Muslim teacher who donated to Texas Senate Dem candidate James Talarico says Quran gives husbands license to hit wives

Texas Democrat James Talarico’s Senate campaign accepted $3,000 from a celebrity Muslim leader who was accused of grooming female fans for sham marriages and assured husbands that Allah would “let you get away with” wife-beating — under certain conditions.Nouman Ali Khan — founder of the Bayyinah Institute, an Islamic studies outfit boasting millions of fans on YouTube — cut the Texas Democrat three $1,000 checks, FEC records show.The most recent donation arrived Oct.19, the day early voting opened — and one day after Talarico worked the room courting Muslim voters at a halal barbecue spot in Irving.Khan was not at the halal event, a Talarico campaign official said.The Quran teacher’s reputation took a major hit in 2017, when multiple women accused him of using his celebrity among Muslim fans to draw them into relationships — in some cases quickie religious marriages they said were a cover for sex — and then pressuring them to keep their mouths shut.A panel of four Muslim scholars found that when women complained about his conduct, Khan “apologizes and attempts to buy their silence or threatens them,” BuzzFeed News reported.

The panel’s findings reportedly included a screenshot of a nearly $7,000 bank transfer that one woman described as hush money.A second panel of six clerics concluded that Khan’s behavior was “unbecoming of any believer, much less someone who teaches about the Holy Qur’an.”Khan, for his part, denied any wrongdoing and his lawyer called the claims “unfounded.”Two years before the allegations surfaced, Khan posted a lecture to his YouTube channel titled “Hitting Women – That’s Messed Up.” It opens as a condemnation of Muslim men who use scripture to justify domestic violence.But about 10 minutes in, Khan finds a theological loophole: a situation in which a wife “is actually caught” and her husband “sees her with another man.”“He loses his mind, and what does he do? He hits her,” Khan said....