A Canadian news portal has reported that the charity status of the ISNA Islamic Services of Canada was removed after an audit problem with respect to a Pakistani armed militant group. According to the Globalnews.com report:
Federal regulators have revoked the charity status of a Canadian Islamic organization after an audit uncovered problems including tax receipts that were issued for donations to a Pakistani group linked to armed militancy.
ISNA Islamic Services of Canada was stripped of its charitable status for ‘non-compliance,’ according to records obtained by Global News. Authorities also revoked a related charity, the Canadian Islamic Trust Foundation.
..Both are former affiliates of the Islamic Society of North America-Canada (ISNA-Canada), and shared its Mississauga, Ont. address. Politicians of all stripes have attended ISNA-Canada events, notably Justin Trudeau in 2013 and, in April, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.
An image from a Facebook post by ISNA-Canada on Justin Trudeau’s 2013 visit to the organization, when he was Liberal leader. Facebook The Canada Revenue Agency took action four years after the ISNA Development Foundation lost its charity status over fundraising for a Pakistani relief group linked to militancy in the disputed Kashmir region.
Among the findings that led to the latest two revocations was that ISNA Islamic Services tax receipts had been issued for collections by a Toronto mosque for the ‘charitable arm’ of a Pakistani group whose armed wing was fighting Indian forces.”
Read the rest here.
The report goes on to identify the militant group as the Relief Organization of Kashmiri Muslims (ROKM), the charitable arm of Jamaat-e-Islami, a Pakistani religious party close to the Global Muslim Brotherhood.
The report describes ISNA Islamic Services of Canada as a” former affiliate” of the Islamic Society of North America-Canada, sharing its Mississauga, Ont. address, and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) had issued a statement that included the following:
ISNA Canada and Islamic Development Foundation (IDF) in Canada are federally registered charities in Canada. It is important to note that the leadership and management of both of these organizations in Canada are separate from ISNA and its IDF (a department of ISNA), registered in the United States. There has been no links of authority or responsibility between the United States and Canadian organizations for a few decades, despite the similarity of names.
However, the statement has since been removed from the ISNA website.
In May 2013, the GMBDW reported that money raised by the Canadian branch ISNA may have gone to support a militant Kashmiri separatist group known as Hizbul Mujahideen.
In January 2011, we reported that Mohammad Ashraf, long-time leader of the Islamic Society of North America Canada, was at the center of a controversy involving mismanaged charity donations and free perks for family members.
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) describes itself as “an independent, open and transparent membership organization that strives to be an exemplary and unifying Islamic organization in North America by contributing to the betterment of the Muslim community and society at large. ISNA emerged out of the early U.S. Muslim Brotherhood infrastructure and documents discovered in the course of the the terrorism trial of the Holy Land Foundation confirmed that the organization was part of the US. Muslim Brotherhood.
For a detailed analysis of ISNA and its recent history, go here.