A previous post has reported on an article posted on the website of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) which took the federal government to task over prosecution of Islamic charities such as the Holy Land Foundation. Now Islam Online, the news portal operated by Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi, has used the occasion of Ramadan to post an article echoing similar complaints. The article cites the director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organization, who claims that:
..charity closures were never problematic for federal authorities…These are indirect ways of having Islamic charities close down without due process…It scares away the donors and even some employees.
According to the article, one of the charities feeling pressure is Life for Relief and Development Charity (LIFE), headquartered in a suburb of Detroit:
Alomari’s [a LIFE officer]organization is one of a backlog of charities targeted by federal authorities in the wake of the 9/11 attacks six years ago on claims of channeling funds to groups the Bush administration designated as terrorist like Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hizbullah. The intense government pressure on Life, which was raided by FBI in 2006, forced it to stop transferring much-needed aid to orphanages in Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories in order to keep operating at home, Alomari said. It had to go to court to prevent its bank from flagging it as a money launderer or terrorist financer when the charity’s account was closed shortly after the raid.Life was back in court last month to stop the Justice Department from charging it 115,000 dollars in copying fees so it could get its documents back. Alomari fears that Islamic charities in the United States will soon become extinct due to the systematic clampdown.”There used to be a lot of different organizations. We certainly weren’t the largest. But by default now we’re the largest because they closed down the other ones,” he said. Alomari fears that Islamic charities in the United States will soon become extinct due to the systematic clampdown. “There used to be a lot of different organizations. We certainly weren’t the largest. But by default now we’re the largest because they closed down the other ones,” he said.
In fact, LIFE has many ties to the global Muslim Brotherhood including a shared address with an Islamic University chaired by Youssef Qaradawi as well as numerous speaking appearances and joint efforts with U.S. Brotherhood organizations and leaders. In addition, LIFE has a history of working with NGO’S in its areas of operation that have in turn have ties to terrorism. These NGO’s include the Al Rahma Charity of Kuwait, the Qatar Charitable Society, Human Appeal, and Lajnat Al-Da’wah Al-Islamiya. If the last of the large Islamic charities in the U.S. is feeling pressure, it is likely because of these ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorism which further illustrate the stranglehold the Brotherhood has over Islamic charities the US.