Muslim Aid trustee charged with war crimes

Islamic charity leader indicted for killing 18 intellectuals

Money Jihad has been contacted by Muslim Aid on a couple occasions in the past (see here and here) to insist upon the innocence of their philanthropic endeavors and to disclaim their organization’s membership in the pro-Hamas network of charitable fronts known as the Union of Good.  Will Muslim Aid also claim to be unaware that at least one of their trustees is a war criminal?

From BBC (h/t to Jurist with a special nod to Mahadib who told Money Jihad that Mueen-Uddin could be indicted) on May 2:

UK community leader Mueen-Uddin indicted in Bangladesh

A British community leader has been indicted in Bangladesh for his alleged role in the killing of 18 people during the 1971 liberation war from Pakistan.

Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin strongly denies any role in the murder of 18 intellectuals in December of that year.

He is alleged to have been a member of the Al-Badr group, which identified and killed pro-independence activists.

He is accused with another alleged Al-Badr member, Ashrafuzzaman Khan, a United States citizen.

His lawyers have rejected all the allegations against him. They say that none of the accusations have ever been formally put to him and there has been no attempt to question him.

“The statements made by members of the government of Bangladesh are grossly defamatory to my client, wholly untrue and are refuted in their entirety,” his lawyer Toby Cadman told the BBC.

Mr Cadman’s website carries a detailed rebuttal of all the allegations against Mr Mueen-Uddin.

Holding dual British and Bangladesh citizenship, Mr Mueen-Uddin is a trustee of the UK charity Muslim Aid and played a prominent role in setting up the Muslim Council of Britain.

His website says that he is also the director of Muslim Spiritual Care Provision in the UK’s National Health Service.

State prosecutor Syed Haider Ali told the AFP news agency that he “has been indicted for crimes against humanity and genocide”. He said that Mr Mueen-Uddin fled Bangladesh soon after the end of the war.

Mr Khan, now believed to be living in the US, faces the same charges.

An arrest warrant was issued by the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka on Thursday for both men, who are accused of “directly taking part” in the killing of the 18 intellectuals between 10 December 10 and 15 December 1971.

Charges were initially put before the tribunal last month – on Thursday it accepted them and ordered their arrests.

Nobody knows exactly how many people were killed in the 1971 war. Bangladesh says up to three million people died, mostly in massacres by the Pakistan army and their local Islamist allies, the Razakar and Al-Badr forces…

Money trail news: recommended reading

• Of course, old chap, Bank Saderat has financed Iran’s nuclear program. But that doesn’t give you the right to impose economic sanctions, says an EU court… more>>
• The web, smartcards, and cell phones were sold as glittering innovations that would empower the world’s poor. Now Bangladesh is desperately wading through massive rivers of fast-moving data in time to catch the next terrorist transaction… more>>
• Nine men have been convicted of fundraising for the jihadist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. An overdue update to this story from Paris… more>>
• Iranian state-run newspaper claims it has proof that Saudi Arabia is funding Al Qaeda fighters of Syria’s al-Nusra Front.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day… more>>
• A Muslim Brotherhood group is helping coordinate events in Tunisia thanks to some money from an unexpected source.  The British taxpayer… more>>

Saudi-backed tycoon finances Jamaat-e-Islami

Mir Quasem Ali

Mir Quasem Ali serves as the de facto treasurer of Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI or simply “Jamaat”), the Islamist political party in Bangladesh with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and militant causes.  He has served for nearly 40 years as Saudi Arabia’s money man in Bangladesh, being involved major Wahhabi-backed institutions since the 1970s.

Mir Quasem Ali (also often spelled Mir Kashem Ali) is in jail at the moment for war crimes he and his Al-Badr group committed during Bangladesh’s struggle for independence in 1971, but he is still sometimes touted as the party’s next leader.

According to one account, Mir Quasem Ali fled to Saudi Arabia after Bangladesh secured its independence, and returned after amnesty was offered in 1974.  He landed a job at the newly founded Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited, Bangladesh’s biggest sharia bank (which itself has close ties to Saudi Arabia’s Al Rajhi Bank), and he became IBBL’s director for many years according to an article by Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury:

…IBBL provides JEI an opportunity to launder money from abroad and also channel un-audited funds to various militant groups in the country and abroad. Islamic Bank Foundation (IBF), a JEI floated organization oversees all the projects of IBBL and profits generated by it and the interest / commission accrued on foreign donations goes to the IBBL account of IBF.

The IBF is headed by Mir Qasem Ali, JEI Executive Committee member and Country Director of the Saudi based Islamic NGO Rabeta-al-alam-al-Islami that funds a number of projects in Bangladesh. Mir Quasem Ali, the main brain behind JEI’s finances, is now in jail facing trial on war crimes charges. He remained Director of IBBL for a number of years since its inception in 1975…

Money Jihad readers will recall that Bangladeshi authorities say that IBBL has diverted 8 percent of its corporate zakat to terrorists.  The U.S. Senate also blasted HSBC last year for its banking relationships with IBBL.

In his role as country director for the Saudi-backed Muslim World League’s branch in Bangladesh—Rabeta-al-Alam-al-Islami Bangladesh—Mir Quasem Ali collected funds for local militants, Rohingya fighters from Burma, and Afghan mujahideen, which Money Jihad blogged about in 2011.

Mir Quasem Ali also sits on the board of the Saudi-funded Ibn Sina Trust, whose website describes his position with the trust and his previous positions with Rabeta-al-Alam-al-Islami and IBBL without referring to his current status in jail.

An article from the Policy Research Group in 2009 laid out additional details about Jamaat’s money laundering, terrorist financing, and business operations, and Mir Quasem Ali’s role in overseeing them:

Sharia banks that fund terrorism

The relationship is simple.  Jihadists know they can trust sharia-compliant banks to maintain their anonymity, not ask too many questions, and facilitate high-dollar transactions on behalf of their terrorist groups.  Some Islamic financial institutions, such as National Commercial Bank and Islami Bank Bangladesh, have taken the relationship a step farther by donating a portion of their bank profits in the form of zakat as an act of corporate “charity” to terrorist organizations, or in the case of Al Rajhi, through private zakat donations of leading bankers.  Saudi Arabia and Iran are key bases for these activities, but this is a global phenomenon.  Here’s Money Jihad’s short list of the worst offenders:

Al Rajhi Bank:  The Saudi financial institution has served as the sharia bank of choice for the world’s jihadists, including East Africa embassy bomber Mamduh Mahmud Salim, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and organizations like Indonesian Kompak and Al-Haramain.  Bank co-founder Sulaiman Al-Rajhi appeared on the infamous Golden Chain document of Al Qaeda financiers.  These allegations were reinforced by the recent U.S. Senate investigation into HSBC’s correspondent relationships.

Al Shamal Islamic Bank:  Osama Bin Laden co-founded the Al Shamal in Sudan and invested $50 million there.  During the 1990s and early 2000s, Al Qaeda distributed money to its cells through Al Shamal.  Funds passed through Al Shamal were used in preparation for terrorist attacks.

National Commercial Bank:  Offering conventional and sharia banking services, Saudi Arabia’s self-described first, largest, and most prominent bank is NCB.  Among other misdeeds, a Saudi audit revealed that NCB transferred $74 million in the 1990s as zakat through its charitable front organizations to Al Qaeda (see here, here, and here).  Khalid bin Mahfouz, the head of the bank, exploited libel laws to sue author Rachel Ehrenfeld in an effort to silence accusations about his role in financing terrorism.

Arab Bank:  This conventional bank in Jordan maintains a wholly-owned subsidiary (Islamic International Arab Bank PLC) that offers full-range sharia services.  Arab Bank has transferred money on behalf of Comité de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (CBSP), a notorious French charity, to a known financial subunit of Hamas.  The Jordanian bank has paid out insurance benefits to families of suicide bombers for the Saudi Committee—another charity that funds Hamas.  Arab Bank has handled transactions for the Holy Land Foundation, whose leaders now sit behind bars for financing terrorism.  It has been the subject of American investigations, but the bank has consistently refused to turn over related documents to the U.S.

Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited:  IBBL, Bangladesh’s biggest sharia bank, has handled Wahhabi accounts to propagate radical Islam since its inception.  In 2011, the Bangladeshi home ministry intelligence revealed that 8 percent of the bank’s profits were diverted as corporate zakat to support jihad in Bangladesh.  One of the men on IBBL’s board of sharia advisors was arrested in connection with a terrorist attack against Bangladeshi police officers.  The U.S. Senate slammed British bank giant HSBC for maintaining relationships with IBBL despite evidence that it served terrorists like Shaikh Abdur Rahman of Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh and terror-funding Islamic charities like IIRO.  The Senate’s report also implicated HSBC for disregarding evidence of terror financing at another Bangladeshi sharia bank with whom it worked:  Social Islami Bank.

Bank Melli:  The Iranian Islamic bank sent “at least $100 million to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard branch that supports Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups, the Quds Force” between 2002-06.

Bank Saderat:  Another major Iranian sharia finance house, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the rocket-funding Bank Saderat, stating that “The bank is used by the Government of Iran to transfer money to terrorist organizations, including Hizballah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A notable example of this is a Hizballah-controlled organization that has received $50 million directly from Iran through Bank Saderat since 2001.”

Other culprits include Dubai Islamic Bank, which is active in both the U.A.E. and Pakistan, and Tadamon Islamic Bank.

So much for “ethical finance.”  For further developments, please continue reading Money Jihad, Shariah Finance Watch, and @moneyjihad on Twitter.

Ten biggest terror finance news stories of 2012

1. Taliban funding remains intact despite international sanctions
   Reports in 2012 revealed that the Taliban’s funding remains intact, that none of the Taliban’s assets have been blocked by U.S. sanctions, that the Taliban retains its taxing authority over Afghans, and that the UN sanctions only 18 percent of the Taliban’s provincial shadow governors in Afghanistan.
2. Islamic charities remain top terror financiers
   It’s questionable to even call this “news,” but understanding the role of Muslim charities in funding jihad, of which we saw multiple examples throughout 2012, is the Rosetta stone to bankrupting terrorism.  Instances of Muslim charities behaving badly cropped up, and in some cases have worsened, in both in the Middle East and in the West this year.In the Islamic world, the Saudi charitable foundation IIRO, whose branches in Indonesia and the Philippines were previously blacklisted by the U.S. for funding terrorism, is opening seven new branch offices.  In Bangladesh, the chief of the terrorist organization Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) revealed that Muslim Aid, WAMY, the Muslim World League, the Qatari Charitable Society, and the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, are among the primary donors to his jihad. 

Another global giveaway to subsidize sharia

The Asian Development Bank will promote sharia finance with a $750,000 handout to Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan—countries with Islamic bank structures that are already well-entrenched.

Keep in mind that the World Bank also has a program to promote sharia-compliant finance in concert with the Islamic Development Bank, a sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood.  From Reuters on Dec. 11:

Islamic banking expansion aided by ADB grant

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 11 (Reuters) – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has provided a $750,000 grant to promote Islamic banking in Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

The money will be shared between those countries’ governments to help their banking systems to meet regulatory standards set by the Islamic Financial Services Board, the ADB said.

Islamic finance follows religious guidelines such as a ban on the payment of interest and on pure monetary speculation.

Its core markets are in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, with about 57 percent of total global Islamic banking assets held by the 20 largest Islamic banks, concentrated in Malaysia, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Turkey.

The ADB, which promotes economic and social progress in the Asia-Pacific region, said that the expansion of Islamic finance in other countries in the region will provide large numbers of people with banking services for the first time.

A report by Ernst & Young on Monday said that up to 150 new financial institutions could be established to cater for growing demand from the Muslim-majority populations of countries such as Indonesia, Egypt and Pakistan.

The sharia finance sector in Bangladesh has been documented to fund terrorism.  Giving even more money to their Islamic banking system makes no sense unless the purpose is to bankroll terrorism even further.

ADB is funded by its member countries and international bond sales.  Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Nomura, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Daiwa, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets and UBS were involved with an ADB bond issuance earlier this year.

Bangladesh overwhelmed by the financial jihad

Bangladesh continues to teach the world more and more about the collusion between Islamic sharia financial institutions and terrorist organizations.

First there was the revelation that IBBL uses zakat to fund terrorists.  Then there was the U.S. Senate’s damaging report about HSBC last summer which highlighted the British bank’s relationships with IBBL and another sinister sharia bank in Bangladesh, the Social Islami Bank Limited.

The revelations probably had something to do with FATF issuing a warning to Bangladesh to clean up its act and tighten the screws on terror financing.  The government of Bangladesh is indeed trying to, but the jihadi swamp there is so foul, and sharia banking is so dominant over conventional banking, that one wonders if the swamp can ever be drained.

This informative November article from the Eurasia Review provides some excellent background on the last 20 years of terrorist financing in Bangladesh and how the country wound up in its current stew with FATF:

Bangladesh: Banking For Terror – Analysis

By: SATP
November 12, 2012

By Sanchita Bhattacharya

In what seems a logical culmination of events, Bangladesh has been given time until February 2013 to address deficiencies in its fight against money-laundering and terror-financing to avert black-listing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)…

…[T]he U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, in its July 17, 2012, report titled U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History, disclosed that two Bangladesh-based banks, Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL) and Social Islami Bank Limited (SIBL) were involved in terror financing. Regarding the functioning of HSBC, it was mentioned that the bank acted as a financier to clients seeking to route funds from countries like Mexico, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Myanmar, Japan and Russia. The report also stated that the HSBC supplied dollars to IBBL and SIBL, ignoring evidence of their links to terror financing. HSBC did not submit these two banks to enhanced monitoring for suspicious transactions, despite recommendation by HSBC’s own Financial Intelligence Group (FIG).

According to the document, SIBL’s ownership stakes were held by two Saudi Arabia based non-governmental organizations (NGOs): the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) – implicated in terrorist financing by the U.S. administration and included on the list of those prohibited to do business in the country; and Lajnat-al-Birr-al-Islam (Benevolence International Foundation, BIF), one of al Qaeda’s financers.

It was noted, further, that Saudi Arabia’s Al Rajhi Bank, also engaged in suspicious transaction, had a 37 per cent ownership in IBBL. HSBC also had maintained an association with Al Rajhi, a member of al Qaeda’s “Golden Chain” – a list including at least 20 top Saudi and Gulf States’ financial sponsors of al Qaeda, including bankers, businessmen, and former ministers.

The U.S. report on terror financing was not a recent finding. Since 9/11, the U.S. has taken strong steps to halt the flow of funds to terrorist organizations under Executive Order 13224 and related elements of the USA Patriotic Act.

The exposure of the unholy nexus between banking establishments and terrorist activities in Bangladesh can be traced back to the watershed country-wide serial bomb blasts on August 17, 2005. 459 explosions had been orchestrated in 63 of the country’s 64 Districts (excluding Munshiganj), killing three persons and injuring 100 others, on that date. After the serial blasts, which were orchestrated by the Jamaat ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the role of IBBL in promoting religious terror was brought under scrutiny, when Bangladesh Home Ministry constituted a committee to investigate terror financing. Subsequent to the arrest of the JMB ‘chief’ Shaikh Abdur Rahman and his second in command Siddiqui Islam alias Bangla Bhai, and the subsequent seizure of some banking documents, the investigation team documented suspicious transactions with IBBL branches in Sylhet, Gazipur and Savar, where violations of the Anti-Money Laundering Act were noticed. The Act which came into existence in 2002 was last amended on June 20, 2011. Rahman and Bangla Bhai were also found to have accounts with IBBL. The two were eventually hanged on March 30, 2007 – Rahman in Comilla Jail and Bangla Bhai in Mymensingh Prison.

Muslim banker under renewed scrutiny

The mainstream media and the Internet search engines have generally circled the wagons to suppress negative news coverage of Muhammad Yunus, a prominent Muslim banker.  Search for his name and you’ll find only glowing, positive biographies and tributes to the man.  But dig a little deeper and you’ll find an increasingly checkered record of financial and legal misdeeds despite the accolades for him from U.S. politicians, journalists, and academics.

Money Jihad remains watchful.  From the Business Recorder earlier this month:

Bangladesh orders new probe into Yunus

August 03, 2012

Bangladesh’s cabinet Thursday ordered a new probe into Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus which will check for irregularities during his time as head of microfinance pioneer Grameen Bank, an official said. The 72-year-old “banker to the poor” was forced from the institution last year, due to what his supporters say is a government vendetta against him.

A separate review of the bank has been underway since May this year. Yunus, who fell out with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after talking about going into politics, was officially fired for exceeding the mandatory retirement age of 60. He challenged the move in the Supreme Court, but lost.

“The investigation will cover the period of beyond that mandatory retirement age and see whether the facilities he enjoyed during that period were lawful,” the government”s cabinet secretary Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said. It will investigate in particular “if he enjoyed any tax exemption when he brought foreign currency home during his tenure as the managing director”, he said.

The findings of the investigation by the Bank and Financial Institution Department and the National Board of Revenue are to be handed to the cabinet within the shortest possible time, he added. Yunus, who won his 2006 Nobel Prize for pioneering the microfinance system in which small loans are made to poor entrepreneurs, is seen as one of the world”s leading anti-poverty activists and has many powerful foreign supporters.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a personal friend, heaped praise on Yunus during a visit to Dhaka in May and urged Hasina’s government to maintain “an environment where civil society groups operate freely”. The same month Yunus expressed fears that the bank he founded to put his concept of microfinance into practice would be taken over by the Bangladesh government.

Don’t forget that Yunus was the subject of an investigation by the government of Norway in 2010 for misappropriating Norwegian donations made to his bank.  Last year, Yunus was released on bail over slander charges from officials in Bangladesh, who have also investigated Yunus for tax evasion.

HSBC flouted warnings, cozied up to IBBL

A report by the U.S. Senate has documented extensive ties between HSBC and Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL), the biggest sharia bank in Bangladesh.  HSBC engaged in business activity with the Bangladeshi financial institution despite ample evidence of IBBL facilitating terrorist financing.

As previous Money Jihad coverage has shown, IBBL helped bankroll the dangerous spread of Wahhabi Islam in Bangladesh.  Last year, IBBL was also named by its own government for diverting zakat to fund militant jihad, and one of its sharia board advisers was arrested an interrogated for an attack against police officers.  And that was without even knowing the contents of this report, which are quite damning.

IBBL remains one of the world’s worst examples of the nexus between sharia finance and terror finance.  But HSBC didn’t seem to mind too much.

From Wednesday’s Daily Star:

Terror financed due to HSBC failure

US probe into British bank’s operation in Bangladesh exposes links of 2 local Islamic banks

Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd and Social Islami Bank Ltd came into the spotlight yesterday for their alleged links to terrorist financing after a US Senate report exposed British banking giant HSBC’s internal governance failure to control flows of suspect funds.

Click here to read Full Text of US report

One of the banks was allegedly funding al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law held shares in a company that has shares in the bank.

In all these cases, profit motive rather than cautions from various levels within the bank and standard procedures ruled the game.

More thoughts were given to the bank’s making $47,000 in revenue that might go up to $75,000 a year later than to the terrorist links the banks allegedly had, or the US authorities’ view of the banks.

A report of the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a congressional watchdog panel, has revealed these troubling information which show a “pervasively polluted” culture at HSBC Holdings Plc.

The bank acted as financier to clients seeking to route shadowy funds from the world’s most dangerous and secretive corners, including Mexico, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, according to the report.

The US report also mentioned that Al Rajhi Bank, a Saudi bank, was involved in suspicious transactions.

HSBC apologised to the US Senate, saying it takes “compliance with the law, wherever it operates, very seriously”.

In one instance, when Islami Bank wanted to open a US dollar account with the HSBC US office, questions were raised about the Saudi bank Al Rajhi’s 37 percent ownership in Islami Bank. Ears of HSBC’s anti-money laundering unit were cocked.

But the then head of HSBC Global Banknotes, Chris Lok, felt that his interest in considering a new account depended upon whether there was enough potential revenue to make.

“Is this an account worth chasing….How much money can you expect to make from this name? It’s just that if the revenue is there then we are prepared for a good fight,” he wrote. “The money is there and we should go for this account.”

“Then Lok and others approved the account despite questions about its [Islami Bank] primary shareholder Al Rajhi Bank, whose past links to terrorist financing had received attention in the media …and troubling information about Islami Bank itself,” the senate report said.

HSBC’s own Financial Intelligence Group (FIG) unit had reported that Shaikh Abdur Rahman, chief of Bangladesh’s terrorist outfit JMB, had an account with Islami Bank. Bangladesh Bank found that two branches of Islami Bank had been engaged in “suspicious transactions” and urged the bank to take action against 20 bank employees for failing to report the suspicious transactions, according to the FIG report.

Six top militants including JMB chief Abdur Rahman and his deputy Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai were executed for killing two Jhalakathi judges in 2007.

HSBC’s Know Your Customer unit had reported that Islami Bank be classified as a highest risk client but HSBC rejected the suggestion. It meant HSBC did not subject the bank to any enhanced monitoring.

HSBC’s another internal report said a Saudi NGO, International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO), had been implicated in terrorist financing by the US government and included on the list of those prohibited to do business in the US. The IIRO had accounts with both Islami Bank and Social Islami Bank, and yet HSBC’s Compliance Department denied an internal request of due diligence on the bank.

“Today, although HSBC exited the US banknotes business in 2010, Islami Bank remains a customer of two dozen HSBC affiliates,” the report said.

Western Union’s sharia shipwreck

Money transfer giant partners with fishy sharia bank

Western Union and IBBL officials join together

A major partnership has been reported between Western Union and Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL) to provide remittance services to Bangladeshi expatriates.

IBBL is the largest and oldest sharia-compliant bank in Bangladesh.  The Islami Bank Foundation is its charitable wing.  Money Jihad has previously reported that:

• In January 2011, the government of Bangladesh said there were “strong evidences of militant financing by the Bank and the Foundation.”
• Bangladesh’s home ministry announced in March 2011 that 8 percent of IBBL’s profits are diverted as zakat to support militant jihad.
• Abu Bakr Rafique, one of the advisors on IBBL’s sharia board, was arrested and interrogated in September 2011 for his suspected involvement in an Islamist attack that left three police officers seriously injured.

IBBL also played a historical role in facilitating transactions and handling accounts for the Saudi Wahhabi-based Muslim World League (Rabita al-Alam al-Islami).

More than any other entity, IBBL provides the clearest example of the connection between sharia banking and terror finance.

But Western Union doesn’t seem to mind.

From The Financial Express yesterday:

Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd (IBBL) Tuesday launched inward remittance transfer services linking millions of expatriates, living and working in over 200 countries and territories, to the bank’s 269 branches across the country.

Teaming up with world class cross-border money transfer platform-Western Union, IBBL enabled the Bangladeshi expatriates to send their hard-earned money to the beneficiaries at home within a few minutes.

Cop attacker suspect serves on sharia board

Money Jihad readers will recall Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL), a large sharia bank that diverts 8 percent of its profits as zakat toward jihadist militants according to the Bangladesh home ministry.

What you don’t know is that the secretary of IBBL’s sharia advisory board is Abu Bakr Rafique, who was arrested last September on suspicion of his involvement in an attack against Bangladeshi police by Jamaat-e-Islami “activists” who seriously injured three officers.

Rafique remains a member in good standing on the sharia board of IBBL, and attended the board’s May 7 meeting.

Rafique is also the pro-vice provost of the International Islamic University in Chittagong (IIUC).  The government of Bangladesh has detected $15 million that is suspected to have been funneled from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait through the IIUC to terrorist leaders in the form of “honorariums,” grants, and bogus allowances.  Let’s look back to the Blitz last September 2011:

Bangladesh government has detected an annual inflow of US$ 15 million suspected terror funding from dubious sources in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which came to International Islamic University [IIU] situated in Chittagong in the country as “grant”. Pro-Vice Chancellor of IIU, Abu Bakar Rafique has been arrested on his way to Kuwait from Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong. It is alleged that, IIU was connected with a number of leaders of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and some of the leaders of the party were receiving monthly honorarium or allowances from it. Chittagong city leader of Jamaat, Shamsul Islam, who is the secretary of the “Trustee Board” of IIU, was receiving US$ 2,000 each month as “meeting allowance”. A number of Jamaat leaders continued to draw fund from the International Islamic University as “meeting allowance”.

International Islamic University obtained approval in 1995 from the Ministry of Education in Bangladesh to start its activities.

It may be mentioned here that, dubious Afro-Arab sources are continuing to fund various madrassas and Islamic education institutes in Bangladesh for years. Earlier, Kuwait-based Islamic Heritage Revival Society and Saudi-based Al-Haramine Institutes were outlawed in Bangladesh on suspected terror involvement. Both the organizations were funding few hundred millions of dollars every year in Koranic madrassas as well as various Islamic institutions in Bangladesh. Both were banned by the previous government led by Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP].

There are three campuses of International Islamic University in the world. These are located in Malaysia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is believed that IIU are product of Jamaat-e-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood. The late Abdullah Azzam, Bin Laden’s mentor, was a teacher at the International Islamic University in Islamabad [IIUI]. Since 2001, there have been numerous reports of IIU students and lecturers being connected to al-Qaeda.

On January 28, 2010 two Nigerians who were pursuing their Doctor of Philosophy [PhD] degrees at the Islamic University of Malaysia were arrested by the Malaysian government on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist group. Australian newspaper Sydney Morning Herald) reported that the terrorism suspects detained in Malaysia were believed to be linked to the Nigerian student responsible for the botched Christmas Day plane bombing near Detroit. It quoted Malaysian officials as saying they arrested the 10, including nine foreigners, for “acts of terrorism” and that they were members of an international terror outfit tracked down in cooperation with foreign intelligence groups.

British newspaper The Telegraph said, The 10 suspects were from Malaysia, Syria, Nigeria, Jordan and Yemen. Abdul Mutallab – who studied mechanical engineering at University College, London from 2005 – 2008, was arrested after he attempted to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear on-board Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.

However in Bangladesh, leading news agency BDNEWS24 removed a news item titled ‘IIUC Chancellor questioned for dubious meetings’ which was released in 2010, while News From Bangladesh deleted a news titled ‘Militant Camp found behind International Islamic University Chittagong’ for reasons not mentioned by either of the news sites.

The controversy in the Arab world over funding and promoting Islamic extremism and ultimately exporting this form of jihadist education is alive and well in an age in which terrorism is proliferating. Islamic universities have found themselves under siege as a result of the inquiry into their promotion of jihadist teachings. The controversy though stretches beyond the Arab world. There are Islamic universities all over the world, including in the United States, for example Michigan’s Islamic American University. In addition, Russia opened its first Islamic university in 1998 in Kazan, the capital of predominantly Muslim Republic of Tatar Stan.

This issue has been brought into focus with the attempted Christmas Day bombing by the 23-year old Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab. Mutallab allegedly received training and education in Yemen months prior to his attempted attack on a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009. Further controversy has ensued since it has been revealed that the radical, American-born, Internet preacher Anwar al-Awlaki took classes and gave lectures at Al Eman University in Sana, where Mutallab was studying Arabic.

Al Eman University in Sana, Yemen has been in the media spotlight as a result of its connection to the Christmas Day attempted bombing and terrorist plot. There is viable fear among Americans and other international counterparts that violent extremism is brewing in the halls of Al Elman and other Islamic universities. Sheik Abdul Majid al-Zindani, who was also a theological adviser to Osama bin Laden, founded Al Elman University in 1993. The United States eventually put Zindani on a list of “specially designated global terrorists” for suspected fundraising for al-Qaeda operatives. The university has approximately 4,000 students and teaches courses in Islam and Western disciplines, publicly asserting that it seeks to blend the two and not promote jihadism. The university administration denied that Sheik Zindani was ever involved in a terrorist plot against the United States. The university vehemently opposes any claim that its form of education embraces violent, conservative Islam.

It is claimed by the counter-terrorism specialist that universities are an ideal setting for indoctrinating the young to radical, fundamental Islam. The case of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab and his connection to Al Eman University has reinvigorated the debate about whether universities are being used as breeding grounds for radical Islam. British universities in particular have been questioned since Abdul Mutallab studied in London in a mechanical engineering program before his connection to al-Qaeda was revealed. Before him, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted of the murder of a Wall Street Journal reporter, attended the London School of Economics. Likewise, notorious British citizens Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Sharif were enrolled in King’s College London before launching a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2003. Experts fear that during the very formative years of the college experience, extremists are influencing the youth and planting radical ideas. The British Department of Education has recently said to have prepared advice for colleges on how to look for Islamic fundamentalist activity on campuses. The fear for some becomes that overseas students are sought after to fill spaces and subsequently able to move freely around campus clandestinely recruiting other young people for radical, violent jihad. The argument goes that a university setting automatically provides radicals with access to thousands of young people for recruitment. It is an environment undeniably conducive to rallying a group of prospective followers.

Clandestine jihadists in Bangladeshi universities:

There are currently above eight hundred foreign students studying at Dhaka University, various medical colleges as well as Islamic universities in Bangladesh. It is alleged that, in most cases, students in particular from Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Palestine, Syria and African countries are actively involved in Jihadist indoctrination to fellow students by generating anti-West and anti-Semitic sentiments with the tactics of telling fake stories of “American, Western and Israeli brutalities on Muslims and anti-Islam conspiracies”. Such stories generally are cooked by top-graded pro-jihadist scholars. None of the intelligence agencies in Bangladesh are yet monitoring the activities in clandestine of the foreign students in various campuses in the country.

What does it tell you about Prof. Rafique when he maintains his positions with the IBBL sharia board and the IIUC, and both entities have been implicated by his own government in terror finance schemes?  And what does it tell you about IBBL that they keep a man on their sharia board who was arrested for his involvement in a failed cop killer plot?