Bush Administration Targets Muslim Charities Aiding Terrorists
Nonprofits Raise Money For Terror Organizations
by John Berlau
April 2002
Summary: In the U.S. war on terrorism, federal authorities are shutting down Muslim charities that provide aid to international terrorist organizations, including Al-Qaeda. Some Muslim-American groups criticized the closures as unjust. Others say more should be done to combat Islamic extremism.
Dec. 4, 2001 marked a turning point in the war on terrorism. Less than three months after hijackers killed 3,000 Americans, President Bush issued an order putting terrorists all over the world on notice. The President's order was not directed at Afghanistan or Iraq, but at an office in the Dallas suburb of Richardson in the President's home state. There the FBI shut down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a large Muslim charity that, according to terrorism experts and concerned Muslim Americans, has been funneling money to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group.
The Treasury Department froze the foundation's assets and Bush explained the action to reporters in the Rose Garden: "The message is this: Those who do business with terror will do no business with the United States or anywhere else the United States can reach," he said. "The facts are clear; the terrorists benefit from the Holy Land Foundation, and we're not going to allow it."
Holy Land Foundation: Aiding Terrorist Families
The Holy Land Foundation, called the Occupied Land Fund when it was set up in 1989, claims to support widows and orphans in the Middle East. Many well-intentioned Muslim Americans believe in its mission and contribute to its programs. In a statement, HLF has denied that it "provides any financial support to terrorist groups or individuals." But the evidence says otherwise.
An FBI memorandum to the Treasury Department says HLF has raised money at Hamas conferences for years, according to the Los Angeles Times. At a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia secretly recorded by the FBI, Hamas leaders met with HLF executives and "decided that most or almost all of the funds collected in the future should be directed to enhance the Islamic Resistance Movement." At a 1995 HLF fundraising event in Los Angeles, the memo reports, Hamas military leader Sheikh Muhammed Siyam told a cheering crowd: "Finish off the Israelis. Kill them all! Exterminate them! No peace ever! Do not bother to talk politics." Immediately after Siyam's speech, an HLF official exhorted the crowd to give to "the cause." The FBI also found that Siyam made five trips from the Middle East to the U.S. that were charged to HLF's corporate credit card.
HLF's claim to help widows and orphans is partly true, but the group doesn't disclose what its internal documents strongly indicate - that it gives priority to helping widows and orphans of Hamas suicide bombers. The Israeli government seized lists of HLF's beneficiaries at the group's offices in Beit Haucha and found that twenty-five of twenty-eight families on one list "were families of Hamas activists who were killed, arrested, or deported." The persons on that list received far more money than those on other HLF charity lists. HLF, in effect, provided a life insurance policy for Hamas by promising to take care of its families. Terrorism expert Steven Emerson writes in his new book, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us: "By giving money to the family after the Hamas terrorist's demise, HLF encourages others to engage in similar terrorist conduct ensuring that the terrorists need not fear for the well-being of their families after they have died for their cause."
In announcing the HLF shutdown, President Bush called Hamas "one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world today." According to the New York Times, Hamas is a conduit for funds intended for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Hamas also has called for the destruction of Israel and its leaders have likened Jews to "monkeys and pigs." The suicide bombings for which it claimed credit have killed hundreds of innocent people, including two Americans in Israel last year.
Global Relief Foundation: Al-Qaeda Conduit?
A week after taking action against the Holy Land Foundation, the Bush administration froze the assets and raided the office of another large Muslim charity, the Global Relief Foundation (GRF). There is evidence that this group was funneling money directly to Al-Qaeda. "It's clearly related to directing funding to terrorist activity and their associates, and specifically to Al Qaeda," Treasury Department spokesman Tony Fratto told the Los Angeles Times.
The Treasury Department acted against the suburban Chicago-based group on December 14, the same day that KFOR, a NATO-led international security force in Kosovo, raided the foundation's offices in Pristina and Dakovica. A KFOR press release said the force had "credible information that individuals working for this organization may have been directly involved in supporting worldwide international terrorist activities," and that GRF is "allegedly involved in planning attacks against targets in the U.S. and Europe." KFOR arrested three GRF officials in Kosovo. In a statement, GRF strongly denied "any links to terrorism" and said, "We are in the business of helping innocent civilians and take every precaution to ensure our aid does not go to support or subsidize any nefarious activity."
In freezing the assets of the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, the federal government has set a precedent for taking action against nonprofit organizations linked to terrorism. The FBI has monitored HLF since 1993, but it was only after September 11 that it acted under the direction of the Bush administration. The terrorists have found that nonprofits are one of the best ways to finance their activities. They hate America, but they have used the nation's respect for religious freedom, freedom of speech and civil liberties to their advantage. Since the 1970s, "the FBI was particularly hamstrung if these groups operated under the auspices of 'religious,' 'civic,' 'civil rights,' or 'charitable' groups," writes Emerson. "This has provided cover for recruiting and fundraising by jihad warriors in the United States."
Muslim-American Organizations Criticize the Crackdown
The Bush Administration has shown that it will not tolerate terrorists who hide behind nonprofits with benign names. "It sends a signal to the groups here that they are being watched; they are not going to have the freedom of action they had in the past," says Daniel Pipes, a former Reagan Administration official and director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia. Still, he warns that an extensive network of U.S. nonprofits closely connected to the dubious charities is aiding the terrorist cause.
Despite the evidence demonstrating why the Administration acted against the Holy Land Foundation, eight prominent U.S. groups issued a joint statement decrying the action. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim Council (AMC), the American Muslim Alliance, the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Muslim American Society, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Muslim Student Association of the United States and Canada declared: "We ask that President Bush reconsider what we believe is an unjust and counterproductive move that can only damage America's credibility with Muslims in this country and around the world and could create the impression that there has been a shift from a war on terrorism to an attack on Islam." The statement intones: "No relief group anywhere in the world should be asked to question hungry orphans about their parents' religious beliefs, political affiliation, or legal status." But the groups gloss over evidence that HLF always checked the family backgrounds of its aid recipients and made sure most of its money went to the wives and children of Hamas suicide bombers.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American Muslim Council
It is noteworthy that two of the groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American Muslim Council (AMC), actually solicited money for HLF and GRF despite evidence that both were linked to terrorists. On the home page of its website CAIR even featured a section telling readers "what you can do for the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks." CAIR advised: "Donate through the Global Relief Foundation" and "Donate through the Holy Land Foundation," and it provided links to the groups' web sites.
On Nov. 14, AMC published a list of charities in an e-mail and on its web page, and it urged American Muslims to aid Afghan refugees by making a contribution. Included on the list of charities were GRF and HLF. AMC then quoted this powerful verse from the Koran, "Verily, God does not fail to reward to doers of good." The appeal for donations appeared on the American Muslim Council web site even after the federal government froze the assets of the two groups in December.
The next day, Nov. 15, AMC sent out an e-mail defending GRF from charges that it aided Al-Qaeda. AMC further warned that GRF was suing media organizations that reported on its alleged ties to Al-Qaeda. "While the U.S. government has moved quickly to freeze the assets of those suspected of supporting terrorist operations . . . GRF has not been among the organizations targeted," AMC said. Those statements would be proven wrong less than a month later when the government raided GRF offices.
While CAIR and AMC pose as groups interested in Muslim civil rights, they defend Hamas and Hezbollah, the terrorist group that bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and they support radical Islamic states like Sudan, which the State Department says is a sponsor of terrorism. "It is a known fact that both the AMC and CAIR have defended, apologized for and rationalized the actions of extremist groups and leaders," wrote the late Muslim commentator Seif Ashmawy.
Following the September 11 attacks CAIR, AMC and other groups expressed sympathy for the victims and issued what appeared to be strong denunciations of terrorism. But they have yet to condemn the groups that claim responsibility for terrorism. "There's nothing significant about the statement 'I condemn terrorism,'" noted Emerson in a recent speech at the American Enterprise Institute. "It's a vacuous statement. The only way you can determine if someone is genuinely anti-terrorism and genuinely moderate is to see if they will make a statement such as 'I renounce Hamas and Hezbollah unequivocally. I renounce the notion of holy war in Islam, which is the way militants interpret jihad. I acknowledge and want to discredit Islamic extremists.'"
But CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper had trouble even condemning bin Laden. He would only tell Salon.com reporter Jake Tapper, "If Osama bin Laden was behind (the Sept. 11 attacks), we condemn him by name." But in 1998, CAIR's southern California chapter protested a Los Angeles television station's billboard showing Osama bin Laden under the headline "The Sworn Enemy" as an "insult to the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who live in Southern California." CAIR's executive director and cofounder, Nihad Awad, said in a 1994 conference, "I am in support of the Hamas movement." In fact, Awad was previously public relations director for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), Hamas' "primary voice within the United States," according to Emerson. At a conference of the IAP in 1999, CAIR's chairman Ohmar Ahmad defended suicide bombers, according to an audiotape obtained by Emerson. "Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam - that is not suicide," Ahmad told a youth session. "They kill themselves for Islam."
CAIR also has protested the punishment of Muslim terrorists in the U.S. The conviction of four Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who plotted the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was "a travesty of justice," wrote CAIR executive director Awad in the Muslim World Monitor. Despite their confessions, Awad wrote that "there is ample evidence indicating that both the Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) and Egyptian intelligence played a role in the explosion." CAIR also protested the decision to extradite Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, who funded HLF and IAP. It argued that the extradition order from a federal judge was "anti-American" and "anti-Islamic."
AMC has a similar record. Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Horowitz has called AMC "the principal American front group for the worst, most vicious and most radical terrorist movements and regimes in the Middle East and Africa." AMC has defended the government of Sudan against charges of human right violations, issuing a press release stating "Slavery in Sudan is a sham," even though slavery there is documented by the U.S. State Department and the United Nations. AMC board member and former executive director Abdurahman Alamoudi has repeatedly championed Hamas. At an October 2000 rally in Washington's Lafayette Park, just across from the White House, Alamoudi shouted: "Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas. … I am also a supporter of Hezbollah." At an IAP conference in 1996, captured on an audiotape obtained by Emerson, Alamoudi was ambiguous on the question of violence toward America. "If we are outside this country we can say O Allah, destroy America, but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it…" Alamoudi said. "You can be violent anywhere else but in America." AMC also has cosponsored conferences with the United Association for Studies and Research, which a convicted Hamas operative has described to Israeli authorities as "the political command of Hamas in the United States."
Muslim Groups Charge
"Racism" to Silence Critics
One important way U.S. nonprofit groups aid terrorism is by chastising as "anti-Muslim" anyone who dares criticize Muslim extremists. "They're the ones who attack the politicians, religious figures, journalists," Pipes says. "They try to intimidate anyone they see as on to their story."
To be sure, there are instances of bigotry against Muslims which the groups are right to criticize. For example, there was the unfortunate comment by Rep. John Cooksey (R-LA) that police should stop every man wearing "a diaper on his head." Yet these groups also attacked then-Rep. Rick Lazio (R-NY) when he criticized Muslims who were sympathetic to terrorists. In the 2000 New York Senate race, Lazio said opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton should not have accepted contributions from AMC's Alamoudi and from a fundraiser sponsored by another group, the American Muslim Alliance, whose president called for the use of "armed force" against Israel. In fact, Clinton returned the contributions. But Lazio was attacked for "anti-Muslim racism" in an October 31 statement signed by nine Muslim groups. "In a desperate bid to win (the) Nov. 7 elections. Mr. Lazio is trying to turn Muslims into 'the Willie Horton of 2000,'" the statement said. It was signed by the leaders of CAIR, AMC, the American Muslim Alliance, the Arab-American Institute, the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Circle of North America, and the Islamic Institute.
In November 2001, I interviewed Khaled Saffuri, co-founder and now chairman of the Islamic Institute, for Insight magazine. A former deputy director of AMC, he stood by the statement. "Lazio was attacking her for taking money from Muslims," he said. Saffuri claims to be a conservative Republican, but as head of the Islamic Institute he has contributed to the 2000 election campaigns of liberal Democratic Reps. David Bonior of Michigan, Jim Moran of Virginia and Nick Rahall of West Virginia who have been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. These congressmen voted against a resolution, passed overwhelmingly, condemning Yasser Arafat's Palestinian authority for encouraging attacks on Israeli civilians.
The Islamic Institute works with conservatives on such issues as school choice, free trade, and personal Social Security accounts, but some worry that it could be a vehicle for AMC's radical agenda. "It's legitimating militant Islamic elements in the Republican Party," Pipes has said. Like AMC and CAIR, the Islamic Institute condemns terrorism. But Saffuri is also like the leaders of those organizations in being reluctant to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah. "If Hezbollah soldiers attack Israeli soldiers it should not be called terrorism," Saffuri was quoted as saying in The Final Call, the newspaper of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, in 1996. When I asked about the quote, Saffuri said he didn't believe he spoke to the Final Call. But he still refused to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah. Instead, he equated the terrorists with Israeli soldiers: "I always condemn all attacks on civilians as terrorism, whether it's done by Hamas, whether it's done by Hezbollah, whether it's done by Israeli soldiers," he said.
The Islamic Institute also publicized and listed itself as a co-sponsor of the Jerusalem Day rally on Oct. 28, 2000 where Alamoudi praised Hamas and Hezbollah. In e-mails and on its web site, the Institute informed readers of its weekly "Friday Brief" that "there will be a march and rally in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., to protest Israel's aggression." The announcement said the Islamic Institute was part of the coalition that organized the rally, the National Task Force for the Crisis in Jersualem, and it advised those wanting more information to "contact the Islamic Institute via phone or e-mail."
Several other speakers at the rally praised Hamas and some attacked America as well. "America has to learn that … if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come," shouted Muzammil Siddiqi, president of the Islamic Society of North America, the main organizer of the rally. An Islamic Institute staffer told me he made a mistake in sending the pro-rally e-mail while Saffuri was out of town. He said an official at another Muslim group falsely told him that Saffuri had signed on. But this doesn't explain why a subsequent announcement in the following week's "Friday Brief" indicated that the rally was rescheduled and again implored readers to call the Islamic Institute for more information. Moreover, the January 2001 issue of American Muslim Online referred to the Islamic Institute as part of the task force organizing the rally. It also appears that the Islamic Institute never issued a statement saying it was not an event sponsor or deploring the pro-terrorist sentiments expressed.
President Bush has admonished all Americans to recognize that Muslim Americans overwhelmingly believe in religious toleration and unequivocally condemn terrorist organizations. The philanthropic community needs to help moderate Muslim Americans organize and represent their beliefs (see sidebar on page 3). Unfortunately, extremists are claiming they represent the official American voice of Islam and are leading public protests. Public officials and journalists need to challenge them; they should not be intimidated by false accusations of racism or bigotry.
John Berlau is a writer for Insight magazine.
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