US Muslims wary of giving charity amid crackdown

As Ramazan approaches, many US Muslims are worried about how they will manage to fulfill their charitable obligations without raising the ire or attention of federal authorities. (Ramazan is when Muslims typically do the bulk of their required giving known as “zakat”.)

In 2005, federal agents knocked on the doors of prominent Detroit-area Muslims and asked them if they were planning on donating to Michigan-based Life for Relief and Development and other charities.

In 2006, Life was raided and every local television station was on hand to capture images of federal agents carting away computers and boxes of documents. Life for Relief and Development has managed to keep operating despite the bad publicity from the 2006 raid, said administrative director Mohammad Alomari. But it had to go to court to prevent its bank from flagging it as a money launderer or terrorist financer when the charity’s account was closed shortly after the raid.

“These are indirect ways of having Islamic charities close down without due process,” said Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “It scares away the donors and even some employees.”

While it is important to ensure that charitable funds are not diverted to terrorist activities, the federal government’s inability or refusal to provide hard evidence against the charities has created a backlash, said Shereef Akeel, a lawyer who represents two raided Muslim charities.

Many Muslims have stopped donating to overseas programmes out of fear that the money will be either frozen or tied up in legal fees and that they could be held liable for inadvertently funding terrorism.

“People in the Muslim community are scared. They have to give zakat. But how do you give it? Do you give it only to the mosque? Do you give it to a friend who takes it overseas? The avenues of giving are narrower.”

Excerpt of an article by Mira Oberman, The Daily Times]