Payoffs, Threats, And Secret Marriages: How An Accused Preacher Is Fighting To Save His Empire
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In the spring of 2017, 29-year-old N.M.’s life was unraveling.
Her parents’ nasty breakup had left her and her mother homeless, forcing them to leave London and crash with a relative in northwest England. The move cost her the job she loved at an Islamic school. Broke and adrift in a new city, she was desperate for a spiritual boost.
That’s when she heard about Losing My Religion, a nearby conference where some of Islam’s most popular speakers would discuss big political and religious issues affecting Muslims. She was especially eager to see one headliner: Nouman Ali Khan, the Texas-based superstar preacher who’s earned millions of fans — and amassed a fortune — through his plainspoken Qur’an lessons aimed at millennials. Unofficial recordings of his lectures, such as one about material wealth titled “I feel sorry for Justin Bieber,” break the half-million mark for views.
Nouman Ali Khan
Bayyinah TV / Via bayyinah.tv
At the conference in April, N.M. and a few other women approached Khan with questions about Qur’an interpretation. He quickly zeroed in on her, she recalled, and asked about her personal life and her work as an Islamic teacher. She was thrilled when he offered to share a coveted syllabus from his suburban Dallas-based institute, Bayyinah, by far the most successful of a handful of for-profit Islamic learning centers in the United States.
“For years, I’ve listened to him,” N.M. said, referring to Khan’s lectures on YouTube. “He was a very, very pious person, and I already kind of trusted him, I suppose.”
N.M. left the conference buoyed by Khan’s encouraging words. They kept in touch via text. Later, when he learned N.M. was unemployed and dealing with family turmoil, he offered her a job working from England for Bayyinah. Finally, she thought, her life was on the upswing.
“He’d say, ‘Call me anytime, I’m here,’” N.M. said. “I looked to him as a father figure, a teacher. Then the texts got more and more frequent.”
The findings depict a man who used his prestige to groom female fans for “secret sham marriages.”
As the tone of his contact changed, N.M. said, she started to hear “alarm bells.” At first, she dismissed the idea that he might be interested in romance — it was well known that 39-year-old Khan had a wife and seven children. But then he confided that he was going through a divorce and floated the idea of marriage, N.M. said. Startled, she told him she’d consider the proposal. Privately, though, she had concerns that only deepened when he started sending her sexually suggestive texts and shirtless selfies, shocking behavior for a preacher who’s discouraged unmarried men and women from even shaking hands.
By that time, N.M. said, she and her relatives no longer felt flattered by the celebrity’s attention. Instead, they were suspicious, and began to make calls to the United States to figure out: Who, really, is Nouman Ali Khan?
Their digging would help turn a quiet investigation into the biggest scandal to hit the national US Muslim leadership in years: a tale of secret marriages, hush money, and threats. Months before N.M. met Khan, four Muslim clerics already had begun looking into reports about his conduct with women and had discovered that Khan’s private life didn’t match the moralizing he does on the lecture circuit.
A written summary of the clerics’ findings, which was obtained by BuzzFeed News and hasn’t been previously disclosed, depicts a man who used his prestige to groom female fans for “secret sham marriages,” essentially sexual relationships that have no US legal standing and only dubious religious cover. The panel, which included some of Khan’s longtime friends and colleagues, found that Khan “lies and manipulates” women as he courts them for such undercover unions. Some culminated in sex; others, like the one he pursued with N.M., did not. Khan is still legally married to the mother of his seven children, two associates of his wife said, though the couple is in divorce proceedings.
“He has urged them to lie to one another when he is found out. When he tires of them, he divorces them,” the clerics’ summary states. “At any step along the way, if they call him out on his manipulation, he apologizes and attempts to buy their silence or threatens them.” Included in the clerics’ report was a screenshot of a nearly $7,000 bank transfer from Khan to N.M., which she described as hush money. N.M. spoke on condition that only her initials be used, to protect her family’s privacy.
Bruce Turner, Khan’s attorney in Texas, responded late Wednesday to BuzzFeed News’ request for comment, disputing parts of N.M.’s account and calling the allegations against Khan “unfounded and clearly driven by a damaging motive.”
“The claim that my client made a practice of singling out women and taking advantage of them at Islamic events is preposterous,” Turner said in an emailed response.
"If they call him out on his manipulation, he apologizes and attempts to buy their silence or threatens them."
A broad outline of the claims against Khan was made public in a mediator’s Facebook post in September, just 10 days before reports about Hollywood titan Harvey Weinstein triggered the #MeToo explosion and revealed the pervasiveness of sexual misconduct, from off-color comments to rape. In the weeks since, however, Muslim women’s voices have been largely missing from the cascade of stories about powerful men crossing boundaries, and the Khan scandal helps explain why.
For any religion, acknowledging leaders’ flaws is painful; the Catholic Church, for example, is still wrestling with its history of protecting abusive priests. For US Muslims, that defensiveness is compounded by many other factors that contribute to a culture of silence when it comes to addressing misconduct claims.
For starters, Islam frowns upon publicizing the sins of others, with sensitive matters typically handled quietly to protect all involved. The idea of innocent until proven guilty is enshrined in Islamic law, with an especially high burden of proof for illicit sex.
In conservative circles where reputation is staked to women’s chastity, women are afraid to speak up for fear of hurting marriage chances or shaming their families. And if they do speak up, their claims are sometimes shrugged off because what might be taboo to them — such as holding hands or being asked for a photo with their hair uncovered — pales in comparison with the stories of women getting groped and attacked. And if the controversial issue of secret marriages is added to the mix, there’s even less incentive to come forward.
Muslim community figures who are asked to look into misconduct claims lack the training and resources to do a thorough job, according to advocacy groups studying the issue. Plus, there’s a financial risk in calling out famous figures who are vital to fundraising, not to mention the social fallout in the clubby world of national Islamic activism. The few Muslim leaders who’ve dared to criticize Khan on social media have been hit with a vicious backlash from his followers.
On top of all that, there’s the grim political backdrop, with many Muslims opposed to “airing dirty laundry” at a time of rampant hostility toward Islam.
“The reality is, in most Muslim institutions, there is so little oversight of the religious leadership,” said Ingrid Mattson, an Islamic studies professor and former president of the Islamic Society of North America who was part of an inquiry into Khan’s conduct. “There’s no easily accessible mechanism for reporting violations.”
Suffice it to say there’s little to gain in coming forward, especially to expose a figure as famous as Khan. Still, N.M. agreed to speak publicly for the first time, in a series of interviews this month with BuzzFeed News, to offer a cautionary tale about the dangers of failing to hold religious figures accountable. She’s alarmed that Khan is already easing back into public speaking with little outcry from the US Muslim leadership, which she says sends a chilling message to any woman grappling with whether to report inappropriate conduct.
Khan responded to allegations against him in September.
Nouman Ali Khan / Facebook / Via Facebook: noumanbayyinah
“I don’t want anyone slipping into the same trap as me,” N.M. said. “The rock-star Islamic speakers have access to so many women and if they’re corrupt, that’s a major danger for a lot of women.”
BuzzFeed News has reviewed text messages, emails, bank transfers, and other materials that support N.M.’s claims. And BuzzFeed News received further confirmation from three other people with direct knowledge of the events who requested anonymity because of Khan’s repeated threats of lawsuits against his detractors.
Separately, BuzzFeed News interviewed a second woman who alerted community leaders to unwelcome advances from Khan and contributed to their report; the woman didn’t want to be named or to speak at length about her experience. The clerics’ fact-finding document mentions at least four other women who’ve reported inappropriate conduct by Khan, including one who was in a secret marriage with him for two years.
Because no criminal offense is alleged, there’s much hand-wringing about how to frame the Khan scandal: Is it abuse of power? Is it sexual misconduct?
Khan hasn’t disputed the veracity of the photos and text threads that were leaked but has said on Facebook that the claims are a mix of lies and distortions about “communications” between consenting adults after he divorced his wife. (Khan filed for divorce in March, according to court records.)
Because no criminal offense is alleged, there’s much hand-wringing about how to frame the Khan scandal: Is it abuse of power? Is it sexual misconduct? Is it both? Neither?
N.M. said she has no qualms about adding Khan to the growing list of influential men who’ve mistreated or manipulated women from their positions of authority. In fact, she’s let Khan know exactly what she thinks of him, according to one of the last text messages she sent him before cutting off contact.
“Interesting how your favorite movie is predator,” she told him.
A picture texted by Khan
Provided to BuzzFeed News
Rumors had swirled for more than a year, but the first big public sign of trouble in Khan’s world was his absence from this year’s Islamic Circle of North America convention, an annual gathering of thousands of Muslims that took place over Easter weekend in Baltimore.
Khan, always a marquee speaker at the convention, was a no-show, leaving the audience to speculate about why he was missing. In an online essay published after the misconduct claims went viral, attendee Humera Gul recalled sad fans asking one another, “What happened?”
“We all know exactly what happened,” she wrote.
At the time, however, only a few Muslim leaders across the country were aware that Khan had agreed to a private, negotiated agreement to retreat from the limelight. That was because the panel of four clerics had found that Khan repeatedly had abused his influence by approaching his admirers about marriage, lying to them about his marital status, and “manipulating” them into keeping the relationships quiet. For Sunni Muslims, marriage requires witnesses, and any union that’s shrouded in secrecy or understood to be temporary is strongly discouraged, if not prohibited, depending on religious interpretation.
The agreement, which Khan has acknowledged in a Facebook post, called for him to cease contact with the women, get counseling, and stop giving public lectures. He was permitted to publish or air previously recorded talks, except for those on “marriage or gender matters.” In exchange, the clerics weren’t to go public about Khan’s behavior and to only discreetly alert other leaders so they’d stop inviting him to speak.
In his emailed response, Turner said Khan’s absence from the ICNA convention this year was not as a result of the accusations but “based on a difference of opinion on a theological/Islamic studies-related issue.”
"If there is evidence that your behavior is illegal or detrimental to the community or society, you will be outed.”
For a while it seemed as if the secret would be contained, but then the clerics learned that Khan had resumed giving speeches and approaching women. When they confronted him, Khan had his attorney send letters to the mediators threatening lawsuits. BuzzFeed News obtained a copy of the letter the clerics received.
Khan’s reneging, coupled with the new claims brought up by N.M., led to the saga going public with a bombshell Facebook post Sept. 24 by Omer Mozaffar, one of the clerics who received the letter and who’s mediated in other high-profile Muslim scandals. Mozaffar wrote that Khan “confessed inappropriate interactions with various women,” lied about them, and threatened lawsuits to stop people from exposing him.
“The failures of one preacher does not mean that the entire Tradition is suspect,” Mozaffar wrote. “But every preacher, scholar, and activist should know that if there is evidence that your behavior is illegal or detrimental to the community or society, you will be outed.”
Understanding what a blow this was to the Khan brand requires understanding his place in the pantheon of “celebrity preachers,” not a new phenomenon but one that’s taken off in recent years on social media. Khan’s pop culture–laced sermons and his own past — a lapsed Muslim who rediscovered Islam in college — made him a huge hit with young Muslims struggling to reconcile their faith with their secular surroundings.
Khan’s English-language Facebook page boasts more than 2 million fans; tens of thousands more subscribe to his pages in Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, and other languages. He has more than 280,000 Twitter followers and more than 400,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.
@noumanbayyinah / Twitter / Via Twitter: @noumanbayyinah
Khan bet correctly that there was a market for Muslims who wanted a deeper understanding of Islam without relying on traditional clerics. Launched in 2005 with Khan as founder and CEO, Bayyinah is believed to be the first in the US to turn Qur’an study into a for-profit business — a controversial approach. More than a decade later, the institute has expanded to include Bayyinah TV, an online streaming portal that’s billed as the Netflix of Qur’an lectures, with mobile apps for Apple and Android. There’s also a nonprofit arm, Bayyinah Foundation.
The jewel of Khan’s empire is Bayyinah Dream, a rigorous Qur’an study program housed in a sprawling new campus that was built with millions of dollars from a fundraising campaign.
Some purists sniff at Khan’s credentials, noting his lack of formal study, as well as his focus on the Qur’an to the exclusion of other important texts. Khan is always careful to stress that he’s just a preacher, not a scholar, a regular guy who got lost and found his way back to Islam.
“Bayyinah,” Khan said in an introductory video, “is about people who felt like they want to connect with the Qur’an, but they don’t even know where to begin.”
Bayyinah’s reach has catapulted Khan to the top echelon of Muslim preachers worldwide. Khan has said he receives more than 1,000 emails a day. The comments sections of his videos are filled with people asking him to pray for their relatives, visit their mosques, and settle their household disputes. He’s been candid about how overwhelming the adoration can be, and not just because of the nonstop requests for selfies.
“He was just a regular perv kind of flirt."
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