U.S. Funding of Islamist “Charity” Groups Triples Under Trump

The amount of American taxpayer dollars that go to Islamist organizations has drastically increased under the Trump administration, which has doled out millions to radical nonprofits, including a recent allocation to a terrorist front group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism financing trial. Between 2017 and 2018 the U.S. government more than tripled its funding to organizations either influenced or controlled by Islamist activists from $4 million to $13.5 million, according to an analysis conducted by a think tank dedicated to protecting Western values from Middle Eastern threats.

The Philadelphia-based nonprofit, Middle East Forum (MEF), reviewed millions of dollars in government grant data and found that the Trump administration is dedicating a lot more to radical Muslim groups than the Obama administration, which gave Islamist-linked organizations an average of $1.7 million annually. A big chunk of the money, around $8.7 million, has gone to the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a surrogate of the south Asian paramilitary group Jamaat-e-Islami, which was recently banned by the Indian government under anti-terrorism laws. An ICNA subsidiary known as Helping Hand for Relief and Development has openly partnered with the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was involved in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack that killed 164 people. The $8.7 million was delivered in 2018 for “disaster assistance projects,” according to the government data obtained by MEF.

Other radical groups whose coffers have been filled by the Trump administration include Islamic Relief ($800,000), which is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and has been designated as a terror-financing organization by Israel and the United Arab Emirates; the Islamic Institute of Knowledge, which is linked to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, has received $780,000 from the U.S; the Muslim American Society, identified by MEF as the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading activist organization in the U.S., got $160,000 from Uncle Sam. The group’s Philadelphia branch recently broadcast a disturbing video of kids at its center singing about chopping off the heads of Jews. Dar al-Hijrah, an extremist mosque in Virginia that the U.S. government says operates as a front for Hamas, received $100,000. Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Aulaqi was the imam at the Falls Church mosque and two of the 9/11 hijackers attended his sermons as well as Nidal Hassan, the Ft. Hood terrorist sentenced to death for murdering 13 and wounding dozens of others at a Texas Army base.

Just a few months ago, another $100,000 went to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) via a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant program. CAIR is a terrorist front group that was named as a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation. For more details read a Judicial Watch special report on Muslim charities. CAIR was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine. The Obama administration allowed CAIR to transform the way U.S. law enforcement agencies conduct anti-terrorism training by permitting the group to bully agencies at the local, state and federal level to alter materials determined to be discriminatory against Muslims. This includes getting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to purge anti-terrorism training curricula of material coined “offensive” to Muslims. Judicial Watch uncovered that scandal, obtained the FBI records and published an in-depth report. CAIR also got several local police departments and the U.S. military to eliminate anti-terrorism training materials and instructors deemed anti-Muslim.

The Trump administration seems to have maintained a cozy relationship with CAIR, recently joining forces with the group by suing a Michigan suburb for rejecting a Muslim organization’s zoning request to construct a mosque within city limits.