The nominally anti-Islamist Trump administration has continued to finance and partner with a group called Islamic Relief Worldwide that is under furious fire in Europe for rampant anti-Semitism and pro-terrorism utterances from its board members.
Even as liberal American news outlets such as the Washington Post continued this month to run gauzy puff pieces about Islamic Relief Worldwide, a recent international firestorm of well-merited negative publicity for the group ought to spur the U.S. government to cut all ties with and support for the organization.
Islamic Relief Worldwide portrays itself as a charitable group. Whatever its official aims, though, it copiously maintains what the watchdog group Middle East Forum calls “extremism and terror connections.” Nearly two years ago, a brief kerfuffle arose when I reported that Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, was scheduled to speak at a dinner sponsored by the Islamic Relief’s U.S. outlet. Alas, even that publicity about the group’s objectionable record did not dissuade the U.S. Agency for International Development from granting it $356,000 last October, nor the Department of Homeland Security from posting a video touting its work with the organization.
European officials often bend over backward to accommodate and excuse sketchy Islamic outfits, but even in Europe, and even at the Islamist-friendly United Nations, Islamic Relief Worldwide is now in extremely bad odor. The entire board at Islamic Relief Worldwide resigned in August after it replaced one board member found to have made horridly anti-Semitic comments with another one who praised the brazenly terrorist wing of Hamas as “heroes.” The prior board member had referred to Israelis as the “grandchildren of monkeys and pigs” and called Egypt’s president, who maintains peace with Israel, a “pimp son of the Jews.”
Now Swedish politicians and others are calling for defunding Islamic Relief Worldwide, which has received nearly a billion Euros in European government support in the last decade, and a British government-funded think tank just weeks ago detailed the group’s ties with Hamas. The think tank also noted that a Tunisian anti-terrorist-financing group accused Islamic Relief Worldwide of using $50,000 for “logistical support for jihadists,” and it blasted Islamic Relief Worldwide for organizing speaking events “for numerous prominent Islamists … [who] espouse hateful or intolerant views of Jews, homosexuals and/or apostates.”
As if on cue, the Washington Post on Friday ran a lengthy article letting the group boast extravagantly about its disaster-relief activities within the United States. In an extremely brief aside, the article mentioned that “groups including the National Republican Congressional Committee have … accused Islamic Relief USA of having ties to terrorism.”
Well, of course the Washington Post would couch the issue this way as just a Republican smear of saintly Muslims.
Maybe the disaster-relief efforts really have been beneficial; I am in no position to dispute it. But this article read like more an advertisement than like news, especially since it was not linked to any current events. The case remains that all across the globe, Islamic Relief Worldwide is deservedly under fire for an inability to rid itself of anti-Semitic and terrorist-friendly associations, including employing a man who celebrated the killing of Jews.
If Islamic Relief Worldwide wants to clean up its act while providing real relief to people in need, that’s fine. All agencies of the U.S. government, though, should stay well clear.
