BY: Adam Kredo
September 18, 2013 1:55 pm
Official business for two organizations overlapped
A senior Muslim Brotherhood official who, until recently, had been employed by the William J. Clinton Foundation was arrested in Cairo on Tuesday and charged with inciting violence.
Gehad el-Haddad served as one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s top communications officials until Egyptian security forces seized him as part of a wider crackdown on officials loyal to ousted former President Mohamed Morsi.
Before emerging as a top Brotherhood official and adviser to Morsi, el-Haddad served for five years as an official at the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit group founded by former President Bill Clinton.
El-Haddad gained a reputation for pushing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda in the foreign press, where he was often quoted defending the Brotherhood’s crackdown on civil liberties in Egypt.
He was raised in a family of prominent Brotherhood supporters and became the public face of the Islamist organization soon after leaving his post at the Clinton Foundation.
However, much of his official work with the Brotherhood took place while he was still claiming to be employed by the Clinton Foundation.
“It was only a matter of time before Gehad el-Haddad was arrested,” Egypt expert Eric Trager told the Washington Free Beacon. “Many of the other Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen have been apprehended, and in addition to decapitating the organization, the military-backed government has been specifically targeting the Brotherhood’s media wing, including by shutting down its T.V. stations at the time of Morsi’s ouster on July 3.”
“It has also gone after those connected to Morsi’s presidential office, and Gehad’s father is Morsi adviser and Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Office member Essam el-Haddad,” noted Trager, a next generation fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
El-Haddad’s father was a top foreign policy adviser for Morsi until both were apprehended by Egyptian security personnel.
El-Haddad’s arrest sparked outrage among Brotherhood supporters, scores of whom have taken to the street in protest in the weeks since Morsi was removed from office and seized by the Egyptian military.
“We are thinking about you and you are in our prayers,” one supporter wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
“Freedom for #gehad el haddad,” tweeted another.
El-Haddad served as the Clinton Foundation’s city director from August 2007 to August 2012, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Just a month after El-Haddad left the Clinton Foundation to work full-time for the Brotherhood, former President Morsi was invited to deliver his first major speech at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), the high profile political family’s other nonprofit.
El-Haddad’s employment at the Clinton Foundation overlapped with his official work for the Muslim Brotherhood, which began in Cairo in February 2012 when he assumed control of the Renaissance Project, a Brotherhood-backed economic recovery program.
El-Haddad officially became a senior adviser for foreign affairs in Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party in May 2011, when he was still claiming to be employed by the Clinton Foundation.
El-Haddad was quoted in the Guardian newspaper in March 2012 as “one of the Brotherhood’s senior advisers.” USA Today referred to him as “a senior adviser to the Muslim Brotherhood” in May 2012.
El-Haddad was “charged with developing a long-term economic recovery program,” known as the Renaissance Project, during his time as senior adviser.
Egyptian media reported in July 2012 that the program was actually meant to bring the country more in line with the Muslim Brotherhoods extremist religious ideals.
“Renaissance is far more than the electoral program of President Mohamed Morsi or the Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party,” the Egypt Independent reported at the time. “It is a 25-year project to reform state, business and civil society, rooted in the Brotherhood’s Islamic values but conditioned by the experiences of the project’s founders in the modern economy.”
Haddad told the Independent that he applied the knowledge he learned at the Clinton Foundation to his work at the Renaissance Project.
“The Clinton Climate Initiative taught Haddad about managing an NGO and the role that civil society takes between the state and private sector, lessons he is applying to the Renaissance Project,” the report states.
El-Haddad represented the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Climate Initiative in Egypt during his overlapping tenure, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He additionally “setup the foundation’s office in Egypt and managed official registration,” “supervised policy-making workshops & presented foundations views,” and “presented projects to high-level government officials,” among many other duties.
El-Haddad left the Clinton Foundation in August 2012, two months after Morsi assumed the Egyptian presidency.
He was appointed a “senior adviser and media spokesman” to the Muslim Brotherhood in January 2013 and served in that role until his arrest.
El-Haddad regularly defended the Brotherhood’s authoritarian crackdown on civil society, even running damage control in December 2012 when Morsi supporters attacked women and children.
When widespread Democratic protests broke out on June 30, El-Haddad referred to the demonstrators as violent thugs in an interview with the Free Beacon.
“The anti-Morsi camp are providing a political endorsement to the violence,” he said at the time. “Some have resorted to violence because they didn’t do well at the ballot box.”
El-Haddad did not respond to an email request for comment sent shortly after reports emerged of his arrest.
The Clinton Foundation did not respond to multiple requests for comment on El-Haddad’s employment and arrest.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that El-Haddad’s work for the Renaissance Project began in February 2011. His work actually began in February 2012.
http://freebeacon.com/muslim-brotherhood-official-former-clinton-foundation-employee-arrested/
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The Clintons Employ Muslim Brotherhood Officials? You can’t be Serious…
“I don’t know who is more shocked about this, me or Huma Abedin, but it turns out that a former top Clinton Foundation official is also … a senior Muslim Brotherhood official who has just been arrested for – you’ll never guess – inciting violence in Egypt. Not to worry, I’m sure it was only moderate violence.”
“Funny how that works. As I’ve previously recounted, Ms. Abedin began working for then-First Lady Hillary Clinton while simultaneously (a) working at an Islamist journal with top al Qaeda financier Abdullah Omar Naseef (the funding device, a “charity” called the Rabita Trust, which Naseef ran with al Qaeda founder Wael Jalaidan, is a designated terrorist organization under U.S. law); and (b) serving on the executive board of the Muslim Students Association’s George Washington University chapter. (The Muslim Students Association is the first building block of the Brotherhood’s American infrastructure, and the late, unlamented al Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki – an MSA alum, like Morsi, Jalaidan and Ms. Abedin – was the “chaplain” at the GWU chapter at the same time he was providing, er, spiritual advice to some of the eventual 9/11 suicide-hijackers).”
“Adam Kredo’s report goes on to explain that Gehad el-Haddad’s placement in the Morsi inner-circle was a natural because of family ties: el-Haddad’s father was a top foreign policy adviser to Morsi, the Brotherhood leader, America-basher, anti-Semite, and now-ousted Egyptian president.”
“Small world: Ms. Abedin’s parents (her mother and late father) have also been prominent Brotherhood figures. In fact, besides running the journal founded by Naseef, Ms. Abedin’s mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is reportedly a member of the Muslim Sisterhood … as is Morsi’s wife. Mrs. Abedin also runs a sharia promotion organization called the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC), which is part of another group, the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (IICDR), that has been banned in Israel for providing material support to Hamas (the Brotherhood’s Palestinian terrorist branch). Both IICWC and IICDR operate under the umbrella of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi’s Union of Good. Sheikh Qaradawi is the Brotherhood’s chief jurist and has issued fatwas endorsing suicide bombings in Israel and the killing of American troops in Iraq – and his Union of Good is a designated terrorist organization under U.S. law.”
Adam also notes that el-Haddad was the Brotherhood official placed in charge of the “Renaissance Project” in February 2011, while he was still at the Clinton Foundation. The report describes the “Renaissance Project” as “a Brotherhood-backed economic recovery program.” Actually, that’s not the half of it. As I outlined in Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy:
[In early 2011, just after Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badi announced that jihad was “the only solution against Zio-American arrogance and tyranny”] Khairat el-Shater … began making himself heard. Shater is the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Deputy General Guide.” He is a charismatic figure, revered as the “Iron Man” for his defiant refusal to buckle through two decades of repeated detention and prosecution by Mubarak’s regime[.]…He also brings intellectual heft: after Mubarak fell, it was to Shater that the Brotherhood turned to craft its comprehensive strategy for shaping Egypt’s future.
The Brothers have a name for this enterprise. It is called “the Nahda Project” – the Islamic “Renaissance.”In April 2011, Shater delivered a lengthy lecture, “Features of Nahda: Gains of the Revolution and the Horizons for Developing.”… Shater’s instruction was remarkable. He emphasized that the Brotherhood’s fundamental principles and goals never change, only the tactics by which they are pursued. “You all know that our main and overall mission as Muslim Brothers is to empower God’s religion on earth, to organize our life and the lives of the people on the basis of Islam, to establish the Nahda of the ummah and its civilization on the basis of Islam, and to subjugate people to God on earth.” Shater went on to reaffirm the time-honored plan of the Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, stressing the need for both personal piety and internal organizational discipline in pursuing the goal of worldwide Islamic hegemony.
The lecture dovetailed with a 93-page platform released by the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, under the guidance of its leader Mohammed Morsi, a Shater confidant. The platform proposed to put every aspect of human life under sharia-compliant state regulation. The document was unmistakably anti-Western and anti-Israeli: structuring civil society on the foundation of “Arab and Islamic unity”; making the “strengthen[ing] of Arab and Islamic identity” the “goal of education”; making treaties (think: Camp David Accord) subject to approval by the population (i.e., the same population that had just, by a landslide, adopted the Islamist position on constitutional amendments); and describing Israel, “the Zionist entity, [as] an aggressive, expansionist, racist and settler entity.”
But hey, nothing to see here. And no word yet on whether Senator McCain will be taking to the Senate floor once more to rail against this obvious smear campaign against a Clinton confidant with deep ties to Islamic supremacism.
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Featured Story: Top Muslim Brotherhood Adviser Worked For Bill Clinton
By gmbwatch - May 20th, 2013
During the closing session of the 2012 meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, former President Bill Clinton failed to hold Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to account for the anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. incitement engaged in over the years by both Dr. Morsi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Video (time 55:03) of the session shows that Mr. Clinton seemed about to ask Dr. Morsi about this incitement but ended up remarking only that the “fairly large” number of Jews in the audience were among those who wished him well and wanted him to succeed. Few if any in the audience could have realized that Bill and Hillary Clinton have had individuals belonging to both the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and to Saudi Islamists in their employ.
Gehad El-Haddad
Two weeks ago, the Carnegie Europe in collaboration with the European Parliament hosted a conference in Brussels with a session on “Political Islam.” One of the featured speakers at the session was Gehad El-Haddad, billed as Senior Adviser, Muslim Brotherhood and Freedom and Justice Party and Executive Director, Nahda Project (Egypt). According to his resume, from August 2007 until August 2012 Gehad El-Haddad was the City Director in Egypt for the William J. Clinton Foundation. Among Mr. El-Haddad’s duties at the Foundation were representing the Clinton Climate Initiative in Egypt, setting up the foundation’s office in Egypt, managing official registration, and identifying and developing program-based projects & delivery work plans. Gehad El-Haddad later became a Senior Adviser on Foreign Affairs to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, a position he has held since May 2011. His resume also says that he is a Senior Adviser & Media Spokesperson for the Muslim Brotherhood as well as a Steering Committee Member of the Brotherhood’s Renaissance (Nahda) Project. Mr Haddad also served as the Media Strategist & Official Spokesperson for the presidential campaign of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. An Egyptian media report provides biographical detail for Gehad El-Haddad:
Spending the early part of his life in Alexandria, Haddad hails from a family of influential Brotherhood members. His father is Essam El Haddad, a member of the organization’s Guidance Bureau, which is one of its highest decision-making bodies.
[...]
After graduating, Haddad worked as a consultant in competitive intelligence for a multinational firm. He was earning well, but at one point told his father that he was losing purpose in life. He then received a message from [Khairat] Shater that marked a turning point in his life.
“I went back home, Googled his name, watched a video he made, and said to myself, ‘That’s it, this is the guy I’ve been looking for,’” Haddad said. He packed his bags and returned to Egypt
[...]
He then started working for the Clinton Climate Initiative, while continuing to work anonymously on the Renaissance Project.
[...]
The Clinton Climate Initiative taught Haddad about managing an NGO and the role that civil society takes between the state and private sector, lessons he is applying to the Renaissance Project. Within the Brotherhood, Haddad says he sits on the group’s internal reform committee.
Gehad’s father, Essam El-Haddad, chairs the Arabian Group For Development (AGD) which is where Gehad served as a consultant. The ADG lists among its most “significant and trusted clients ” Islamic Relief, an arm of the Global Muslim Brotherhood discussed below, and Egyptian televangelist Amr Khaled’s Rightstart Foundation where Gehad worked as a marketing manager.
Gehad El-Haddad’s ties to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood deepen through his father who in August 2012 was appointed as one of four Egyptian Presidential assistants with responsibility for foreign relations and international cooperation. Dr. Essam El-Haddad is a UK trained physician and long-time Muslim Brotherhood member who was appointed to the Guidance Bureau in February 2012, later becoming responsible for Foreign Relations on behalf of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. Dr. El-Hadadd is also a member of the board and former chairman of Islamic Relief, an Islamic charity close to the Global Muslim Brotherhood and said by Israel to be controlled by Hamas in the Palestinian Territories. According to an online bio, Dr. El-Haddad also works also as a management consultant for the Dubai-based Skopos Company, described as “one of the first consulting companies in the Middle East and Africa to focus solely on Organizational Development.” According to a company brochure, Skopos is doing business as Skopos Consulting while the Louis Allen Worldwide website refers to the company as Skopos Middle East and says it has an equity interest in the company. In turn, Louis Allen Worldwide lists a number of prominent clients including Citibank, Pepsico, and Ford as well as least two Saudi companies.
The Skopos brochure also identifies Hussein El-Kazzaz as the Managing Director of Skopos Consulting. Dr. El-Kazzaz is an economic advisor to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. (FJP) and in August, Egyptian media identified him as a Muslim Brotherhood member and one of the President’s consulting team. According to Egyptian media, Dr. El-Kazzaz is also the “intellectual driving force” behind the Brotherhood’s Nahda (Renaissance) Project and member of the project’s steering committee chaired by influential Brotherhood leader Khairat Al-Shater. It should also be noted that a translation of a lecture on the Nahda project given by Khairat Al-Shater reveals that the leadership of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood views its entry into politics as only a stage in furtherance of its ultimate goals of Islamic government, both on an Egyptian and global basis.
Huma Abedin
Disturbing as the El-Haddad family ties are to the Muslim Brotherhood and to the Clinton Foundation, Gehad El-Haddad is not the only individual employed by the Clinton family whose relationship to the Global Muslim Brotherhood should raise concerns. The New York Times reported on Thursday that long-time aid to Hillary Clinton Huma Abedin was working, among other side jobs, as a consultant to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation while still employed by the US State Department.
Our predecessor publication was the first to report on the ties of Huma Abedin’s family to Saudi Arabian Islamists and which have since become part of the political firestorm that began in 2012 when a group of House representatives sent letters to five federal agencies demanding investigations into alleged infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of these ties center on the Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMM) edited by Human Abedin’s mother Saleha M. Abedin (aka Saleha Mahmood) and which has Brotherhood supporter and Saudi-funded Georgetown professor John Esposito on its advisory board. Huma Abedin was listed by the IMM Journal as an Assistant Editor from 1996 until 2008, a time period during which she was working for Hillary Clinton in various capacities including as a White House intern in 1996.
The IMM itself was founded by Syed Z. Abedin, Huma’s father, and has been described as having had ”the quiet but active support” of Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, then General Secretary of the Saudi Muslim World League (MWL), established in 1962 as a means for the propagation of Saudi “Wahabbi” Islam. Muslim Brothers played an important role in its founding and, to date, the League has been strongly associated with the Brotherhood. Saleha Abedin has additional ties to Saudi Islamists and the Global Muslim Brotherhood including:
- Serving as an adviser to the college President and founding member of the Dar El-Hekma women’s college in Saudi Arabia. A pre-911 archived list of the college’s ”Establisher’s and Trustees” included prominent Saudi Islamic bankers, a member of the Bin Laden family, and Yaseen Abdullah Kadi (aka Yassin Abdullah Kadi) who on October 12, 2001 was added to the list of designated terrorists by the U.S.Treasury. In February 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to students at Dar El-Hekma.
- Serving as a board member of the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (IICDR), an umbrella group for 86 Islamic organizations, many of which are associated with the global Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas fundraising, or support for Al Qaeda. The IICDR was banned by Israel in July 2008 as one of a group of organizations belonging to the Union of Good, a coalition of charities headed by Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi that help to raise funds for Hamas.
- Serving as a representative of the Muslim World League (MWL).
There have also been Arabic-language reports that Saleha Abedin was included on a list of members of a “Muslim Sisterhood” but the reliability of this information is unknown at the current time. The Center for Security Policy has published an analysis of Saleha Abedin’s views on women as presented in her book “Women In Islam.”
In addition, as of 2010 Huma Abedin’s brother Hasan Abedin was an officer of the Oxford Center of Islamic Studies, chaired by Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef. In addition to his role as the former Secretary-General of the Muslim World League (MWL), Dr. Naseef is an officer of the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (IICDR), discussed above, and has also been associated with other UK Islamist organizations including the Islamic Foundation and the Markfield Institute for Advanced Studies. Until 2006, global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi also served as an Oxford Centre Trustee. The Oxford Centre has been listed as a UK affiliate of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi religious organization close to the global Muslim Brotherhood that is believed to have helped spread Islamic extremism around the world as well as sponsoring terrorism in places such as Bosnia, Israel, and India. It should be noted that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the largest donors to the William J. Clinton Foundation.
On a historical note, the relationship between the Clintons and the Global Muslim Brotherhood dates back at least as as far as December 1995 when Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) leader Mather Hathout was invited to the Clinton White House to discuss the Bosnia peace agreement with senior administration officials. MPAC was established originally in 1986 by leaders with backgrounds suggesting they were associated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and has since developed into the political lobby arm of the US Muslim Brotherhood. The MPAC/Clinton relationship drew national attention in May 1996 when Hillary Clinton attended a lunch hosted by MPAC. Then, in January 1998 Ms. Clinton invited MPAC and the Muslim Women’s League, an MPAC-affiliated organization, to organize an Eid al-Fitr celebration for 100 persons at the White House. The relationship continued through 2000 when MPAC director Salam Al-Marayati was included in a group of Arab-American leaders who met with President Clinton and again in April 2000 when MPAC representatives attended a White House briefing that included President Clinton, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mousa. In August 2000, Dr. Hathout was selected to give the invocation at the Democratic National Convention.
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UK Funds Terror Connections: Islamic Relief Worldwide
by Samuel Westrop
July 3, 2013
The large number of links between Islamic Relief Worldwide and extremist terror groups suggests that buried beneath the cover of a charity lies a structured pro-terror group with an anti-Western agenda.
Islamic Relief Worldwide [IRW] is the poster-child of an exemplary Islamic charity. Headquartered in the UK, and given tens of millions of dollars by Western governments, the United Nations and the European Union, IRW consists of a “family of fifteen aid agencies” which “aim to alleviate the suffering of the world’s poorest people.” New information, however, indicates that IRW — which counts Islamic Relief UK and Islamic Relief USA as its most important branches — is an extremist organization with a pro-terror agenda. IRW has worked with a significant number of organizations linked to terrorism.
IRW’s accounts show that it has partnered with a number of organizations linked to terrorism and that some of charity’s trustees are personally affiliated with extreme Islamist groups that have connections to terror.
In 2006, the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs designated IRW itself a terrorist front, and claimed that:
“The IRW provides support and assistance to Hamas’s infrastructure. The IRW’s activities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives. The intensive activities of these associations are designed to further Hamas’s ideology among the Palestinian population.”
In May of 2006, Israeli police arrested IRW’s Gaza coordinator, Ayaz Ali. The Israeli government stated Ali had assisted Hamas-related institutions and groups such as Al Wafa and Al Tzalah, both of which are designated terror organizations in Israel. According to the Israeli government, Ali also said that he had cooperated with local Hamas operatives in Jordan:
“Incriminating files were found on Ali’s computer, including documents that attested to the organization’s ties with illegal Hamas funds abroad (in the UK and in Saudi Arabia) and in Nablus. Also found were photographs of swastikas superimposed on IDF symbols, of senior Nazi German officials, of Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as many photographs of Hamas military activities … Ali admitted that he was aware that several of the organizations supported by the IRW in Judea, Samaria and Gaza were indeed identified with Hamas.” [Author's emphasis]
For several years, IRW has supported the Islamic University of Gaza, where, during 2008, rockets and explosives were produced for use by Hamas. One of the most senior Hamas leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founded the university in 1978, and sixteen of the university’s lecturers and teachers are elected Hamas members of the Palestinian legislature.
In 2002, the Russian Federal Security Service also accused Islamic Relief of being part of a radical Islamist network, providing support to terrorists in Chechnya.
Islamic Relief has denied the charges against them. These denials would be more convincing, however, were it not that IRW appears to be a hub for donations from charities accused of links to Al Qaeda and other terror groups.
In 2004, 2007 and 2009, IRW accounts revealed donations of tens of thousands of pounds from the Charitable Society for Social Welfare [CSSW], a charity founded by Al Qaeda terrorist and “Bin Laden loyalist” Abdul Majeed Al-Zindani. In 1998, the Al Qaeda terrorist Anwar Al-Awlaki, eventually killed by a U.S. drone strike, served as vice-president of CSSW’s San Diego branch.
During a terrorism trial in 2004 in the U.S., Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Brian Murphy testified that CSSW was a “front organization to funnel money to terrorists.”
In 1999, Human Concern International, a charity that Osama bin Laden told an Egyptian interviewer in 1995 was funding an al-Qaeda charitable front called Blessed Relief, gave IRW a $50,000 donation. IRW continues to refer to Human Concern as a partner. In 2008, Human Concern granted IRW a further £25,000.
Human Concern has also funded the Global Relief Foundation, an organization shut down by the American government on the grounds that it had been laundering money for al-Qaeda and was linked to the Taliban. Similarly, in 2009 another funder of the Global Relief Foundation, the International Development and Relief Foundation, gave IRW just under £200,000.
Further, in 2008, IRW’s accounts revealed a donation of £13,437 from the Yemeni Al-Eslah organization — a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood whose leaders include Sheikh al-Zindani, whom the US Government has designated a “Global Terrorist.”
The same year, the UK-based charity Human Appeal International gave IRW £34,081. A 1996 CIA report claimed Human Appeal International was one of a number of Islamic charities used as conduits for funds to terrorist organizations, and tied it to the Saudi-based Muwafaq, an Al-Qaeda front group. The FBI, in 2003, claimed there was a “close relationship between Human Appeal International and Hamas.” In February 2005, Hamas’s website had already openly announced the receipt of funds from HAI.
One of Human Appeal’s trustees is Dr. Nooh al Kaddo, who also serves as executive director of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland. In 2009, this organization gave £2,707 to IRW.
The Islamic Cultural Centre is part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s European network and hosts the European Council for Fatwa and Research, of which former IRW director Issam Al-Bashir is a leading member. The head of the council is Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who believes Hitler was “divine punishment” for the Jews and is a supporter of suicide bombings.
In 2010 and 2011, the Kuwait-based International Islamic Charitable Organisation provided IRW with hundreds of thousands of pounds. According to counter-terrorism expert Matthew Levitt, a leaked CIA report identified this Kuwaiti charity as a key supporter of terrorism.
It is not just the charity, however, that has partnered with extremist groups. A number of IRW trustees and officials are also personally affiliated with state sponsors of terror, extremist groups and pro-terror organizations:
Essam El-Haddad
Dr Essam El-Haddad, a trustee of both Islamic Relief Worldwide and Islamic Relief UK, is presently the national security advisor to Egypt’s President Morsi.
In January 2013, media reports claimed that Essam El-Haddad met with Major General Qassem Suleimani of the Iranian state terror group, the IRGC’s Quds Force. The Times reported:
The spy chief met Essam al-Haddad, foreign affairs adviser to President Morsi, and officials from the Muslim Brotherhood, to advise the Government on building its own security and intelligence apparatus, independent of the national intelligence services, which are controlled by Egypt’s military.
The move will confirm fears among opposition groups that the Muslim Brotherhood plans to enslave the country under a theocracy, while the prospect of Iran gaining influence in Cairo will make Egypt’s neighbours and allies fearful.
Two members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Council, the Maktab al-Ershad, confirmed details of Mr Suleimani’s visit. “The Government requested a high-level meeting with Iranian officials. Iran sent Suleimani,” said one official. “The meeting was intended to send a message to America, which is putting pressure on the Egyptian Government, that we should be allowed to have other alliances with anyone we please.” [Author's emphases.]
In April 2013, Haddad met with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who hailed the talks as “strategic” and promised greater collaboration between Egypt and Iran. Haddad pledged to help Iran “prevent intervention of foreign countries in Syria by taking new initiatives.”
Ahmed Al-Rawi
Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi, a director of Islamic Relief, is the former head of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe and president of the Muslim Association of Britain. Both groups are considered to be part of the European Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2004, Al-Rawi signed a declaration which supported jihad against British and American forces in Iraq.
Hani El-Banna
Dr. Hani El-Banna, the co-founder of Islamic Relief, was formerly a trustee of Muslim Aid, a London-based charity which was previously a “partner organization” of the Al-Salah Islamic Association. The U.S. government has officially designated Al Salah a terrorist entity. A number of Bangladeshi commentators have accused Muslim Aid of funding the violent Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami, while El-Banna was involved.
In an interview with Emel magazine, El-Banna expressed his admiration for Islamist figures Hassan al-Banna and Sayyed Qutb, the ideological founders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qutb famously authored a pamphlet entitled ‘Our Struggle with the Jews‘ – an anti-Semitic tract recently described by the New York Review of Books “as extreme as Hitler’s.”
Hasan al-Banna was an advocate of violent jihad against non-Muslims and, during the Second World War, successfully appealed to Hitler for money to create a terror network in Egypt.
In addition, Hani El-Banna founded, and runs, with the support of IRW, another charity called the Humanitarian Forum. Banna’s fellow trustee at IRW, Abdul Wahab Noorwali, is also a trustee of Humanitarian Forum.
Another trustee at the Humanitarian Forum is Huseyin Oruc, who is also a representative of the Turkish charity IHH. The IHH helped to organize the Gaza flotilla and has been designated a terrorist organization by the Dutch government. In 2012, Oruc helped to organize a protest movement called the Global March to Jerusalem, which was backed by a number of key Hamas individuals and organizations.
Sulaiman Shamsaldeen and Ibrahim Hassaballa are also trustees of the Humanitarian Forum, and both have been directors-general of the International Islamic Charitable Organisation. As mentioned above, the US government accuses this Kuwait-based charity of being a key financial supporter of terrorism.
Issam Al-Bashir
Issam Al-Bashir is a former Director of Islamic Relief. He is also the former Minister of Religious Affairs in the Sudan and a leading Muslim Brotherhood figure. Bashir was forced out of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood after he attempted to merge the group with the Sudanese Islamist Party, a group created by the Sudanese regime to broaden the support for the Islamist government. Bashir is a leading member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, a group of fundamentalist clerics led by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who has called for the killing of Jews and homosexuals.
Abdul Wahab Noorwali
Abdul Wahab Noorwali, a trustee of Islamic Relief Worldwide, is the Assistant Secretary General of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a position he has held for the last 12 years. WAMY, founded in 1972, is a Saudi youth organization that US government agencies and officials claim has helped spread Islamic extremism around the world and has sponsored terrorism in places such as Bosnia and Israel.
The Saudi government funds WAMY. The US government has accused the organization of having links to Osama Bin Laden. WAMY was named in the lawsuit filed by families of the victims of the September 11 attacks, who accused the group of supporting al-Qaeda. Further, law enforcement officials in India and the Philippines have also accused WAMY of financing terrorism in their countries. In 2003, Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin thanked the World Assembly for their continued financial support.
Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi Arabian commentator who is the executive director of the Saudi Institute, said in an interview in March 2004 that WAMY is not only deeply anti-Semitic, but also anti-Shia.
WAMY has a long history of producing extreme anti-Semitism and anti-Shia publications.
WAMY distributed the booklet The Difference Between The Shiites and the Majority of Muslim Scholars in both English and Arabic. The booklet claims that Jews conspired to create division within Islam, and planted the “Jewish ideas” which became Shi’a Islam. The author claims, “The Jewish conspiracy (among others), represented by Abdullah Bin Sabaa, first influenced Muslims who were less knowledgeable about Islam and later on, spread to the rest of the Muslim community.”
The book A Muslim’s Relations with Non-Muslims, Enmity or Friendship, authored in Arabic by Dr. Abdulla Al-Tarekee, is also distributed by WAMY, and claims,
“The unbelievers, idolaters, and others like them must be hated and despised… We must stay away from them and create barriers between us and them.” (page 28) “Qur’an forbade taking Jews and Christians as friends, and that applies to every Jew and Christian, with no consideration as to whether they are at war with Islam or not.” (page 37)
Islamic Views is an Arabic language book produced by WAMY and printed by the Saudi Government’s Armed Forces Printing Press. Under the heading ‘The Prophet asks for Jihad’, Islamic Views states:
“The Prophet Mohammad fought against the infidels and the Jews till he triumphed over them and conducted himself about twenty invasions and he sent tens of regiments led by his companions for Jihad…Damn from Allah to the Jews who made graves of their prophets as Masjid.”
Noorwali was involved with the distribution of WAMY’s publications.
In an interview with Middle East Newsfile, Noorwali said, “Saudi Arabia’s support has been enormous since the establishment of WAMY in 1963. The Kingdom provides us with a supportive environment that allows us to work openly within the society to collect funds and spread activities. It also provides us with protection abroad through Saudi embassies and consulates, in addition to financial support.”
Ibrahim El-Zayat
Ibrahim El-Zayat is also listed as a trustee for both Islamic Relief Worldwide and Islamic Relief UK.
Arab journalist Dr. Sami Alrabaa has claimed that El-Zayat, while head of an extremist Munich-based organization called The Islamic Community of Germany, told a meeting of activists: “It is still premature to strike against the Jews and infidels in this country.”
The German government has also identified El-Zayat in the past as the European representative of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. An archived WAMY Arabic language web page also makes the same identification.
Meckenheim police also link Zayat to Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines, a French Islamist college. Several radical clerics are lecturers at the school, which a number of European intelligence agencies have accused of being used to spread religious hatred.
In 1996, in cooperation with WAMY, the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe established a youth branch, the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations, of which Zayat was president. The NEFA Foundation and other counter-terrorism organizations consider this youth forum to be a leading voice of European Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2002, German federal police launched an investigation of Zayat. A leaked report claimed Zayat transferred more than $2 million on behalf of WAMY. Zayat sent some of that money, according to the report, to an Albanian charity called Taibah. In 2011, Taibah’s Bosnian branch was designated a terrorist organization by the US government. The report concluded:
“The constellation of accounts, money flows and persons indicate that the accounts in Germany of Ibrahim El-Zayat and Ayman Sayed Ahmed Aly were used for carrying out fundamentalist Islamic activities in Europe.”
In 2011, El-Zayat shared a platform with the Holocaust denier Gilad Atzmon.
El-Zayat is also the head of the Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland (IGD), a German member organization of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe, and which is listed by the German domestic intelligence agency as a key representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany.
El-Zayat is linked (through a German business called SLM Liegenschaftsmanagement Gesellschaft für Finanzvermittlung und Consulting GmbH) to the Islamische Gemeinschaft Milli Görüs (IGMG), a pan-European organisation which the German domestic intelligence agency claims is responsible for promoting extremist ideas and propagating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Adnan Saif
Adnan Saif is another trustee of Islamic Relief Worldwide. He has been an outspoken supporter of the late Sheikh Abdullah al-Ahmar, who was leader of the Islamist Yemeni Islah Party. Al-Ahmar was a vocal supporter of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah and praised its acts of terror against Israel. Saif claims that Abdulla al-Ahmar was to Yemen what, “Ghandi and Mandela were to their respective countries.”
Ahmar’s confidante was Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, the Bin Laden loyalist who, in 2004, was deemed a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States government.
Saif was previously the head teacher of the Scientific Institute in Birmingham, which, according to Yemeni writer Nu’man Abd al-Wahid, was one of a large number of Yemeni institutions designed to instill Islamist values. Al-Wahid notes that Al Zindani was the first “guardian” of these Scientific Institute schools.
Political Legitimacy
Islamic Relief has worked hard to promote itself as a responsible charity with only benevolent interests at heart. It appears, though, looking at IRW trustees’ high-level links to extreme Islamist groups, that a proper investigation is urgently required.
Despite being one of the largest and most influential Islamic charities in the World, there has been surprisingly little scrutiny of Islamic Relief Worldwide and its branches. In part, this is due to the legitimacy conferred on IRW by politicians around the world, who are all too eager to endorse such a large charity.
Not only, for example, does the British Government fund IRW’s work, but cabinet members, Deputy Prime Ministers and peers of the realm regularly appear at Islamic Relief fundraising events; all eager to assure the charity of their firm support. Even Britain’s Prince Charles, heir to the throne, has expressed his support and made appearances at IRW events.
In 2009, the British Foreign Office sponsored the charity’s 25th Gala dinner. In 2011, Britain’s ruling Conservative Party screened an Islamic Relief fundraising video at its annual conference.
Also in 2011, the Scottish Government provided Islamic Relief with £398,000 of the taxpayers’ money, as part of its £9 million International Development Fund. Humza Yousaf, a Scottish National Party member of the Scottish Parliament, is presently the Minister for External Affairs and International Development. Yousaf was formerly the media spokesperson for Islamic Relief. Further, in 2008 Alex Salmond, the Scottish leader, attended a ceremony which honored IRW’s head of fundraising.
Between 2007 and 2010, the European Commission granted Islamic Relief Worldwide a total of €19,507,127.
The current American administration is particularly friendly with Islamic Relief. Islamic Relief USA’s own website notes that:
“In April 2010, Mr. Ayoub was appointed to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid (ACVFA). Along with other leaders in the international development field, Mr. Ayoub provides advice, analysis and recommendations to USAID on the most pressing development issues in the world today. Most recent, Mr. Ayoub was appointed to the U.S. State Department’s Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group, where he will be advising on humanitarian issues.”
In 2011, the website of the White House published an article which praised the charity’s work and illustrated the close relationship between the U.S. government and Islamic Relief USA. During a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama also noted his administration’s support for the charity.
With such widespread and high-level support, it is not surprising that IRW enjoys both the provision of public funds and the political legitimacy that maintain its stellar reputation in the halls of Washington and Westminster. Indeed, senior politicians, unwilling to abandon a favourite charity that they have personally endorsed, might well lobby against any investigation into IRW.
It is not, however, unusual for politicians to identify with charities that promote extremism. Without the grassroots or political pressure for greater scrutiny, the most unscrupulous charities enjoy the benefits of political support. Interpal, another leading British Islamic charity which openly consorts with senior leaders of the terror group Hamas, has also enjoyed endorsement from leading politicians and cabinet members.
Few regard IRW to be as troublesome a charity as Interpal. It appears that IRW is simply much more careful. Moreover, IRW has elicited a great deal of support outside the Muslim community due to its donations to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the 2005 London tube bombings.
The large number of links between IRW and extremist pro-terror groups, however, suggests that under the cover of a charity with excellent public relations officers lies a structured pro-terror group with an anti-Western agenda.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3792/islamic-relief-worldwide-terrorism
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Islamic Relief
Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) is headquartered in the U.K. where one it’s trustees listed in U.K. charity records is Ibrahim El-Zayat, a leader in both the European and the German Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. El-Zayat is also a trustee of the U.K. branch of Islamic Relief. Islamic Relief Worldwide is also listed as a company in the U.K where records indicate that Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi, the former head of the Federation of islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) and President of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) has been a director at one time. Both FIOE and the MAB are part of the U.K. and European Muslim Brotherhood. Another member of the board of Islamic Relief Worldwide is Essam El-Haddad, a longtime Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood member and currently an adviser to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.
In May 2006, the Israeli government announced the arrest of an IRW worker for activities related to supporting Hamas and said that IRW activities in the Palestinian territories ” are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives”:
The Israel Security Agency (ISA) and the Israel Police, on 10 May 2006, arrested Iyaz Ali, a Pakistani-born British national, born in 1970. He admitted to being a member of the UK-based Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), which is suspected of supporting Hamas. He admitted to working for IRW’s Gaza branch as a project director since December 2005; he worked to transfer funds and assistance to various Hamas institutions and organizations, including the Al Wafa and Al Tzalah associations, which have been outlawed in Israel. He also admitted that he worked in Jordan and cooperated with local Hamas operatives. Incriminating files were found on Ali’s computer, including documents that attested to the organization’s ties with illegal Hamas funds abroad (in the UK and in Saudi Arabia) and in Nablus. Also found were photographs of swastikas superimposed on IDF symbols, of senior Nazi German officials, of Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as many photographs of Hamas military activities. The IRW was established in 1984 in the British city of Birmingham. It has branches in Gaza and Ramallah. The IRW provides support and assistance to Hamas’s infrastructure. The IRW’s activities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives. The intensive activities of these associations are designed to further Hamas’s ideology among the Palestinian population. These associations’ educational and religious institutions incite against the State of Israel and advocate terrorist actions against it and its citizens. The associations provide support to the families of terrorists who were wounded in actions against Israel, and to Hamas prisoners and detainees. These associations thus promote Hamas’s goals including the destruction of the State of Israel. Ali admitted that he was aware that several of the organizations supported by the IRW in Judea, Samaria and Gaza were indeed identified with Hamas. By agreement, Ali was released today (Monday), 29 May 2006, with restrictions on his movements. He will be deported from Israel in the coming days and will be barred from returning.
Islamic Relief was one of the founding members of the Union of Good, a “coalition of Islamic charities that provides financial support to both the Hamas ‘social’ infrastructure, as well as its terrorist activities.” The Union of Good is headed by global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi and most of the trustees and member organizations are associated with the global Muslim Brotherhood.
http://www.globalmbwatch.com/islamic-relief/
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Prominent British Charity “Linked to Hamas”
by Samuel Westrop
June 17, 2013
The British charity, Human Appeal International, seems more than happy to use democratic means, such as the courts, to silence its critics.
Britain’s leading Jewish newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle, issued an apology recently to Human Appeal International, a British charity with a number of worldwide affiliated branches, all particularly active in the Palestinian territories.
The apology was issued after Human Appeal objected to an article published in The Jewish Chronicle in February 2012. The newspaper claimed Human Appeal was “linked to Hamas” and was on the “US State Department’s list of charities connected to terrorism.”
The mistake was mentioning the US State department. Human Appeal has never been officially designated as a supporter of terrorism, although a number of US government institutions have referred to Human Appeal as a supporter of terror.
A lengthy dispute led the Jewish Chronicle to “apologise unreservedly to Human Appeal International and to those individuals who are involved in its operation.” Further, the Jewish newspaper “paid sums in damages … as an indication of our regret.”
So what sort of organization has this Jewish newspaper just given money to?
A leaked 1996 CIA report claimed Human Appeal International’s branches were among a number of Islamic charities used as conduits for funds to terrorist organizations. The FBI, in 2003, claimed there was a “close relationship between Human Appeal International and Hamas”.
In August 2002, an Islamic youth group featured an advertisement for a Hamas fundraising scheme, called the “101 Days Campaign”. The youth group claimed profits from the sale of intifada videotapes would go to the campaign through Human Appeal International.
In 2005, a website belonging to the Palestinian terror group Hamas reported that funds were transferred from Human Appeal’s affiliated organization in the UAE to IQRA and Rifdah, two Hamas front organizations based in the West Bank.
In 2004, documents obtained from the Internal Revenue Service by Senator Charles Grassley revealed that the IRS considered Human Appeal to be one of a number of charities “which finance terrorism and perpetuate violence.”
Further, leaked State Department cables also reveal that staff from the Human Appeal UAE branch were funding terror groups, and that, “In 2003, there were indications that HAI was sending financial support to organizations associated with Hamas and that members of its field offices in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya had connections to al-Qaeda associates.”
In 2008, the Israeli Government proscribed a number of Human Appeal’s affiliated international branches as “bodies that are active abroad and which are responsible for raising very large sums for Hamas activities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.”
Despite the considerable number of accusations, however, there is not enough evidence to prove Human Appeal International is actually financing Hamas. It is clear, however, from the Human Appeal’s own published activities, that the charity is supportive of Hamas in other ways.
In July 2011, Human Appeal International was one of a number of charities honoured at a Hamas ceremony in Gaza.
 Human Appeal’s logo is sixth from right. |
Also in July 2011, Human Appeal hosted, along with the Palestinian Forum of Britain, an event with a number of radical hate preachers and Hamas supporters.
The Palestinian Forum of Britain is one of the UK’s leading pro-Hamas organization, whose spokesman is Zaher Al-Birawi, a man closely connected to the Hamas leadership.
 In Gaza: Zaher Al-Birawi (fourth from the left) with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to his right. |
One speaker at Human Appeal’s 2011 event was Raed Saleh, a prominent supporter of Hamas, known for his anti-Semitic and anti-homosexual views. Saleh has claimed that 4000 Jews skipped work at the World Trade Centre on 9/11, those who killed the “Martyr, Sheikh Osama Bin Laden” had “sold their consciences to Satan”, and that the honour killing of girls is acceptable.
One of Saleh’s poems includes the lines:
You Jews are criminal bombers of mosques,
Slaughterers of pregnant women and babies.
Robbers and germs in all times,
The Creator sentenced you to be loser monkeys,
Victory belongs to Muslims, from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Saleh is best known for his frequent invocation of the ‘blood libel’ — an ancient anti-Semitic claim that Jews kill children to use their blood to make matzah at Passover. Even a British court concluded that Saleh’s comments were hateful of Jews.
Saleh was joined at the Human Appeal event by Ahmad Noufal (also spelled ‘Nawfal’), a prominent figure in the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood who was “directly involved in sponsoring and organizing Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.” In 2005, Noufal endorsed the French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy on Saudi television:
Roger Garaudy said: “If we take the number of gas chambers and the maximal daily capacity of an oven, and multiply them by the period you Zionists, claim the Holocaust lasted – even if we multiply the number of ovens by the maximal [capacity], the figure is grossly exaggerated. The number of those burned [sic] was 600,000. You added another zero, and turned it into six million.”
In December 2011, Human Appeal hosted an event which featured the hate preacher Haitham al-Haddad as a guest speaker. Al-Haddad regards Jews as “enemies of god, and the descendants of apes and pigs”, and disregards any form of peace until “Allah’s law [will] govern the whole earth, and for no other law to remain.” Haddad deems homosexuality a crime and supports the subjugation of women, telling them: “you must obey [your husband].”
Haddad claims that the West only opposes Hamas because “there is a high level of enmity and hatred against Hamas as a Muslim group”.
The hate preacher Zahir Mahmood also spoke alongside Haddad. Mahmood has stated that, “Hamas are not terrorists, they’re freedom fighters”.
Human Appeal International is an extreme Islamist organization that promotes pro-terror and anti-Semitic ideas. Although it may ultimately support the destruction of democracy, Human Appeal seems more than happy to use democratic means, such as the courts, to silence its critics.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3765/prominent-british-charity-linked-to-hamas
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Comment: “Clearly Human Appeal International should not be a charity because its support for pro-terror and racist ideas is counter to the UK charity laws. For example, the 2010 Equality Act makes it unlawful for a charity to discriminate on the basis of a protected characteristic. The protected characteristics include race, religion, and sexual orientation. Clearly HAI’s whole stance is anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli, and should lose its charitable status.
Furthermore, the UK charity rules mean that charities must “be vigilant to ensure that a charity’s premises, assets, staff, volunteers or other resources cannot be used for activities that may, or appear to, support or condone terrorist activities.” The Charity Commission considers it significant and unacceptable if a charity has links to terrorist organisations or fosters extremism. A complaint could be made to the Charity Commission, but my point is this: If Tom Lewis were right, these rules would not be needed. Charities can and do overstep their remit and should be investigated and possibly exposed when they are racist. There is a convincing prima facie case in this article.”
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/comments/13131
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Gehad al-Haddad’s father: Essam al-Haddad الحدادعصام
- Born: Not available
- Position: Head of the Office of the President; member of the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Office
- Education: B.S. in medicine, University of Alexandria; M.B.A. from Aston University, England; doctorate in microbiology, University of Birmingham, England
- Occupation: Doctor, businessman
Haddad’s political involvement began during his studies at the University of Alexandria College of Medicine, where was elected president of the student union. He later obtained his master’s degree and PhD in England. In 1984, he co-founded Islamic Relief Worldwide, a Britain-based NGO, and he continues to serve as chairman of its board of trustees. Additionally, he is a member of the Arab Group for Development, the Union of Arab Exhibitions, the International Business Forum, the German-Arab Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the British Egyptian Business Association, and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He also founded “Inter-Build Egypt,” the country’s largest exhibition for the construction sector.
Haddad was arrested in 2009 while attending a demonstration in support of the Palestinians alongside then Guidance Office member Abdel Monem Abouel Fetouh. He rose through the Brotherhood’s leadership ranks and was elected to the Guidance Office himself in December 2009. His brother Medhat serves with him on the MB’s internal shura committee, which votes on strategy and policy. Within the Guidance Office, Haddad handles the foreign relations portfolio and, since the January 2011 uprising, has been influential in the Brotherhood’s outreach to the West. He met with U.S. assistant secretary of state Michael Posner in January 2012, and organized the Freedom and Justice Party’s participation in the Carnegie Endowment’s conference on democratic change in North Africa, held in Washington in April 2012. Following Khairat al-Shater’s exclusion from the presidential race in April 2012, Haddad became Muhammad Morsi’s campaign manager and, in early May, accompanied both men to Alexandria to meet with prominent Salafist sheikhs. He was later appointed an advisor to President Morsi, accompanying him when he first entered the presidential palace and later becoming his top foreign policy counselor.
http://mediachecker.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/whos-who-in-egypts-muslim-brotherhood/
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$200 Million U.S. Islamic Charity Linked to Muslim Brotherhood
By Ryan Mauro:
RadicalIslam.org has discovered that four officials of Islamic Relief USA, a charity that reported a whopping $182 million in revenue in 2010, have Muslim Brotherhood ties. One appears to have been arrested in Egypt in 2009 and another has even defended Hamas as “freedom fighters.” RadialIslam.org. previously documented IRUSA’s Islamist ties in an expose about the Obama Administration’s embrace of the group, including having its CEO serve as a State Department and USAID adviser.
As stated in our previous article, Americans for Peace and Tolerance discovered that IRUSA president and board chairman Mohamed Amr Attawia is listed as the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood New England director in a 1991 phone directory.
He was also once the Vice President of the Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors say “was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” Abdurrahman Alamoudi, an admitted secret U.S. Muslim Brotherhood member that was convicted on terrorism-related charges, said in January, “Everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Now, RadicalIslam.org has found three more IRUSA officials with Muslim Brotherhood links, two of which have also held positions in MAS.
Read more at Radical Islam
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FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!
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Muslim charity honcho embraced by Obama
October 30, 2012
Abed Ayoub, CEO of Islamic Relief USA
Ryan Mauro reports that the executive branch of the federal government has been consulting with Abed Ayoub, the chief executive officer of North America’s largest Islamic charity, Islamic Relief USA (IR-USA), for the past two years.
IR-USA serves as a conduit for zakat donations from Muslim Americans to fund programs overseas—a portion of which is transferred to Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), its British-based parent organization. IRW has been implicated by Israel for funding Hamas, and at least one high-ranking source in the Department of Justice equates Islamic Relief with the infamous Holy Land Foundation—formerly America’s largest Muslim charity before its leaders were convicted on all counts of financing Hamas.
The revelation of Mr. Ayoub’s involvement in lobbying U.S. officials on matters of diplomacy and foreign aid is disturbing but not surprising. The State Department has previously issued press releases praising Islamic Relief’s operations, for example, in Haiti. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has also worked directly with IR-USA on food programs.
Yeesh. From RadicalIslam.org on Oct. 24:
Exclusive: Islamist Adviser to the State Dept and USAID Exposed
Abed Ayoub, the CEO of Islamic Relief USA, a powerful charity with links to Hamas is an official advisor to the State Department and USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), a RadicalIslam.org investigation has found.
Ayoub has been advising the Obama Administration since at least April 2010. He and his organization have been publicly embraced by President Obama and Vice President Biden.
Ayoub was born in a Palestinian refugee camp and raised in Jordan. After high school, he moved to Yugoslavia and Germany and ultimately ended up in California. He became a volunteer for the Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA) and went on to become its CEO in 2008. He is a governance committee member of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), IRUSA’s parent group. He is also on the Board of Trustees of the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty.
Ayoub joined the State Department’s Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group in November 2011, specifically the Sub-Group on Faith-Based Groups and Development and Humanitarian Assistance, according to IRUSA’s press release. It says he will “take part in dialogue and provide input on relevant topics including the challenges and opportunities for partnership. The group also will identify model action programs or projects for collaboration between the U.S. government and NGOs.” The release says it will “meet through November 2012.” The timing and phrasing suggests that this isn’t the group’s expiration date and that the election will determine whether its work continues next year.
According to his bio, Ayoub was appointed to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid in April 2010, where he “provides advice, analysis and recommendations to USAID on the most pressing development issues in the world today.” He was reappointed to another two-year term in May…
http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/muslim-charity-honcho-embraced-by-obama/
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Islamic Relief’s financial rating tumbles
July 1, 2013
The financial health of the largest Islamic charity in the U.S. has been downgraded by Charity Navigator from four to two stars. The financial rating lowered Islamic Relief USA’s overall rating down to three stars—IR-USA’s lowest rating since fiscal year 2001. The following chart is a portion of Charity Navigator’s ratings from the present going back to 2008:
The rating was published in May and reflects data from 2011. Charity Navigator is widely regarded as the nation’s top evaluator of nonprofits.
A decline in IR-USA’s stated revenues and soaring administrative costs contributed to the downgrade. IR-USA reported $160 million in donations in 2010 but only $63 million in 2011. At face value, the plummeting revenues suggest fewer donations, but a more accurate valuation and decrease of in-kind donations of medicine has more to do with the apparent financial nosedive.
In 2011, Forbes reported that Diana Sufian, an independent contractor, was terminated by IR-USA after hyper-inflating the charity’s assets over a five year period. Sufian used grossly inaccurate valuations of deworming drugs. The overstatement was no minor bookkeeping technicality—IR-USA’s drug stockpiles represented 75 percent of their stated assets.
Sufian was paid $510,000 for the year in which she was fired for services she performed. One wonders why Ms. Sufian has never been charged with financial statement fraud.
Rather than being fired by the board of IR-USA over the Sufian drug value catastrophe, the charity’s CEO Adeb Ayoub is paid $168K a year, and has been reappointed by the Obama administration as an adviser to the State Department for the next two years.
IR-USA donates millions of dollars each year to Islamic Relief Worldwide, a UK-based organization that has aided Hamas and whose leadership is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. A Department of Justice official has implicated IR-USA for being a conduit for the flow of money from America to terrorist groups abroad. Russian intelligence indicates that IR-USA funds militants in the North Caucasus—the region where the family of the Boston marathon bombers originate.
http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/islamic-reliefs-financial-rating-tumbles/
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Russia says 50 groups in U.S. raise funds for North Caucasus extremists
May 26, 2013
According to the Jamahiriya News Agency, Russian intelligence reveals that 50 organizations, many of which are Islamic charities, are actively soliciting and distributing funds from their headquarters in U.S. to terrorist groups in the North Caucasus—the same region where Tamerlan Tsarnaev journeyed prior to the Boston Marathon bombings. Islamic Relief, the largest Muslim charity in America, is included on Russia’s list.
Read it all:
…According to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, over 60 international extremist organizations, about 100 foreign companies and 10 banking groups participate in providing financial, material and other assistance to the terrorists «touring» the Northern Caucasus. In the U.S. alone, almost 50 organizations are raising funds for the Northern Caucasian extremists. And this is not the entire list of the Chechen terrorists’ accomplices in the U.S.; these organizations began sponsoring the rebels from the moment the bands led by Basayev and Khattab (the latter of which is known to be an emissary of Ben Laden, a staff member of the CIA, and a Canadian citizen who was stripped of his native Jordanian citizenship for his links to American intelligence agencies) invaded the territory of Dagestan.
The following groups are actively raising funds in the U.S.: the Muslim American Bar Association; the Islamic American Center, located in Washington; the Muslim American Council; Islamic Relief/Chechnya appeal, registered with the U.S. Department of State; Islamic City Relief; the Islamic-American Zakat Foundation (president I. Akhmadov); the Islamic Action Center; the Chechen-Ingush Society of America, also known as Chechen relief expenses, with a division called Chechen Relief (president Dr. Mohkammed Musa Shishani); the international Muslim organization Al-Ehsan Charitable Relief Organisation, with its headquarters in Washington; the International Relief Association in Michigan; Islamic Relief Worldwide in California; Mercy International, with its headquarters in Plymouth, Michigan; and the Benevolence International Foundation. In regard to the latter organization, it must be noted that when in January 2003 U.S. intelligence agencies found the head of the foundation, Syrian (or Albanian) American Enaam Arnaut, in the course of investigating sources of financing for Al Qaeda, he admitted that the foundation finances rebels in Chechnya and Bosnia; earlier, in October 2002, U.S. attorney general D. Ashcroft charged him with financing Ben Laden, but when Arnaut stated that the money was going to Chechen terrorists and not Ben Laden, Ashcroft…dropped all charges against him.
The following U.S. organizations also provide various support to Chechen extremists, constantly monitor the situation in Chechnya and conduct political campaigns “in support of the struggling people of Chechnya”: the American Muslim Council; the American Committee for peace in Chechnya; the American Friends Service Committee; and the Islamic Circle of North America.
The role of the organization American Muslim Assistance (AMA) deserves special mention. It is registered with the U.S. State Department, and its main task is «helping our Muslim brothers throughout the world». The director of AMA, Sheikh Hisham Muhammad Kabbani, who is also the chairman of the influential Islamic Supreme Council of America, chairman of the As-Sunna Foundation of America, and the founder and chairman of the Haqqani Islamic Trust for New Muslims, is known as the author of many works on Islam. AMA operates in the Northern Caucasus and conducts active propaganda to discredit the actions of the Russian authorities. AMA often acts under the cover of other Muslim organizations, in particular, the Islamic Supreme Council of America, which unites 15 million Muslims living in the U.S.
Active propaganda and political activity in the interests of Chechen separatists in the U.S. are also conducted by: the online company Amina Network, with an office in Washington; Human Assistance Development International, which has been in existence for 13 years; an Islamic information server for spreading the ideas of Chechen separatism and extremism on the Internet; and the public relations office of Ruder Finn, Inc. The Islamic Charity Foundation and the Council on American-Islamic Relations regularly organize media presentations in support of Chechen extremists, interact on a regular basis with many American analytical centers, and initiate hearings in the U.S. Congress, to which they actively invite consultants, experts and U.S. government advisors…
Islamic Relief USA’s website says that Islamic Relief was one of the first aid agencies in Chechnya in the ‘90s and that it has worked in the North Caucasus since 1995.
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FATF’s terrorist charity typologies
July 9, 2013
The Financial Action Task Force, an international financial watchdog, has updated its “Recommendation 8” pertaining to government oversight of nonprofit organizations. (Thanks to Arye Glozman who sent in a link to the report).
Overall, the revised recommendations show greater deference to the nonprofit sector and urge restraint by governments in regulating charities than the 2002 version. This deference is a bit strange considering that using charities as vessels for funding terrorism has not decreased since 2002 then, neither in the West as illustrated by organizations such as the Holy Land Foundation and WAMY Canada, nor in the Middle East and Northern Africa where Gulf-based charities have played a central role in funding and arming Islamist rebels of the Arab Spring.
That being said, the FATF report does present a useful set of typologies to categorize four different types of terrorist “misuse” of nonprofit groups:
- Front charities, where everybody from the donors to the charity workers to the beneficiaries knows that the charity is a sham designed to fund terrorism.
- Organizations defrauding donors by telling them the money is going toward legitimate programs but then redirect the proceeds to terrorism.
- Branch offices of charities defrauding headquarters by misleading the leadership about the branch’s actual programs.
- Charity workers abusing their positions to distribute aid to militants.
The “charities” used by Osama bin Laden to funnel money from wealthy Saudi donors to Al Qaeda in the 1990s are a good example of type #1. Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Pakistan is a good example of a front charity today, with donors and recipients understanding that the money is really for the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group. Many analysts would probably say that the Holy Land Foundation fell into type #2, with donors unwittingly funding Hamas (although some donors knew that their zakat was funding “resistance” against Israel). Islamic Relief Worldwide can be associated with types #3 and #4 by having a branch office in Gaza that passed money along to Hamas, allegedly without the knowledge of headquarters in England.
http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/fatfs-terrorist-charity-typologies/
http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/tag/islamic-relief-worldwide/
http://mediachecker.wordpress.com/page/2/?s=muslim+brotherhood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Relief_USA
U.S. condemns arrest of Brotherhood spokesperson
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/us-condemns-arrest-brotherhood-spokesperson
