Home Sponsoring Terrorism Qatari money account inventory in support of Western terrorism

Qatari money account inventory in support of Western terrorism

The Qatari system uses charitable institutions to support and finance terrorist groups around the world.

A trove of data uncovered details almost 46,000 grants made by the Qatari regime-controlled Sheikh Eid bin Mohammad Al Thani Charitable Association, also known as the Eid Charity, were given to Islamic extremist organizations all around the world. A significant amount ended up in Europe and North America, some 380 grants to 41 recipients, totaling just under $37 million, distributed between 2004 and 2019.

Although the amount is small compared to $770 million worldwide in the data set, some of which appears to have been given to designated terrorist organizations the Eid Charity’s spending across the West reveals a clear pattern of Qatari monies being handed out almost exclusively to extremist terrorist organizations.

It is not surprising that Eid Charity should emerge as a leading patron of Islamist extremism in the West. In previous years, European media has occasionally recorded the Group’s relations with terrorist organizations.

In the Netherlands, in particular, journalists have previously pointed to Eid Charity’s funding of Salafi organizations in Dutch cities, and note that its officials “are said to have funneled money to Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Shabab in Somalia and Palestinian Hamas.”

Despite its extremist links, the Eid Charity has been able to operate internationally with near impunity.

Eid Charity

The United Kingdom was its main target, with some 97 grants distributed there worth just under $9 million, with about $2 million being provided to the Islamic Forum Fund, a radical Salafist charity.

The trust also runs a mosque in West London, which The Times has reported is closely connected to Qatar.

Furthermore, British media has long reported on the extremist links of this charity network.

Journalist Andrew Gilligan noted: “Al-Muntada has close links to British mosques accused of radicalising young people into Isil, including al-Manar in Cardiff, attended by Nasser Muthana and Reyaad Khan, the first Britons to appear in an ( Islamic State ) propaganda video. Both mosques have also organised events with Mohammed al-Arifi, the now-banned extremist cleric accused of grooming the two young Cardiff men.”

Former Al Muntada partners have included ISIS financier Nabil Al Awadi, as well as radical clerics such as Haitham Al Haddad, whom British media has frequently described as “one of the most active extremist preachers in the country.”

Almost $600,000 was provided by the Eid Charity to the Emaan Trust in Sheffield in 2013 and 2014 for the construction of its mosque. As Andrew Norfolk of The Times has previously noted, “The Emaan Trust’s leaders have included men with close links to the Brotherhood.

Norfolk also revealed that the Emaan Trust has received substantial amounts of monies from Qatar Charity UK, a branch of another regime-controlled group in Doha that has long worked closely with the Eid Charity.

Moving from Britain to other European countries, Eid Charity has also been generous with Islamist mosques and organizations, many of which are linked to terrorism.

In Sweden, the Örebro mosque received $2.4 million between 2007 and 2016.

Örebro Mosque has undeniable links to terror: an ISIS recruiter preached there regularly until his arrest in 2015.

The Swedish Security Service subsequently issued a press release which stated: “the Swedish Security Service have a clear picture that there is radicalization and recruitment in Örebro.”

Eid Charity also donated $1 million to Sweden’s Al Rashideen Mosque. The Mosque’s imam, applauded ISIS for taking over the Iraqi city of Mosul, and even encouraged his followers to finance the terrorist organization.

The Swedish government subsequently declared him a “security threat” and decided to deport him, but the sentence was never carried out because of the purported risk of persecution that he faced in his native country of Iraq.

Meanwhile, in France, almost $1.7 million from the Eid Charity went to institutions tied to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, such as the Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines (IESH), which received $470,000 from the Eid Charity.

IESH

The IESH was founded as a Brotherhood seminary, and its curriculum was designed by the Brotherhood’s ‘spiritual leader’ Youssef Qaradhawi.

Another $442,000 went to the Mosquée de Saint-Ouen, whose imam, Abdelghani Benali, is also a professor at the IESH.

In 2008, Eid Charity made a contribution of $66,000 to another French Islamic center in Poitiers. And the L’Association des Musulmans d’Alsace (AMAL) also received $262,000 from Eid Charity for the construction of the enormous An-Nour Islamic center in Mulhouse.

French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot have previously alerted the public to Qatari attempts to create autarkic “micro-societies” in Europe. An-Nour is one of the most obvious examples of this trend, and, indeed, the Eid Charity notes that it will include a dawah (proselytization) center as well as a school, shops, and various other services.

In 2008, Eid Charity donated $457,000 for the construction of an Islamic center in the French town of Villeneuve d’Ascq.

In Germany, Eid Charity donated $400,000 to the Arabischer Kulturverein (Arab Cultural Association), which appears also to be known as the Al Muhsinin mosque.

According to German academic Susanne Schröter, Al Muhsinin is “regarded as an important center of Salafi activities” that “counts several of its members among the ranks of Al-Qaeda,” and where radical preachers “encouraged followers to travel to Al-Qaeda training camps.”

Eid Charity grantees appear sometimes to serve as middlemen by distributing monies to other radical institutions. For example, the Arabischer Kulturverein gave $68,000 to the Assalam Mosque in Essen, also a known “Salafi hub,” according to academic Johannes Saal, described by the German media as the “German face of the Islamic State.”

In 2009, German authorities deported one of its congregants who was in touch with Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard and possessed bomb-making instructions in his apartment.

Osama bin Laden

In Switzerland, the Swiss Islamic Shura Council received $208,000 from the Eid Charity. One of its board members has been convicted for producing extremist propaganda, he traveled to Syria to interview a high-ranking Al Qaeda official, and later posted the video on the Shura Council’s YouTube channel.

Two other board members were also implicated. The Swiss Shura Council also invited the infamous Salafi preacher Mohammed Al-Arifi to its annual meeting in 2013, although he was prevented from attending following the Swiss government’s decision to deny him entry for five years because of his extremist rhetoric.

In Canada, where over $6.7 million of Eid Charity grants have been distributed to eight organizations.

In the United States, almost $100,000 routed through Canada from the Eid Charity appeared to fund the Colorado Muslim Community Center outside Denver, an institution controlled by hardline Salafi cleric Karim Abu Zaid, an unabashed apologist for the Taliban.

Today, many extremist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood are considered dangerous terrorist organizations, and many of these organizations appear to have survived unharmed by the loss of one of their largest financiers.

This newly uncovered data is the most extensive evidence so far of Qatar’s Islamist agenda.

Qatar has long been suspected of being a major terrorist financier and $770 million in charity support may be just a small proportion of Qatar’s total spending on its terrorist partners.

While the Eid Charity is just one institution among dozens used by the regime to front its financial activities, this newly uncovered data presents the most extensive evidence so far of the regime’s terror-linked Islamist agenda.

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