Congress probes U.S. Muslim Brotherhood

According to Paul Sperry writing for WorldNetDaily, congressional staffers are preparing a report on the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood in American Muslim organizations and into their infiltration of the federal government.  Read Sperry’s full piece from Feb. 21 here.  In it, Sperry also republished a page from his own book, Muslim Mafia, that lists “key U.S. Muslim Brotherhood front organizations.”  This is a valuable list for future reference (with hyperlinks to some prior Money Jihad coverage added):

• African Muslim Agency
• Al-Aqsa Education Fund
• All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS)
• American Muslim Armed Forces & Veterans Council (AMAFVAC)
• American Muslim Council (AMC)
• American Muslims for Constructive Engagement (AMCE)
• American Muslim Foundation (AMC Foundation)
• American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT)
• Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers (AMSE)
• Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America (AMSS)
• Baitul Mal Inc. (BMI)
• Council of Islamic Schools of North America (CISNA)
• Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)
• Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center
• Dar El-Eiman USA Inc.
• Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA)
• Global Relief Foundation
• Graduate School of Islamic & Social Sciences (GSISS, aka Cordoba University)
• Happy Hearts Trust
• Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)
• International Institute for Islamic Thought
• International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations (IIFSO)
• International Islamic Forum for Science, Technology & Human Resources Development Inc. (IIFTIKHAR)
• International Relief Organization (IRO)
• Islamic Academy of Florida
• Islamic Assembly of North America
• Islamic Association for Palestine in North America (IAP)
• Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)
• Islamic Free Market Institute (Islamic Institute)
• Islamic Media Foundation
• Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA)
• Islamic Society of North America
• Makkah Mukarramah Charity Trust
• Muslim American Society (MAS)
• Muslim Students Association (MSA)
• Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA)
• Muslim World League (MWL)
• North American Imams Federation (NAIF)
• North American Islamic Trust (NAIT)
• SAAR Foundation
• Safa Trust
• Taibah International Aid Association
• United Association for Studies and Research (UASR)
• World Assembly of Muslim Youth

Obama’s zakat to Qaddafi charities

The article is seven months old now, but The Religion of Peace has recently linked to it, which gives it instant circulation among countless counter-jihad websites.  And that’s a good thing.  It’s a timely reminder of the pitfalls of Islamic charity and the madness of the U.S. federal government having anything to do with supporting such “charities.”

Originally from American Thinker on July 17, 2010:

Remember as a kid drawing connect-the-dots pictures?  Simply follow the dots and a clear picture emerges.  As an adult, connecting the dots of Obama’s actions leads to an oxymoronic picture.  A clear picture of a murky web.  Obama’s actions continually link him to people and causes that the majority of Americans do not support. The recent event of another aid ship sailing to Gaza is an example of to whom and what the strands of Obama’s web link him, and unfortunately America.

Last year, right around the time Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi called Obama “our son,” Obama earmarked $400,000 for two Libyan charities. The money was divided between two foundations run by Gaddafi’s children; Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, run by his son Saif, and Wa Attassimou, run by his daughter Aicha.  What noble causes did our tax dollars potentially help support thanks to Obama’s generosity?

Your tax dollars refurbish mosques

This story about U.S. foreign aid going toward mosque and minaret restoration got some traction last year, but not much.  At the time we were led to believe that “only” $6 million was being spent on such efforts.  Vlad Tepes (h/t GoV) has posted a video from a recent WSB-TV Atlanta broadcast suggesting a much greater scope:

Islamic bigwigs propose war on poverty

What if we donated our hats to the poor?

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the secretary general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, says that civil unrest in the Islamic world today is due to poverty.  This aligns him with Saudi King Abdullah who has called for an anti-poverty fund.  Incidentally, Osama bin Laden has called for the same thing.  The problem is that proposals like these will undoubtedly take shape as yet another zakat fund.   

Fourteen centuries of zakat, a pillar of Islam and the tax which is partly supposed to help the poor, have failed to eliminate poverty in the Islamic world.  Despite vast oil wealth, Islamic economies are among the least free on earth, and economic inequality in the Middle East is dramatic.  The solution proposed by these two distinguished Muslim leaders is to double-down on zakat—a failed model for social development.

As the auditor general of Malaysia succinctly put it, “more zakat, more poverty.”  (And that’s without even addressing the zakat-terrorism connections.)  From Asharq Alawsat on Feb. 22 (h/t Rantburg):

Jeddah– Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference [OIC] Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu has said that the unrest taking place in some Arab states is due to their lack of policies to combat poverty, and the lack of social justice in these countries, which is something that Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz called for at the Mecca Conference. Saudi monarch King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz had called for the creation of a fund to combat poverty at the Mecca Conference…

Muslim scams abound

Western crooks, including Christians, do lie, cheat, and steal.  But they don’t have a religious authority telling them that theft is a duty imposed by god.

Meanwhile, Radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki has told Muslims living in the West that it is a commandment of Islam to engage in a variety of financial crimes against infidel governments.  That includes defrauding the welfare states that play host to Muslim immigrants.  With that as a preface, here’s a round-up of recent Muslim financial criminals at work:

• Two bank clerks plotted to steal £350,000 by using fake ID cards (Men Media, Jan. 20)
• Ten apparently Muslim families cost the U.K. over one million pounds per year in outrageous housing benefits (Daily Mail, Jan. 29).
• An Afghan woman living high on the hog in Britain was able to live in a £1.2 million mansion through housing benefit fraud (Daily Mail, Jan. 25).
• A mortgage fraudster and Islamic religious teacher was able to acquire £1.7 million in real estate through false mortgage papers (Daily Mail, Feb. 19).
• Fake orphan scam:  a Pakistani immigrated to Great Britain and claimed he was a poor, homeless orphan facing death if he were deported, but who was actually just staying in Britain to send cash back to Pakistan (Daily Mail, Feb. 21, h/t GoV).

I’m leaving out some other recent flimflams from Canada, Sweden, and the U.S., but there’s only so much blog space and so many crimes…

L’énergie nucléaire for Saudis & bin Ladens

Ah, another Gaullist day in Arabia.  The French company Areva is “excited” to have signed a deal to furnish Saudi Arabia with nuclear power.  Areva, which is 90 percent government-owned, is including a solar power deal for the sunbaked desert kingdom for good public show, too. 

Behind the convenient cover story of a depleting energy supply and a desire to diversify civil energy sources, the Saudis are probably pursuing the technology as a counterweight to Iran’s nuclear program.  On one hand, the initiative may be a beneficial deterrent to Iran.  On the other hand, considering the rising tide of Islamist protests against the existing regimes of the Islamic world, selling technologies to a “rational” actor like the Saudi royal family could prove to be disastrously shortsighted.

Oh, and the bin Laden Group will also be a co-partner in the power plant construction, but that is but a petit detail, oui?  Read it all, mes amis, from The National last month (with hat tip to Crossroads Arabia):

Saudi Binladin Group and the French nuclear reactor designer Areva are to sign an agreement on nuclear and solar power, advancing Saudi plans for diversifying the kingdom’s electricity supply.

Anne Lauvergeon, the chief executive of Areva, announced the prospective deal in Riyadh on Sunday, saying the companies would sign a partnership agreement to develop both types of power. She declined to give further details.

“We are in a major energy evolution in the region,” Ms Lauvergeon told a conference in the Saudi capital. “In the past it was oil and gas, and that was it. Now it’s oil, gas, renewables and nuclear.

“We are very excited about this evolution and we would like to be a long-term partner of these developments.”

“We think that on solar thermal in Saudi Arabia there’s an important market and we are partnering with Saudi Binladin Group to develop this,” Ms Lauvergeon added on the sidelines of the conference.

A spokeswoman for Areva, reached at the company’s Paris headquarters yesterday, said any deal signed in Saudi Arabia would mainly concern solar power. She said Ms Lauvergeon travelled to Riyadh in response to Saudi requests for discussions on possible solar projects and advice on the direction of the kingdom’s nuclear programme.

Saudi Arabia has responded to soaring power demand as it pursues industrial development by burning oil in its power plants to supplement an insufficient gas supply. As a result, air quality in its cities has deteriorated, while power cuts remain frequent in summer.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia has burnt increasing amounts of crude oil in its power plants in the past two years, limiting foreign revenue from oil exports as the kingdom has also sought to comply with the output cuts on which Opec agreed in late 2008. It is the only major economy dependent on oil for more than 50 per cent of electricity supplies.

Hashim Yamani, the president of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Atomic and Renewable Energy City, said power diversification would free up more oil for export.

“Saudi will need to invest upfront in nuclear energy but the oil saved will contribute significantly to the costs,” Mr Yamani told Reuters. “Nuclear and renewable energy will reduce dependence on fossil fuels by 2050”…

Pakistan’s technical approach overwhelmed by Islamic reality

In a recent Dawn piece, Muhammad Amir Rana argues that Pakistan hasn’t accomplished much in efforts to counteract the funding of militant Islamist organizations.  It’s an informative article, and the author makes several good points about how absurd it is to try using a modern, technical campaign of anti-money laundering controls and prohibitions against only high-profile terrorist organizations when there exists a much broader, traditional, informal, religious, and even tribal-based system of transactions and privately collected Islamic “charity” and taxes.   It’s well worth a read.

Just keep in mind while reading it that it’s not just that Pakistan’s has failed to combat the financing of terrorism, it’s that Pakistan has funded terrorism through the ISI.  The Pakistani government also collects zakat and ushr without screening the recipients of local zakat board aid.  The Pakistanis government struck a truce to allow the Taliban to collect jizya from Sikhs.  The problem is that Pakistan’s overall commitment to Islamic taxation and sharia finance create a veritable breeding ground for jihadist financing.  And allowing militant organizations to fund themselves furthers Pakistan’s strategic interests in Kashmir.

DAWN—FEB 14—…Tracking the sources of their financing is a critical challenge. Although the state has taken some initiatives — including banning militant organisations, freezing their bank accounts and enforcing an anti-money laundering law — these have not proved effective. The main reason for that has been the fact that militant groups do not rely on the formal financial sector or avenues as well as the state’s failure to implement its decisions in any meaningful manner because of the absence of an appropriate mechanism.

In the absence of state monitoring and substantial measures to cut the flow of finances to the militants, the latter not only continue to launch fund-raising campaigns regularly, especially on religious occasions such as Ramazan and the two Eid festivals, but also receive support from individuals abroad, including expatriate Pakistanis.

Financial intelligence implicates Iran

Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin stopped in Iraq for a surprise visit last week.  Treasury issued a press release to make it sound like a friendly meeting among top financial officials between the two countries, but Wolin would not have made such a visit unless he wanted something tangible from the Iraqis.

What Wolin came for is indicated in the crucial line of Treasury’s press release:  “Deputy Secretary Wolin also discussed the significant threat associated with Iran’s increasing ties to Iraq’s developing financial sector and the need for the development of a sound anti-money-laundering/combating-the-financing-of-terrorism (AML/CFT) regime to protect against illicit financial activity, support Iraq’s integration into international markets and attract foreign investment.”

Wolin isn’t the first official to be alarmed by Iranian investments in Iran.  In 2008, Condoleezza Rice warned of the “reputational risks” involved with allowing Iranian business into Iraq.  More than just the reputation problem, such economic entanglement could facilitate Iran’s illicit weapons program.  That is the reason why FATF blacklisted Iran in the first place.  Iran uses front companies and proxy banks throughout the world, now including Baghdad, to spirit money back into its nuclear development.

Italy embraces Syria like a beautiful woman

Move over France.  Syria has another suitor.  Italy has increased its imports from Syria by 140 percent since 2009.

The love fest might not be so bad if Italy were getting something equal in return, but Syria is importing as much from Italy.  Neither would it be so bad if Syria had solid anti-money laundering controls in place and could guarantee that profits from its export business weren’t helping fund the abuses of the Syrian regime.

From ANSAmed (with special thanks to GoV):

DAMASCUS, FEBRUARY 16 – In the month of October trade between Italy and Syria was at about 1.7 billion euros, an increase of 88% over 2009, according to the latest ISTAT (Italian national statistics institute) data available, reported by the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE) office in Damascus. Fostering growth in trade between the two countries is especially an increase in Italian imports from Syria, which rose by 140% compared with 2009, and an increase in Italian exports to Syria, which rose by 55.4% on 2009. After 4 consecutive years of a surplus for Italy, the Italy-Syria trade balance saw a slight deficit of 6 million euros, a worsening of the situation compared with 2009 when Italy had a surplus of 195 million euros.

Tunisians vow to replicate Khaybar assault

Jihad Watch reports that Tunisian Muslims have shouted, “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud, jaish Muhammad sa yaoud,” meaning “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return,” during recent protests in front of a Tunis synagogue.

As Robert Spencer points out, Islamists hail Khaybar as “an aggressive, surprise raid by Muhammad which resulted in the final eradication of the once considerable Jewish presence in Arabia.”

Khaybar was also the scene of a massive theft by Muslims of the Jews’ oasis and the target of an utterly foul 50 percent kharaj tax imposed against the remaining Jewish farmers.

The Khaybar chants at a synagogue aren’t just a threat against the physical presence of the Jews, but a portent of the Islamic tax policy that would be imposed against the Jewish population if the protestors win out.

This aligns at least one political faction of Tunisia with the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party of Malaysia who have formally called for a revival of the kharaj tax against non-Muslims.

Terrorist “imposters” wage money jihad

“False checkpoints”?  The men were imposing the beloved checkpoint tax of Islam.  And they conducted kidnappings made to look like traditional Islamic abductions for ransom (fida’). 

Yet, according to this article, the men were merely imposters “posing” as terrorists.  These Muslim men posed, it would seem, with extraordinary ease.  From Ennahar on Feb. 14 with thanks to Rantburg:

ALGIERS – A network of criminals responsible for several kidnappings for ransom in Kabylia and posing as members of a terrorist group, was disbanded late January, said the Algerian police quoted Monday by the press.

Seven people were arrested and three are actively hunted, according to the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the police who reported the seizure of several weapons on this occasion.

These men, who claimed to belong to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (the forerunner of Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb-AQIM), made many false checkpoints in the area of Aghrib in the province of Tizi Ouzou, about a hundred kilometers east of Algiers.

They are accused for at least seven crimes in less than a year, including the recent assassination of a entrepreneur, kidnapping of the latter’s cousin and an attack against a police station in the region, said the gendarmerie.

Extorted funds to free their hostages were used to purchase weapons from smugglers in southern Algeria.