Senate Committee Requests Tax and Fund-Raising Records for 27 Muslim Charities

George and Laura Bush with Sami Amin Al-Arian, who is
charged with 50 counts of terrorism. Al-Arian even
went to a White House briefing with Karl Rove.

Senate Committee Requests Tax and Fund-Raising Records for 27 Muslim Charities

By PHILIP SHENON

January 15, 2004 extract

The Senate Finance Committee...released a copy of a letter sent to the I.R.S. last month requesting "all I.R.S. materials," including donor records, for 27 Muslim charities, including several that have been under scrutiny by the Justice Department and the Treasury Department for possible ties to Al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorists... "Many of these groups not only enjoy tax-exempt status, but their reputations as charities and foundations often allows them to escape scrutiny, making it easier to hide and move their funds to other groups and individuals who threaten our national society," the Senate letter said. "This support for the machinery of terrorism not only violates the law and tax regulations, but it violates the trust that citizens have in the large majority of charities..."

The Treasury Department announced in November that three groups on the committee's list — Benevolence International Foundation of Palos Hills, Ill.; Global Relief Foundation of Bridgeview, Ill.; and Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development of Richardson, Tex. — had lost their tax-exempt status. Previously, the government had frozen their assets.

The request, first reported by The Washington Post, drew criticism from other Muslim and Arab-American organizations. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group for American Muslims, said in a statement that the "Finance Committee's investigative net has been cast so wide that it seems to target all American Muslims as terrorism suspects — its indiscriminate scope smacks of a McCarthyite witch hunt."

Note: CAIR is accused of being an Islamist front orginazation. See A bad day for CAIR

While many of the groups on the list have been accused of ties to terrorist fund-raising, the list also includes several national organizations that are mainstays of communal life for many American Muslims, including the Muslim Student Association, the Islamic Society of North America and the Islamic Circle of North America. The Islamic Society, based in Plainfield, Ind., is the umbrella group for 300 Muslim groups, and about one-third of the mosques in the United States. The Islamic Circle, which is based in Queens, N.Y., says it drew about 10,000 Muslims, most of Southeast Asian ancestry, to a gathering last July 4 in Philadelphia.

Leaders of both groups said in interviews that they were not aware the Senate Finance Committee had requested their I.R.S. files. But they said they were not concerned about being investigated. "We are open, our books are open, everything is open," said Naim Baig, secretary general of the Islamic Circle. "We don't have any hidden agenda." Mr. Baig said his group had never accepted donations from individuals or governments outside the United States.

Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society, said that his group once accepted money from Muslims overseas but had not for the last two or three years. Dr. Syeed said he was confident that the only overseas Muslims who sent money to the Islamic Society were people who supported the moderate vision that he said his group represented.

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