A Chicago Muslim group inspired by veteran Black Power activists solicits money to empty jails based on religious obligation.
Believers Bail Out claims to have freed 300 Muslims from immigration or pretrial detention with $2.4 million since its 2018 founding, according to its website. The organization has enjoyed financial support from several Muslim and left-wing groups focused on criminal justice reform or resisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Washington Examiner found. Believers Bail Out also coordinates with a network of bail funds that gained steam during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots.
The group’s leaders openly take inspiration from late Muslim leader Malcolm X and other radical Civil Rights era figures, even hosting a February video panel honoring veteran Black Power activists convicted of crimes. Their old race-based Marxist movement, battered by FBI investigation and prosecutions, has now moved to the U.S. nonprofit organization sector through Believers Bail Out to advance the goal of abolishing America’s justice system.
Believers Bail Out furthers this agenda by citing Sharia law, a set of rules that Islam says govern all of life. The rapid growth of America’s Muslim population is renewing fears that Sharia could undermine American values, including in Texas, where Republicans are strategizing on how to restrict Islamic political influence. Meanwhile, Believers Bail Out funds its efforts with an interpretation of Sharia that deems virtually all Muslim arrestees as victims.
“It is in our capacity and our duty as Muslims to be a part of ending this unjust bail system that criminalizes poverty and is inherently racist in nature,” its website says. Donations for bond qualify as “zakat,” a mandatory almsgiving in Sharia law, because the detainees are both “poor and in-need” and “slaves or captives” based on Islamic scriptures, the group argues.
The advocates’ immigration work is increasingly relevant as President Donald Trump ramps up deportations of people accused of jihadi-sympathizing viewpoints, who are often from Muslim regions.
“We firmly believe that based on our understandings of the modern American criminal punishment system that Muslims held in pre-trial and immigration incarceration are captive and held in bondage (fi al-riqab 9:60) and can thus be freed (fakku raqabatin 90:13),” the website says.
Believers Bail Out did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.
The ‘movement elders’
Believers Bail Out was created by four groups: Sapelo Square, MPower Change, Sirat Chicago, and the Chicago Community Bond Fund, according to a left-wing magazine profile. The organization has since funded itself through fiscal sponsorship, a system allowing it to obscure its finances from the public by handling them through sponsoring charities.
Sirat Chicago served as Believers Bail Out’s sponsor as of 2025 after receiving funds from major left-wing charities specifically for the bail fund. The Believers Bail Out website also formerly listed the civil rights group Defending Rights and Dissent as a fiscal sponsor in February, an archived webpage shows.
Believers Bail Out updated the site to avoid naming sponsors after media attention toward its February panel, where speaker Dhoruba bin Wahad quoted a violent Islamic prophecy against Jews. Believers Bail Out also removed the clip from public view.
“Every living thing in the [Muslim holy city] and in Western Asia would speak out … every bush, every tree would say that there’s a Jew behind me — slay him,” said bin Wahad, a former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army militant.
Bin Wahad was charged in 1971 with attempting to kill police, but a court tossed his convictions over legally questionable FBI tactics. The panel also included convicted police-killer Jalil Muntaqim from the Black Liberation Army and Jihad Abdulmumit, who served time for robbing banks for the militant group in the 1970s.
Defending Rights and Dissent, Sirat Chicago, MPower Change, Sapelo Square, and the Chicago Community Bond Fund did not respond to requests for comment.
Former black power activists are among many criminals that some newer on the Left give “celebrity status,” said Manhattan Institute extremism analyst Stu Smith.
“Movement elders are incredibly important to younger organizers, not only for legitimacy but as sources of information,” Smith told the Washington Examiner. “Even imprisoned figures like [former Black Panther leader] Mumia Abu-Jamal still have contact with all manner of activists.” Abu-Jamal was convicted of a Philadelphia police officer’s murder in 1981.
The trend has continued for more recent defendants, Smith said. “Eric King is a good example of a militant who served time for throwing Molotov cocktails at a congressional office and is now traveling the country on a book tour,” he told the Washington Examiner.
University of Michigan professor Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, a Believers Bail Out co-founder, also wrote in a 2023 paper about her mother’s legacy working with the Black Panther Party and other groups in the 1970s. Khabeer’s mother once wrote that America has the “most racist, despotic, slick, sly, degenerate system in the world,” according to the paper.
Fusing Sharia with prison abolition
Believers Bail Out says it follows zakat eligibility guidance from the California-based Tayba Foundation. The foundation joined a March 2024 panel with Believers Bail Out endorsing zakat for criminal justice agendas.
“While other organizations may reference our guidance, that should not be understood as Tayba’s endorsement of every interpretation or application of it,” Tayba Foundation chief operating officer Nabil Afifi told the Washington Examiner. The policy focuses on providing Muslim prisoners with religious resources rather than bail, though it echoes the Believers Bail Out argument that the detainees are “slaves” or “captives.”
“Tayba’s zakat policy was written and reviewed by scholars,” Afifi said. “It should be read in its full context and applied within its intended scope.”
The two groups’ interpretation reflects how some Muslims exploit uncertainties about Sharia law for political ends, according to Sam Westrop, director of a counterextremism program at the Middle East Forum.
“The Tayba Foundation appears to belong to the same obscure ideological network as Believers Bail Out,” he told the Washington Examiner. “This is unsurprising: American Islam is extremely diverse, comprising a broad range of sects, sub-sects, and theological and political divisions. Such diversity is a significant obstacle to Islamist groups, which seek to impose a single political order over Muslim communities.”
A leading Islamic council tried addressing these disputes with a February ruling that allows certain donations to political causes to count as zakat. “Given intra-Islamic divisions, it’s not clear how widely this ruling will be followed, and it may be a few years before we can gauge the consequences,” Westrop said.
“However, the potential for large-scale radical political influence is clear: American Islamist movements wield billions of dollars of annual revenue through the 501c nonprofit system, of which much is drawn from zakat,” he told the Washington Examiner.
INSIDE THE LEFTIST NETWORK WORKING TO SABOTAGE TRUMP’S DC PROSECUTIONS
Tayba Foundation founding director Shaykh Rami Nsour encouraged Muslims to broaden their idea of charity in the 2024 Believers Bail Out panel.
“That $200 or $300 or $400 of zakat, if it went to a family to buy groceries, does it have impact? Yes,” the Islamic scholar said. “Are people’s lives changed? Yes. But if that $200 was also needed by somebody to be able to post bail, and now they can get back to their family and provide for their family … where are we getting the most bang for our buck, so to speak?”
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
