A Jewish lawmaker is calling for Governor Ron DeSantis’ Administration to take action against a Muslim school that receives taxpayer-funded vouchers. Republican Representative Randy Fine is incensed by the school leader’s inflammatory remarks against Jewish people -- and by the state’s apparent lack of action since those remarks came to light.
Fadi Kablawi is the imam of a mosque in North Miami. He delivered a sermon in April that raised some concerns. It began in English…
“I apologized to the Nazis last week because these people have proven to be worse than the Nazis,” Kablawi said.
He then shifted to Arabic, making antisemitic and disparaging remarks against Jewish people as he prayed.
When Fine, who is Jewish, heard about Kablawi’s remarks a few weeks later, he wrote to Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz. Fine says the imam’s mosque also owns and operates the Reviver Academy at the same location. The school receives more than $500,000 in state scholarships to help cover the tuition of 74 students. Fine thinks the state ought to be reviewing that relationship, but months later he says he hasn’t seen any results. Fine says that lack of action makes it feel as if the DeSantis administration is condoning the imam’s remarks.
“When you stand up and say, ‘Jews are the brothers of apes and pigs’ and the DeSantis administration says, ‘Where can we send the check?’ I don’t know how else you can interpret that,” Fine said.
But whether the state can take action and what that action might be are unclear.
Craig Waters, general counsel to the Florida Center for Government Accountability, says this situation has many layers in the law.
“The whole idea of school vouchers has been going through the courts for decades now,” he said. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions about how voucher systems can operate lawfully within the contours of the Constitution.”
Waters says the basic public policy question he sees is an apparent lack of transparency and oversight with some of the voucher schools.
“Even from Fine’s letter, it appears that he’s not really certain of how the vouchers are being used in this particular school,” he said, “whether the voucher money is actually flowing to this particular mosque or to the imam in some way. Those are questions that certainly would be relevant to any lawsuits that might eventually come.”
So, Waters says, the situation may mean the state is torn between the threat of a lawsuit for religious discrimination and the threat of a lawsuit for failing to exercise sufficient transparency and oversight.
“Now, the state may have some reasons why it doesn’t want much transparency here, because they’re walking a tightrope when it comes to First Amendment issues,” said Waters. “By First Amendment, I mean not merely free speech and expression, but also the right of religious freedom.”
Waters also says the state could be walking a tightrope to avoid micro-managing the voucher schools. Because that kind of entanglement could conceivably lead a court to conclude that the voucher schools are being run by the state.
Neither the Executive Office of the Governor, the state Department of Education nor the Reviver Academy immediately responded to questions about the academy’s status. Step Up for Students, Florida’s education choice funding organization, still lists Reviver Academy as receiving scholarships but referred questions to DOE.
In May, Imam Kablawi told NBC 6 South Florida that his intent was not to hurt anyone.
“I wasn’t calling for violence,” he said. “I wasn’t calling for anybody to harm anybody. I was making a pure prayer against tyrannical criminals who are killing my people.”
According to a state House analysis of a bill Fine co-sponsored in the 2024 legislative session, antisemitic incidents in Florida have risen dramatically. The analysis cites Anti-Defamation League reports that such incidents rose by more than 100 percent from 2020 to 2022.
