Mohamad al-Ali al-Halabi was the imam of the American Islamic Center of Florida and a Hezbollah supporter.
Biography[]
Mohamad al-Ali al-Halabi was born and raised in Syria to a Shi'ite family, and he began to receive an Islamic education in Iran in 1987. He immigrated to the USA in 1999 to preach Shi'ism in America, and he was involved in several Shia leadership organizations, becoming one of the most important Shia clerics in America. al-Halabi founded the American Islamic Center of Florida in Boca Raton, Florida in 2003, with these mosques being Shia instead of the already-established Sunni mosques. In April 2005, he held a free dinner to invite new members to the mosque, but he alienated members by inviting neo-Nazi William Baker - National Chairman of the American Populist Party - to speak, and having a Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations member presented as a "guest of honor". A year later, the mosque was renamed "the Florida Islamic Education Center", then "al-Huda Islamic Center" in 2008, and finally the "American Islamic Center of Florida" in 2012. al-Halabi was controversial, as he posted videos of the virulent anti-Semite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and anti-American Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on the internet, agreeing that America is the "mother of terrorism". Nearly all of his family supported his extremist views, but his son Mahmoud Ali served in the US Marine Corps.