Arabs realize khums funds terror

The Koran 8:42 says that “when ye have taken any booty, a fifth part belongeth to God and to the Apostle…” This one-fifth tax, or khums, on booty or the spoils of war has been a common revenue-raising measure employed by caliphs, sultans, and Muslim military commanders since the eighth century.  Shia Muslims regard the concept more broadly to apply to one-fifth of personal net profits.

The problem with khums is that it has been used to fund Hezbollah for years, that it has funded jihadist movements for decades including the Iranian Revolution itself, and it has been used more recently to fund subversive activities in Bahrain.  Even Iraqi Shia have been critical of Iran’s abuse of khums, calling khums haram and equating it to flushing money down the toilet.  It’s amusing that Sunni Muslim figures in the Gulf are just now catching on to the scourge.

From the Jerusalem Post on May 4 (h/t El Grillo):

Gulf Shi’ites paying religious tax to Iran are funding terror, Sunni campaign says

The age-old Sunni-Shi’ite split is now the underlying cause of a new Sunni outcry against the expansionist policy of Iran in the Middle East.

A social media campaign launched recently by Sunni Muslims seeks to protest over the transfer of a religious tax payed by Shi’ites living in the Gulf to the main centers of Shia scholarship in Iran and Iraq.

The Khums (meaning fifth in Arabic), is a tax mentioned in the Koran and consisting of 20% of a person’s excess earning. The money is donated to poor and orphans, as well as to Islamic institutions.

According to the Koran, the Khums should be collected by the Imam Mahdi (the Shi’ite messiah). However, because the day of judgement has not yet arrived, the religious establishment in Iran is the one getting the money.

Since these endowments arrive directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, without any supervision by Iranian state institutions, they are allegedly used for political purposes and not for religious and moral ones, as the Koran obligates.

According to Arab media reports, hundreds of millions of dollars payed annually by Gulf Shi’ites to the religious scholars in Qom (the major Shi’ite center in Iran) are transferred to Iran’s militias in Iraq and Syria, which are fighting the local Sunni population.

The Khums is also a major income source for Hezbollah. In 2005, then-Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Nabousli proudly declared that most of the organization’s revenues come from Khums.

Since this money is not circulated in the international financial system, it helped the Iranian regime withstand the financial sanctions that were imposed on it by the West, providing it with liquidity.

In light of Iran’s expansionist policy in the Middle East, Sunni social media activists are now calling on governments in the Gulf to prevent the transfer of the money collected from Khums to Iran and obligate Shi’ites to pay this money to the states they are living in.

The standard-bearer of the Sunni campaign is Khaled Alkami, a well-known Saudi political analyst, who wrote on Twitter a series of comments under the hashtag: “the transfer of Khums to Iran is terror.”

“Sending money, under any name, to the thug state of Iran, is the same as sending money to al-Qaida, ISIS or Hezbollah, and it should be designated as ‘terror funding,'” Alkami said…

ISIS fish farms supplement income

That and poultry, which in Iraq means chicken and pigeons.  The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is charging a 10 percent, or ushr, customs duty on imports.  The New York Times ran this story with a headline suggesting that ISIS was resorting to the fish farms to make up for lost oil revenues.  But in the text of the article, sources admit that Syrian oil refineries are still ISIS’s primary source of money.  Keep that cork in the champagne bottles, fellas.

Hat tip to El Grillo for sending the report, which is actually from Reuters:

BAGHDAD — Islamic State earns millions of dollars a month running car dealerships and fish farms in Iraq, making up for lower oil income after its battlefield losses, Iraqi judicial authorities said on Thursday.

Security experts once estimated the ultra-radical Islamist group’s annual income at $2.9 billion, much of it coming from oil and gas installations in Iraq and Syria.

The U.S.-led coalition has targeted Islamic State’s financial infrastructure, using air strikes to reduce its ability to extract, refine and transport oil and so forcing fighters to reportedly take significant pay cuts.

Yet the militants, who seized a third of Iraq’s territory and declared a caliphate in 2014, seem to be adapting again to this latest set of constraints, in some cases reviving previous profit-turning ventures like farming.

“The terrorists’ current financing mechanism has changed from what it was before the announcement of the caliphate nearly two years ago,” a report by Iraq’s central court of investigation said, quoting Judge Jabbar Abid al-Huchaimi.

“After the armed forces took control of several oil fields Daesh was using to finance its operations, the organization devised non-traditional ways of paying its fighters and financing its activities,” the report added, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Fishing in hundreds of lakes north of Baghdad generates millions of dollars a month, according to the report. Some owners fleeing the area abandoned their farms while others agreed to cooperate with Islamic State to avoid being attacked.

“Daesh treats its northern Baghdad province as a financial center; it is its primary source of financing in the capital in particular,” Huchaimi said. Islamic State carries out frequent bombings in Baghdad against security forces and Shi’ite residents.

SELLING CARS, RUNNING FACTORIES

Fish farms have supplied militants with income since 2007 when Islamic State’s al Qaeda predecessor fought U.S. occupation forces but the mechanism only came to the authorities’ attention this year, the report said.

The militants also tax agricultural land and impose a 10 percent levy on poultry and other duties on a range of imports into their territory, it added.

“Recently there has been reliance on agricultural lands in areas outside the control of the (Iraqi) security forces through taxes imposed on farmers.”

New revenues are also being generated from car dealerships and factories once run by the Iraqi government in areas seized by the militants.

Those have helped offset the losses from lower oil income, though perhaps only partially. The U.S.-based analysis firm IHS said last week that Islamic State revenues had fallen by around a third since last summer to around $56 million a month.

“In the recent period, Daesh has gone back to using government factories in the areas it controls – like Mosul – for financial returns,” Huchaimi said, but added that oil smuggling from Syrian refineries remains the group’s primary source of international financing…

ISIS makes as much from taxes as oil

The Financial Times has conducted an investigation of the finances of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).  They concluded that ISIS makes “at least as much” money from taxation and extortion as they do from oil.  This is basically what Money Jihad has been pointing out about militant Islamist groups since the inception of this blog.  Jihadists that control territory tend to “live off the land.”  Traditional Islamic law gives them ample justification or cover for this behavior.

From FT on Dec. 14 (h/t El Grillo):

Even under jihadi rule, death and taxes remain the two great certainties of life. Some learn that the hard way.

As Isis officials announced a religious tithe known as zakat last summer, Mansour, a 26-year-old grocery storekeeper in eastern Syria, stalled payment while he tried to cook his books.

A week later, four Isis officials stormed into his shop, ordered him outside, and tallied the bill themselves — to his dismay they based their calculation on the retail price of his stock. There were no price tags on the tinned beef, so one tax collector rode around town on his motorbike comparing canned beef prices in other stores.

Five hours later, the audit was complete. The bill: 32,500 Syrian lira (about $108).

“They told me, ‘You liar . . . How will victory be achieved if you’re not paying zakat?’” Mansour told the Financial Times via an internet site. Like all those from Isis territory who were interviewed by the FT, Mansour requested that his real name be withheld for his safety.

Syria’s oil may ostensibly be the militant group’s most profitable resource but even if US, French and Russian planes succeed in trying to bring down its crude production, local revenues like taxes could keep the Isis economy churning. An FT investigation indicates Isis earns at least as much from taxation, extortion and confiscation as oil…

Read the rest of the FT article here which includes much more detail than the excerpt above.

30 sugar smugglers ID’d as al-Shabaab financiers

Money Jihad readers may recall that Kenya recently sanctioned 86 people and 13 money transfer companies for their financial ties to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab. It has since been revealed that 30 of the sanctioned individuals are sugar smugglers. (Hat tips to Chris Pariso and El Grillo.)

The Star reports:

…A confidential government report seen by the Star says: “Most of the smuggled sugar enters the country [Kenya] from areas controlled by al Shabaab in Somalia. The sugar barons pay illegal levies (or protection fees) to al Shabaab, who in turn uses the proceeds to fund terrorist activities/operations…

Imposing taxes on businesses is a common al-Shabaab tactic. They do it on the charcoal supply chain, the telecommunications sector, the remittance industry, etc.  Sugar and charcoal tax rates are often based on the rate set for zakat in the Koran:  2½ percent.  Money Jihad has previously covered how lucrative the sugar trade has been for al-Shabaab here.

ISIS money man describes 6-figure cash smuggling

Abu Hajjar, a high-ranking leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has explains how he distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to ISIS fighters in a recent interview with BBC Two.  Abu Hajjar also addresses what he calls the Islamic State’s principal source of revenue:  the taxation of businesses and commerce in the areas under ISIS’s control.  He concludes that ISIS will never run out of money as long as businesses are still operating in Iraq.

Update: the world’s 10 richest terror groups

Graphic by Israel National News

A new ranking of the best funded terrorist organizations has been published by Forbes Israel. The Islamic State of Iraq comes in first with a reported net worth of $2 billion, followed by Hamas at $1 billion, FARC in third place at $600 million, Hezbollah fourth, and the Taliban fifth. Money Jihad would have estimated a lower net worth for ISIS, and would have placed the Taliban higher on the list. Forbes Israel rates the Irish Republic Army at 9^th place with $50 million, which Money Jihad believes is an overinflated figure, while the Belfast Telegraph reports that Forbes based that figure on information from the U.S. State Department and academics.

U.S. Treasury official David Cohen has said several times recently that ISIS is the best-financed terrorist group that is not funded by a state sponsor—a comment which tends to undermine the Forbes ranking by suggesting that Hamas and Hezbollah, which are funded by Iran, have more money than ISIS.

One common thread across most of the terrorist groups listed is their reliance on revenues from “taxes” that they believe are justified by the foundational texts of their ideologies.  ISIS charges Iraqi businessmen taxes as a form of zakat and charges non-Muslims jizya.  Hezbollah collects money much of its money through khums, the Shia tax on gains.  Al-Shabaab collects checkpoint taxes and zakat on trade in keeping with taxes and customs duties levied by the caliphate of antiquity. The Taliban collects harvest taxes on opium and collects ransom money as authorized by the Koran. The FARC believes that expropriating the wealth of capitalists through extortion and ransom are in keeping with the writings of Marx and Engels.

Hat tip to Gisele for sending in coverage of the Forbes report.

Clandestine money news: recommended reading

• Qatar is arming the revolutionary Islamist militia known as “Libya Dawn”… more>>

• The international watchdog Financial Action Task Force finds that soccer and money laundering are a perfect match for each other… more>>

• Arab Bank wasn’t the only financial institution funding Hamas.  Enter National Westminster Bank… more>>

• How ISIS’s antiquities smuggling and the Islamic khums tax finance the blood-letting in Iraq and Syria… more>>

ISIS taxing each long-haul trucker $800

Taxes make up increasing share of ISIS’s wealth

Trucks passing through Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) checkpoints on highways out of Iraq are being charged a tax of up to $800 per truck. Truckers are issued two tax stamps or receipts for their payments—one is shown at the next checkpoint as proof of payment, and the other is kept for the driver’s records. The taxes are in keeping with traditional Islamic tolls against merchants passing through the jurisdiction of an ‘ashir–a tax agent of an imam.

But ISIS hasn’t stopped there—they’re also collecting a tax on each bank withdrawal they authorize through ISIS-controlled banking committees in Mosul. If you’re an ordinary Mosul bank customer, you have to get permission from ISIS to withdraw your own money, and of course ISIS takes a cut along the way. ISIS probably justify their fees on the basis of reversing any “haram” interest that has accrued to depositors’ savings.

Thanks to Twitter user El Grillo for sending in both of the news items above.

The taxes suggest a deepening of ISIS’s territorial control, authority, expertise, and capacity to increase revenues domestically.  Forbes also reports that ISIS is taxing telecommunications networks and basic utilities.  Non-Muslims face the discriminatory jizya tax as well.

Muslim Brotherhood fills coffers with jizya from 80 Coptic families

Muslim Brotherhood gangsters have demanded from 3,000 to 15,000 USD apiece from 80 Coptic Christian households in Malawi, Egypt, according to a recent broadcast on CTV.  The report doesn’t specify how the Muslim Brotherhood is using the money it has collected, but typically such funds are used to pay Muslim Brotherhood operatives and to buy weapons.

Raymond Ibrahim has the details on the Brotherhood’s latest enterprise:

The Kidnapping and Plundering of Christian Copts

By Raymond Ibrahim on November 2, 2013

The kidnapping and plundering of Egypt’s Christian Copts continues unabated.

As recently revealed on CTV, in a village called Maghlaga, in the district of Malawi—where Muslim Brotherhood supporters earlier ransacked and plundered a museum housing Egyptian antiquities—a Muslim gang leader known as “Saddam” has been going to every one of the approximately 80 Coptic households in the village demanding jizya/extortion money from them.

One inhabitant of the village confirmed that Muslim Brotherhood members are behind Saddam, specifically informing him how much money each household can be squeezed of, so that most households are paying anywhere from 20,000-100,000 Egyptian pounds (from 3-15 thousand U.S. dollars).

Yasser, the village resident reporting, said that Saddam told the Copts that “Everyone is going to pay and whoever doesn’t pay we’ll take his son, his wife—we’ll violate the people to the utmost extreme.”

During the live news show it was further revealed that in the region of Shubrat al-Khaima, another young Coptic child was kidnapped, with demands that his parents pay 250,000 EP (nearly 40,000 USD).  After the father complied and met them alone with the money in a secret place, the kidnappers took the money, beat the father severely, and still kept his child.

Such hate for Egypt’s Christians is hardly unprecedented.  Earlier another Muslim man kidnapped a 6-year-old Christian boy and, after the family paid the ransom, still killed the child and threw his body in his sewer.

See prior Money Jihad coverage of how the Muslim Brotherhood finances itself through the traditional Islamic jizya tax here, here, and here.

Taliban force businessmen to support jihad

Even after formally being out of power for a dozen years, the Taliban has been able to sustain diversified and balanced revenue streams from a wider span of sources than nearly any other terrorist group on earth.  They collect royalties on opium and ordinary crops, taxes on shipments within and beyond Afghanistan, state sponsorship through Pakistan’s ISI spy service, zakat from wealthy Gulf donors siphoned through third party Islamic charities, jizya from Sikhs and other religious minorities in South and Central Asia, and ransoms from ordinary and wealthy Pakistanis—all of which they justify on the basis of Islamic law.

Dawn calls the ransoms “extortion,” which is vibrant and growing enterprise for Mullah Omar’s men:

Terror group sees Islamabad as a lucrative city for extortions

For the last couple of years, the capital city has seen an alarming increase in extortion cases. Unable to trace the culprits, the police say an outlawed terror group is behind the crime.

The banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has a hand in all the small and big extortion incidents. The terror outfit is involved in extorting money from rich people directly and indirectly, a police officer told Dawn on the condition of anonymity. He added that the TTP was found directly involved in targeting big businessmen, traders and professionals, especially doctors. But these cases were not so rampant.

The disturbing factor is that the TTP was also indirectly encouraging small groups to collect extortions and share the money with it. This racket of splinter groups has widened its activities across the city but most of the cases are not reported to the police on time, he said.

The TTP started getting extortions after its traditional source of foreign funding was either plugged or reduced. In the early days, militant groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan used to receive funds from abroad.

Though the militant groups still receive funds from other countries, they are not sufficient to carry out terror activities. This has forced them to look for other sources of income inside the country, with extortion, kidnapping for ransom and bank robberies being the most lucrative of them.

It was in September 2012 when the police arrested three people in the capital city and unearthed the TTP’s direct involvement in receiving extortions. The network had demanded Rs 6 million as extortion from a trader in the Blue Area.

During investigation, the accused disclosed that they collected extortions from traders and transferred the money to Manchester, UK, through Hundi for onward delivery to the terror network.

In June this year, traders of Sabzi Mandi informed the police that a group of Afghan nationals was forcing extortions from them, but when the police registered a case, the group escaped from the area. During investigation of the case, it was revealed in August that some people in Khana Pul, Sihala and Mandi Mor areas also collected millions of rupees every month and diverted them to militant outfits, the officer added.

The second direct involvement of the TTP in extortion came to light when a business centre in Sihala was attacked a week back. This was the second attack on the centre since July 26.

On June 17, Mohammad Raja Asif, the owner of the centre, received a telephone call in which the caller threatened him to pay Rs100 million. Later, he continued receiving similar calls from different local and Afghan numbers.

On July 26, his business centre was attacked with hand grenades in which his office was damaged. The next day – July 27 – he received another call from an Afghanistan-based number and the caller told him that the attack was the result of his failure to pay the extortion sum.

Syrian rebel fatwa: seize non-Sunni property

Unless they convert to Sunni Islam, the property of Syrian Christians and Shia Muslims should be confiscated.  So say the muftis in Syria who issued a fatwa on the subject.  They also instructed Sunnis to use the money that they confiscate to buy weapons for jihad.

The ruling is in keeping with the teachings of deceased Al Qaeda imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who urged dispossession of infidel wealth.  The fatwa may also be partly inspired by the kharaj, an Islamic tax against defeated non-Muslims and their land.

From PI-News.org on Oct. 1:

Syria: Dispossession of All Non-Muslims

In Syria, islamist legal scholars have signed a fatwa calling for the seizure of the possessions of all Christians, Druze, Alawites and other minorities that “do not confess to the Sunni religion of the prophet.” The proceeds of this property is to be used for the purchase of weapons for “martyrs” and for their families. The Muftis also call for the breaking off of all ties with Syrians “who have betrayed or deserted from the Revolution.” Furthermore, it says: “We call our people to adhere to our islamic traditions and to visit the house of God regularly so that we may protect our souls and our society.” That means very well then that the “infidels” before they are slain are to be humiliated by this robbery of their property. (lsg)

Posted by PI / Translation: Anders Denken