Corporate charities like the GE Foundation, community foundations like the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and independent foundations like George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, have given money to the Islamic Relief Worldwide, which some countries have banned, the Daily Caller reported.
Seven such groups receiving corporate funding have been accused of having ties either to radical Islamist movements or to designated terrorist organisations.
Researchers with the Middle East Forum (MEF) identified the financial stream from American foundations to seven Islamic groups with radical ties: Islamic Relief Worldwide and its sister organization in the United States — Islamic Relief USA, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) as well as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), despite some highly damaging terrorist allegations in 2008 against the latter.
IRS filings show that some $5.8 million were given to these seven groups since 2000. Some 46 corporate foundations, eight community foundations, nine private foundations and one donor-advised fund were involved in funding the seven groups.
The MEF researchers had tried to persuade the seven foundations to stop funding the Islamic organisations before going public with the information, but with limited success.
The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) supports the creation of an Islamic caliphate and boasts ties to a radical Pakistani group, called the Jamaat-e-Islami.
In a 2010 handbook made available to members of ICNA’s sister wing, the group’s stated their goal of “a united Islamic state, governed by an elected khalifah (caliph) in accordance with the laws of shari’ah (sharia)”. An Al-Qaeda recruiter even spoke at an earlier event for the ICNA in 2002.
ICNA members have been involved in several extremist activities in the United States. A woman arrested in 2015 for allegedly planning a terrorist attack, had been a speaker at multiple ICNA events.
Also, the five students arrested for terror activities in 2009 were all members of an ICNA mosque in Alexandria, Virginia.
Islamic Relief Worldwide is another Islamic charity that had previously accepted tens of thousands of dollars from the Charitable Society for Social Welfare, a now-defunct Islamic charity founded by Sheik Abd-al-Majid al-Zindani.
Both the US and the United Nations designated al-Zindani a terrorist in 2004. Federal prosecutors in 2005 said al-Zindani’s group was “a front organisation” that was “used to support al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden,” The Washington Post reported in 2008.
Islamic Relief accepted funding from the al-Qaeda-linked group as recently as 2009, according to their annual report of the same year. The report has since been removed form their website.
