A study of nonprofit donors to a dozen leading Islamist charities aligned with foreign Islamist movements reveals that Mormon 501(c) charities, including the Church of Latter-day Saints itself, are among Islamist extremists’ leading benefactors.
One top Mormon charity appears to serve as the single largest domestic 501(c) grantor to American Islamist humanitarian aid charities tied to the designated terrorist organization Hamas, among other violent extremist organizations.
Globus Relief, a Salt Lake City-based charity established and run by senior Latter-day Saints members, handed over at least $119 million of support to ten radical Islamist recipients, according to electronically filed 990 tax return data.
Globus’s top grantee, Islamic Relief, is a leading Islamist charitable institution whose branches have been described by the Dutch and German governments as components of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. In 2020, the U.S. State Department warned about the “blatant and horrifying anti-Semitism and glorification of violence exhibited at the most senior levels of Islamic Relief Worldwide,” the franchise’s headquarters in the United Kingdom.
Staff at Islamic Relief’s U.S. branch have included Khaled Lamada, who once circulated text on social media praising the “jihad” of the “Mujahidin” for “causing the Jews many defeats,” while another staff member, Yousef Abdullah, praised the killing of Jews, among other anti-Semitic remarks.
Islamic Relief branches have repeatedly partnered with senior terrorist officials in Gaza, including Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad. Weeks after the October 7 attacks, Hamad promised that Hamas would repeat the attacks “time and again until Israel is annihilated.”
In February 2023, Islamic Relief launched a project in the Gazan city of Khan Yunis, with a ceremony attended several Hamas officials, including Abdul Salam Haniyeh, son of Hamas’s late political leader and October 7 architect Ismail Haniyeh.
Globus Relief has handed over $64 million of noncash support to Islamic Relief.
The Mormon-aligned charity also provided some $2.5 million to Human Appeal, a British-headquartered charitable organization which funds groups in Gaza associated with Hamas and once openly appeared to advertise involvement with the Union of Good, a designated terrorist fundraising operation for Hamas.
Another $16 million of Globus Relief grants was provided to Muslim Aid, a prominent extremist charity whose U.K. headquarters once admitted to funding Hamas front organizations. Globus also provided over $10 million to United Musilm Relief (also known as United Mission for Relief and Development), which has funded Hamas proxies in Gaza and whose staff have called for the killing of Jews.
Globus also maintains a partnership with Baitulmaal, an Irving-based pro-terror and anti-Semitic charity closely involved with Hamas fronts and whose leader, Mazen Mokhtar, is a former fundraiser for the Taliban and other jihadist groups.
Other Globus grants to radical 501(c) charities include $3 million to LIFE for Relief and Development, $2.5 million to the Hamas-involved American Near East Refugee Agency (ANERA), and $2.7 million to the Turkish-regime linked Zakat Foundation.
Several of Globus Relief’s grantees have been the subject of congressional investigations and criticism over their alleged ties to domestic radicalism and foreign terrorist organizations.
Another Mormon-run charity, Lifting Hands International, has provided over $19.5 million to Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), the chief U.S. charitable arm of the violent South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami.
In 2017, the Middle East Forum revealed that HHRD organized a conference at a government-run college in Pakistan in collaboration with the charitable and political wings of the Pakistani terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. These findings led to multiple congressional investigations.
In Pakistan, HHRD’s chief partner is the Al-Khidmat Foundation, with which it boasts of partnering at least 214 times. In 2006, Al-Khidmat announced it had “presented a cheque of six-million rupees from the people of Pakistan to Khaled Meshaal, head of politburo Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)” to finance their “just Jihad.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints itself also finances Islamist groups through its international humanitarian endeavors. LDS Charities, a component of the church’s welfare department, operates under its parent organization’s 501(c) church status, and is exempt from filing a nonprofit 990 tax return.
However, 990 tax returns published by Medglobal, an Illinois-based charity, indicate that in 2017, LDS Charities was the largest single donor to Medglobal with a $200,000 donation; and in 2019, LDS charity was the sole listed 501(c) donor to Medglobal, with a transfer of over $1.9 million.
Founded by Zaher Sahloul, Medglobal is an Illinois-based charity particularly active in Gaza and Syria. Sahloul is the former president of the radical Hamas-aligned Mosque Foundation. Sahloul’s social media exhorts Jews to speak out or be considered complicit in violence against Palestinians.
Today, Sahloul and his charity work particularly closely with the new Islamist regime in Syria.
Other Medglobal staff include Hassan Aly, a prominent Illinois imam who serves as Medglobal’s “director of community engagement and global partnerships.” Aly’s Arabic sermons are noticeably more extreme than his English pronouncements. In a 2024 sermon at the Islamic Center of Detroit, as Israeli forces battled Hamas terrorists in Gaza, Aly called for an Islamic Jerusalem to prevail, and called on Allah to provide a “decisive and strengthening victory over your enemy and their enemy.”
In Gaza, Medglobal has operated in close contact with the Hamas authorities, explicitly promising to use donations in its "[work] with the Ministry of Health in Gaza.” Medglobal advertises in Hamas newspapers such as Felesteen News.
Medglobal head Zaher Sahloul boasts that he has known LDS President Dallin H. Oaks since 2012, publishing photos of their meetings in Salt Lake City.
LDS Charities also funds and partners closely with Rahma Worldwide, a Michigan charity which has engaged in financial transfers with a designated Kuwaiti terrorist organization and signed contracts with members of Hamas’s politburo.
Through Medglobal and Rahma, LDS Charities appears to have indirectly worked with other dangerous Islamist charities, including repeated projects with Islamic Oasis, an open supporter and partner of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Islamic Oasis events include openly anti-Semitic discussions about the ostensible wickedness of “‘our Enemies’ the Jews” and their treatment of “goyim” and “Muslims.” Islamic Oasis head Muhammed Shirazi praised the October 7 attacks by the “brave Mujahideen” against the “filth that occupies” Palestine.
LDS Charities also partners with terror-tied Islamic Relief, whose European branches the Swedish government this month reportedly stopped funding over extremism fears. Officials of the LDS Church have invited Islamic Relief leaders to Salt Lake City.
LDS Charities operates opaquely. Because it does not file tax returns or publish its list of partners and beneficiaries, it remains unclear how much funding and non-cash support the Church of Latter-day Saints has transferred to Islamist organizations. The Church has not yet responded to media inquiries from the Middle East Forum.
The problem is not limited to LDS Charities. Across the United States, officials from the LDS Church have partnered with other Islamist organizations of concern.
In Michigan, leaders from radical mosques such as the Muslim Unity Center in Michigan (a regular host of radical imams) organize regular local events with LDS officials, and have been invited by LDS leaders to meetings in Salt Lake City.
Meanwhile, Mohammed Ali Elahi, a leading advocate for the brutal Iranian regime, has attended multiple events with LDS leaders. A congressional letter to the United States Attorney General in 2023, signed by nine representatives, noted that “since moving to the US, [Elahi] has had seemingly non-stop contact with senior regime officials. ... According to investigative journalists, [Elahi’s mosque] has been a significant purveyor of extremist propaganda, in line with the Iranian regime’s views.”
Sharon Eubank shares the stage with Azhar Azeez (right), head of the U.S. branch of terror-tied charity Muslim Aid
LDS official Sharon Eubank has shared the stage with top Islamist leader Azhar Azeez, head of the U.S. branch of terror-tied charity Muslim Aid. And the Turkish regime’s Diyanet Center, a key outpost for extremism and regime influence operations on the U.S. East Coast, has hosted visits from local Mormon groups.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), meanwhile, employs a prominent Mormon attorney. Interviewed by the Salt Lake City Tribune, Carolyn Homer claims she finds common ground with Muslim partners on issues such as alcohol, feminism, and polygamy. Homer also explains, “I have been incredibly hopeful and inspired by the Mormon communities’ outreach to the Muslim community. For more than a decade, LDS Welfare has partnered with Muslim relief services.”
The LDS Church and associated institutions sought, not unreasonably, greater engagement with Muslim communities. Instead, American Mormons embraced America’s Islamists.
