Council
on Foreign Relations Suddenly Cancels Presentation by Terrorist-Linked
Charity Leader After IPT Inquiry
by John Rossomando
IPT News
October 31, 2017
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 Islamic Relief
Worldwide (IRW) is banned by the United Arab Emirates, Israel, the Swiss
banks Credit Suisse and UBS, and HSBC
– the United Kingdom's largest bank – due to its ties to Hamas and other
terrorists. That fact did not stop the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
from treating it as just another religious charity.
CFR planned to host Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA) President Anwar Khan
Wednesday in a members only conference call on "the role of
faith-based organizations in disaster relief efforts," but in response
to questions from the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), said Monday
that Khan canceled due to a medical emergency. The fact that Khan was even
invited, calls into question CFR's diligence in vetting Khan and Islamic
Relief at a minimum, or worse, suggests its indifference to the evidence.
CFR is one of American's most influential foreign policy organizations
with a membership that includes former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, Colin
Powell, former U.S. United Nations Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad,
and numerous other prominent
members.
"The Council on Foreign Relations – which I for better or worse
help fund as a member – has blundered badly by providing a platform and
offering legitimacy to an Islamist organization designated a terrorist
organization in both the United Arab Emirates and Israel and whose accounts
have been closed by prominent banks such as UBS and HSBC. Someone at the
CFR needs to do basic research," Middle East Forum President Daniel
Pipes told the IPT.
CFR's communications department did not respond to a request for
comment.
Three weeks ago, Muslim-majority Bangladesh banned its Islamic Relief chapter
from working with Rohingya refugees from neighboring Burma due to concerns the charity would radicalize them.
Top IRW officials have worked
closely with Muslim Brotherhood-linked entities. IRW co-founder Hany
El-Banna formerly worked for Muslim Aid prior to founding IRW in 1984.
Muslim Aid allegedly had a close financial relationship with Jamaat-e-Islami – a
Muslim Brotherhood-aligned group in South Asia – during Bangladesh's 1971
war of independence. Bangladesh executed several Jamaat-e-Islami leaders for engaging
in genocide during that war.
El-Banna has expressed admiration for Muslim Brotherhood ideologue
Sayyid Qutb, who influenced Osama bin Laden and remains an inspiration for jihadists everywhere.
IRW received a $50,000 check from bin Laden in 1999, and
received £60,000 – approximately $115,000 – from an al-Qaida front group between 2003 and 2008. IRW
also was an early member of the Union of Good, a global network of
charities that fundraise for Hamas, headed by Muslim Brotherhood ideologue
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Treasury Department officials designated the Union of Good in 2008 as a
supporter of terrorism.
IRW's annual reports indicate donations from several
terror-connected entities. They include:
· Qatar Charity, formerly the Qatar Charitable Society,
which allegedly played a key
role in financing the 1998 al-Qaida bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania. French military intelligence accused it
of funding jihadis with close ties to al-Qaida in the Islamic
Maghreb (AQIM) at the time of France's 2013 intervention in Mali. It collaborated
with Hamas' Ministry of Education in Gaza to distribute pro-jihadi
propaganda in 2009.
· International Islamic Charitable Organization, a
Kuwait based charity tied
to Qaradawi that allegedly has sent funds
to committees that raise charitable money mandated by the Quran, known as
zakat, linked to Hamas.
· Al-Islah, a Yemeni Islamist political party with the ties to
Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida.
Group members harbored
Anwar al-Awlaki prior to his 2011 death in a drone strike. The U.S.
and U.N.
designated longtime Al-Islah leader Abdul Majeed Al-Zindani as a terrorist,
and a 2013 U.S.
Treasury memo describes him as a spiritual leader for al-Qaida
in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Zindani also served
as a Union of Good board member.
Several IRW publications cite Qaradawi's 1999 Fiqh of Zakat as an
authoritative explanation about using charitable donations. It explicitly
endorses spending zakat, on violent jihad, in addition to more
benign uses:
"Today, Muslim land is occupied in Palestine, Kashmir,
[Eritrea], Ethiopia, Chad, Western Somalia, Cyprus ... and several others
... countries. Declaring a sacred war to save these Muslim lands is an
Islamic requirement, and fighting for such purposes in those occupied
territories is in the way of God, for which zaka[t] must be spent."
Terror finance concerns prompted HSBC to cut off IRW last year, following similar action by UBS in 2012 and Credit Suisse in 2014.
Despite that development, IRW received a $100,000 grant from USAID and a
$270,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services in 2016, government records show.
Israel barred Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), the parent organization of
all of the Islamic Relief groups, from working in the West Bank and Gaza in
2014 due to evidence its aid workers were Hamas members.
"The IRW is one of the sources of Hamas's funding and a means of
raising funds from various countries from around the world," former
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in 2014. "We do not intend to allow it to
function and abet terrorist activity against Israel."
The Israel Ministry for Foreign Affairs previously accused IRW in 2006 of having ties with Hamas.
IRW continued operating in Hamas-controlled Gaza.
And IRUSA got around the restrictions by obtaining an OFAC license from the Treasury Department, Khan said at
a December 2009 convention by the Muslim American Society and Islamic
Circle of North America.
IRUSA's ties with IRW date back to its beginnings. When IRUSA first
sought tax exempt status in 1993, the IRS advised
its application would require "further review due to your close
association with Islamic Relief, United Kingdom, an organization that
does...not have tax exempt status in the United States. As stated in your
application, Islamic Relief, United Kingdom will administer the operation
of your numerous, diverse programs."
Although IRUSA is legally independent from IRW, its website
notes that IRW "serves as a catalyst, coordinator and implementer
of the Islamic Relief family's relief and development projects around the
globe." IRUSA also gave millions in donations to IRW in the late 2000s.
IRW's 2016 annual report notes that just under 25 percent of its annual budget came from
IRUSA.
IRUSA's collaboration with IRW is illustrated in a November 2009 diary
entry by Anwar Khan, who worked directly for IRW in the early 1990s, describing
his recent visit to Gaza. He visited Islamic Relief offices – again, the
ones Israel says include Hamas funders – and then traveled directly to
IRW's global headquarters in Birmingham, England for meetings. Khan
previously toured
IRW projects in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2004.
IRUSA officials have disputed that Hamas is a terrorist organization and
had prior association with a top Hamas figure. In 2007, IRUSA board vice
chairman Hamdy Radwan said it was not a terrorist group and described it as "Freedom fighters, in other
countries."
IRUSA board
chairman Khaled Lamada reportedly has Muslim Brotherhood ties, and has
expressed deep anti-Semitism. Egypt's El-Watan
newspaper identified Lamada as part of a Muslim Brotherhood cell in
North America that aimed to "lobby in support of their banned
organization inside the United States."
He praised the "jihad" of the "Mujahidin of Egypt"
for "causing the Jews many defeats" and republished on his
Facebook page claims that praise Hamas, wrote Sam Westrop of the Middle East Forum's Islamist
Watch.
Lamada described himself as the founder of a group called
Egyptian Americans for Democracy and Human Rights (EADHR). Its New York-New
Jersey chapter described
the group as part of an umbrella group created by the London-based
International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.
IRUSA board
member Mohamed Amr Attawia appears in a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood phone book together with then-Hamas
Political Bureau chief Moussa
abu Marzouk.
Marzouk created the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee to
support Hamas in America.
Pro-Hamas apologia also has been heard at IRUSA events.
For example, during its 2014 Emergency Relief Dinner on Palestine,
speaker Hatem Bazian, the founder and national
chairman of the pro-Hamas group American Muslims for Palestine,
rationalized Hamas' use of human shields during that summer's Gaza
war.
"Even if Hamas used the Palestinians as human shields, even if we
take this absurdity even though that already the research shows otherwise,
but even if the absurdity of this being a fact, Israel still is responsible
under international law to preserve the lives of those who are being used
as human shields," Bazian said.
Bazian then argued that using non-violent tactics instead of violence
against Israel would fail. "I don't see Bibi Netanyahu to be a Gandhi
to speak about Gandhi, and had he met Gandhi, he would have killed
him," Bazian said.
AMP carries on many of the same pro-Hamas activities as the old
Palestine Committee, an IPT investigation found.
By hosting Khan, CFR would have given IRUSA undeserved legitimacy to an
organization that gives financial and personal assistance to its parent
organization that funds terrorists. Numerous other legitimate religious
charities that don't help fund terrorists are out there, so why hold IRUSA
up as an exemplar?
Related Topics: Hamas, Terror
Financing, Yusuf
al-Qaradawi | John
Rossomando, Council
on Foreign Relations, Islamic
Relief Worldwide, Islamic
Relief USA, Anwar
Khan, Daniel
Pipes, Hany
El-Banna, Muslim
Aid, Qatar
Charity, Al-Islah,
International
Islamic Charitable Organization, Fiqh
of Zakat, Moshe
Yaalon, Hany
Radwan, Hamas,
Terror
Financing, Yusuf
al-Qaradawi
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