Ibrahim Abusharif teaches a mandatory seminar promoting Qatar after a lawsuit from a Hamas terror victim crippled the group he cofounded
Northwestern University describes journalism professor Ibrahim Abusharif as a “former book publisher” who “has been involved in projects to translate—from Arabic into English—the Quran.” It does not give examples of those projects, perhaps because they include the Quranic Literacy Institute (QLI), an organization Abusharif cofounded that raised and laundered money for Hamas and was forced to pay damages to the family of a teenaged terror victim.
Abusharif is a Chicago native who received his master’s degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and worked as a senior lecturer at the university’s Evanston campus in 2008. From there, he moved to Qatar, where he’s served as an assistant and then associate professor of journalism at Northwestern’s Doha campus for more than 17 years.
But Abusharif has not always worked in academia. From 1990 to 1998, he served as cofounder and treasurer of the QLI, an organization in suburban Chicago that ostensibly worked to “translate and publish sacred Islamic texts.” It was actually a “money-laundering clearinghouse” for Hamas, as revealed in an early 2000s lawsuit from the family of David Boim, a 17-year-old American killed in a 1996 Hamas terror attack in Jerusalem. A federal court found QLI liable for the attack in a 2004 ruling that provided the Boim family with $156 million in damages. That ruling was re-affirmed in 2008.
Abusharif’s status as a Northwestern Qatar professor is one example of how the university’s partnership with the Gulf State “contributes to the creation of a hostile environment for Northwestern’s Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students,” according to a recent Middle East Forum report.
Abusharif teaches the “Doha Seminar,” a required course for Northwestern students who spend a semester in Qatar before returning to Evanston. The seminar “discusses issues relevant to Qatar and the Gulf”—including “history,” “arts and culture,” and “regional and international foreign policy”—and examines “the interplay between modernity and tradition in Qatar.” In other words, it exists to “promote the Qatari government’s narrative,” the Middle East Forum report states.
As QLI’s treasurer, Abusharif oversaw the finances of an organization that in 1991 used nearly $1 million from a Saudi terror financier to purchase a rental property. Rather than keep the rental income for itself, QLI funneled it to Mohammad Salah, a Hamas operative whom QLI employed as a “computer analyst” to provide him cover for Hamas activities.
Salah, according to the Boim family’s May 2000 complaint, took his cues from Mousa Abu Marzook, a former U.S. resident who served as Hamas’s de facto foreign minister in America before his imprisonment in 1995 and subsequent deportation to Jordan in 1997. When Israel deported hundreds of Hamas terrorists to Lebanon in December 1992, the complaint states, Marzook directed Salah to “go to Israel” and “distribute $790,000 to Hamas cells” to shore up the terror outfit’s chain of command.
Salah, a Chicago native and U.S. resident, arrived in Israel in January 1993. Two years later, he pleaded guilty in an Israeli court to channeling funds to Hamas. He spent two years in prison before returning to the United States, where he served more jail time for lying about his ties to Hamas in connection with the Boim suit.
Marzook lives in Doha and remains active in Hamas leadership. In the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre, he told the New Yorker that “he and other Hamas political leaders had authorized the attack’s over-all strategy, including its scale and ambition.”
Though Abusharif was not charged in the scheme himself, a November 2004 court order stated that, as treasurer, Abusharif would have known where the group’s money came from and what that money was meant to support.
“It is certainly no great leap to infer that Mr. Abusharif, who served as Treasurer of QLI, has first-hand knowledge of how and why QLI was funded,” the order states.
Abusharif, who also teaches courses on magazine writing, journalistic storytelling, and “Islam, America, and Media,” has not discussed the ordeal since joining Northwestern. He did, however, defend QLI in a November 2002 interview with the Chicago Tribune.
“The whole forfeiture is unjust and QLI is challenging it,” he said, referencing a 1998 federal forfeiture complaint that confiscated hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of QLI assets. “Just because someone makes an accusation, it shouldn’t be like a scarlet letter that you carry around for life.”
Northwestern’s partnership with Qatar has come under scrutiny as the Gulf nation harbored Hamas terrorists and as anti-Semitic demonstrations plagued the school in the wake of Oct. 7. The Trump administration stripped $790 million in federal funding to Northwestern over its response to those demonstrations, which saw then-university president Michael Schill reach a deal with the student radicals who took over parts of campus. As part of that deal, Schill hired a Palestinian professor who sits on the board of a Gazan organization that maintains close ties to Hamas.
Schill stepped down last week, acknowledging in a statement that “difficult problems remain, particularly at the federal level.” Shortly thereafter, the House Committee on Education and Workforce released an Aug. 5 interview with Schill, which revealed that Northwestern’s contract with Qatar includes a clause that effectively forbids students and faculty from criticizing the Qatari regime.
Neither Northwestern nor Abusharif immediately responded to requests for comment.
