U.S. government distributed covid relief funds to Islamic groups with long-held ties to jihad violence
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Of course. Because no one in the federal government knows anything about Islam. Everyone involved in the distribution of these funds knows that Islam is a religion of peace and that it would be “Islamophobic” to suspect, much less investigate, any of these organizations.
“COVID Relief Funds Went to Violent Extremists,” by Sam Westrop, Newsweek, December 7, 2020:
The federal government’s distribution of COVID relief funds over the past year has been disastrous. As Bloomberg reported in October, the Small Business Administration (SBA) “gave out $10,000 grants to almost anyone who asked.” From fraudulent applications to identity theft, billions of dollars are believed to have been stolen.
However, criminals were not the only ones to benefit from governmental incompetence; federal COVID relief has also helped prop up extremist organizations with long-held ties to violence. The amounts may be small, but the examples are shocking.
Perhaps most striking is the $1,000 handed out to the Virginia-based Khatme Nubuwwat Center. Khatme Nubuwwat (KN) is a violent South Asian movement committed to the eradication of the Ahmadiyyah, a tiny, moderate Muslim sect. For seventy years, KN groups have organized and encouraged violent pogroms against members of the minority sect. Hundreds have been murdered. Just this year, a KN supporter was involved in luring an Ahmadi American citizen to his death in Pakistan.
Today, even in the West, KN distributes leaflets openly advocating the killing of Ahmadiyyah. Islamists in the West follow through. In 2016, a KN member in Scotland stabbed an Ahmadi shopkeeper to death. KN activists applauded the killing, with one KN group declaring: “Congratulations to all Muslims.”
In 2017, the same Khatme Nubuwwat Center in Virginia that received federal monies organized a conference at which speakers encouraged violence against Ahmadi Muslims and discussed their hopes for criminalizing the Ahmadiyyah faith in the West.
But the killer of the Scottish shopkeeper was not only a member of KN; he belonged also to Dawat-e-Islami (DeI), another South Asian Islamist movement. Leaders of DeI warn Muslims against behaving like Jews, and openly advocate the killing of “blasphemers.” DeI members have carried out a number of terrorist attacks, including a recent attack in France near the Charlie Hebdo offices. This year, the SBA handed $10,000 to DeI’s principal U.S. proxy, based in Chicago.
These are far from the only examples. The Indian American Muslim Council, an anti-Hindu Islamist group with alleged ties to SIMI, a banned terrorist organization in India, was given $1,000 of taxpayers’ money. Meanwhile, $10,000 went to the Al-Furqaan Foundation, a prominent Salafi proselytization organization funded by the Qatari regime. Many of these groups could doubtlessly survive without taxpayer subsidies. Al-Furqaan Foundation’s most recent tax return, for example, reported revenue of over $3.5 million.
A number of organizations, long accused of serving as components of a Hamas network in the U.S, also received grants. The government gave $10,000 to Baitulmaal, a Texas charity that openly funds Hamas proxies in Gaza, currently run by Mazen Mokhtar, a former fundraiser for the Taliban and other jihadist groups. American Muslims for Palestine also received $10,000. The group’s officials have long expressed support for Hamas’s activities, and several have been tied to the terror movement’s activities in the U.S….
It is also noteworthy that COVID relief makes up only 1/25th of this year’s federal funding for American Muslim organizations. Under President Donald Trump, perhaps surprisingly, the amount given to American Muslim organizations in 2020 surpassed $25 million, far beyond the previous record of $14 million handed out by federal agencies to Islamic organizations in 2008….
Meanwhile, what do organizations that oppose jihad violence and Sharia oppression get? Why, nothing, of course. Nothing except opprobrium.