The organization behind the creation of a ‘Muslim city’ spanning 402 acres in eastern Texas claims their ambitious project will foster a vibrant and inclusive community for all individuals.

However, upon closer examination, it becomes evident that individuals from the LGBTQ+ community, as well as those of Jewish descent, may not find the inclusive atmosphere as genuinely welcoming as promotional materials suggest.

It has come to light that Yasir Qadhi, the cleric leading EPIC City, has a historical background of delivering speeches with themes of intolerance, homophobia, and Holocaust denial.

Audio files show Qadhi openly calling in the 2000s for the execution of gay people and adulterers – as well as calling the Holocaust a ‘hoax.’

In one of his chilling diatribes, Qadhi even advances a wild theory Jewish people have infiltrated religious departments of American universities in a bid to ‘destroy’ Muslims.

These damning revelations are the latest blow to EPIC City, a project of the East Plano Islamic Community (EPIC), a busy mosque in the suburbs of northeast Dallas.

The group and their landmark development are already under investigation by federal and state officials over alleged racial discrimination and other concerns.

His group runs the East Plano Islamic Center in the Dallas suburbs and has plans for a bigger ‘Muslim city’ to the northeast

Meanwhile, residents of Josephine and other nearby towns say they’re worried about ultra-conservative ‘Sharia’ laws being rolled out in EPIC City and its surroundings.

The organizers of EPIC City did not answer a request for comment. On social media, they decry the ‘misinformation’ spread against them and say they’re a law-abiding non-profit.

Qadhi, 50, a Pakistani-American who was born in Texas and studied in Saudi Arabia and Yale University, and ranks among the most influential conservative Muslim scholars in the US, has reportedly said he’s changed his ways.

The case raises tough questions about Texas’ fast-growing Muslim population, Islamophobia, and whether the hardline views of clerics put the faith at odds with modern US values.

Sam Westrop, a counter-extremism analyst at the Middle East Forum, says Qadhi and his followers are dangerous fundamentalists who want to turn the clock back to the 7th Century.

‘Qadhi and his mosque, EPIC, have radicalized generations of Muslims not just in the Dallas area, but across the US,’ Westrop told the Daily Mail.

‘Any sort of compound such as EPIC City will serve to radicalize future generations of Muslims.’

Qadhi’s group, he claims, seeks to ‘advance Sharia and other theocratic threats away from the checks and balances of Texas law and order.’

The group has since 2015 run a mosque in East Plano, in Dallas, but was strained by the area’s growing Muslim population and decided to build their own community outside the city from scratch.

Qadhi’s group,EPIC, has plans for a city on the outskirts of Dallas focussed on the Muslim faith

The group already runs a major Muslim community in East Plano, a suburb of Dallas, Texas 

Qadhi in 2016 posted in defense of the  actionds of the Taliban, then an Islamist insurgent group

They’re planning a neighborhood some 40 miles northeast of Dallas, with 1,000 homes, a mosque, Islamic schools, clinics, stores, parks, and a nursing home on a site across Collin and Hunt Counties.

Organizers say the properties sold out fast and have since announced ‘ranches’ of bigger homes nearby. Construction is set to begin in 2026 or 2027.

The group brands itself a ‘multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multilingual, non-sectarian, diverse, and open community’ with opportunities for men and women that’s open to non-Muslims.

But when he’s behind closed doors and addressing his followers, Qadhi’s private comments over previous decades cannot be further from the liberal values espoused by his organization.

In one recording, which appears to be of Qadhi preaching in the US in about the early 2000s, about the wide array of vices that mandate executions under Islam.

‘This is a part of our religion, to stone the adulterer … and to kill, by the way, the homosexual. This is also our religion,’ he says in the recording.

His comments recall the atrocities of the Islamic State, which imposed harsh Sharia law in Iraq and Syria in the 2010s and flung gay men off buildings to their deaths.

In a particularly revelatory comment, Qadhi tells his followers that his austere version of Islamic law was not suitable in the West.

‘This doesn’t mean we go do this in America,’ he says.

‘No, we’re not allowed to do this in America, you know? But I’m saying if we had an Islamic State, we would do this now.’

Qadhi’s comments about the execution of gay people in an ‘Islamic State’ apparently came before jihadists seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in the 2010s  

A video still appears to show ISIS militants hurling a man off of a rooftop for being gay in their self-declared caliphate

Some 1,000 homes are part of the vision for EPIC City

In another recording, Qadhi shares his bizarre views about how most Jewish people today are of European descent and have few ties to the Middle Easterners in the Old Testament.

‘Look at them: white, crooked nose, blonde hairs. This is not the descendants of Jacob,’ he says.

Nazi Germany’s genocide of six million Jewish people is ‘false propaganda,’ he adds, and ‘Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews.’ He urges his listeners to read ‘The Hoax of the Holocaust.’

He then shares a wilder theory that Jewish people make up 95 percent of the students of Islamic Studies courses in the US — a dastardly plan to spread ‘disunity’ among Muslims and to ‘destroy us.’

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott holds in press conference in Austin, Texas on March 25

EPIC did not answer our request for comment about the historic comments, which were reported on in the 2000s by The Daily Telegraph, a UK newspaper, and The New York Times.

Qadhi has since described them as an ‘error’ and a ‘one-time mistake,’ saying he fell down a ‘slippery slope’ into extremism when he was ‘young and naïve.’

He nowadays offers in public a gentler, more polished and tolerant version of the religion of some 2 billion people globally.

In recent years, however, Qadhi has spoken out in defense of Afghanistan’s ultraconservative Taliban rulers, the Hamas October 7 attacks on southern Israel, and convicted al-Qaeda operative Aafia Siddiqui. 

Revelations about Qadhi’s past comments throw further doubt on the Epic City project, amid a glut of investigations aimed at the organizers by federal and state authorities.

Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn has said the housing development is being probed by the Department of Justice, adding: ‘Religious discrimination and Sharia Law have no home in Texas.’

Texas Gov Greg Abbott, another Republican, has accused the planners of seeking to create an exclusively Muslim community with Sharia law and has directed several state agencies to investigate the group.

In his public appearances nowadays, Qadhi offers a more tolerant version of the religion of some 2 billion Muslims

Abbot suggested it may have violated fair housing and financial laws, and that the Islamic center had conducted illegal funerals in its mosque. Attorney general, Ken Paxton has also initiated a criminal investigation. 

In a statement on social media, EPIC has decried a ‘misinformation’ campaign against the mosque and a rise in ‘hate and attacks on our community.’

‘We are proud Texans, Americans, and Muslims,’ says the statement.

‘We are committed to doing things the right way — legally, ethically and peacefully. And our doors remain open to anyone who wants to see the good we do with our own eyes.’