repugnant piece of garbage. His influence is limited, but he has also been given opportunities to use that limited influence to sow garbage, and he does seem to have some followers.