Islamic Relief Banned from Rohingya Relief Effort

^{Originally published under the title “Bangladesh Bans Two International Islamist Charities.”}

Bangladesh has banned Islamic Relief and Muslim Aid from providing either relief or aid to some 500,000 Rohingya refugees who have taken refuge in the country. They “were preaching Islam among the Rohingya people and constructing mosques in the name of relief operations,” explained a member of the parliamentary committee that reached the decision.

On October 12, the Bangladeshi government barred two international Islamic charities from providing aid to the 500,000 Rohingya refugees who have entered the country from Myanmar since August. According to Mahjabeen Khaled, an MP for the ruling Awami League, Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief Worldwide are suspected of using their work as a cover to radicalize vulnerable Muslim refugees residing in the Cox’s Bazar camps.

Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief are headquartered in Britain, and both have offices in the United States. This is not the first time these charities have been accused of secretly harboring radical motives. Muslim Aid, established in 1984, has worked with a number of Islamist extremist preachers over the years, including Zahir Mahmood, who has praised Hamas as “freedom fighters” and has condemned Muslim integration into Western societies. In 2010, Muslim Aid even admitted to having funded front groups for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

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Despite widespread acclaim for its humanitarian work, IR has a long history of giving platforms to hate preachers as well as financial links to charities accused of operating as fronts for Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaida.

Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, a close associate of Osama bin Laden, was a financial contributor to Islamic Relief.

According to financial reports from 2007 and 2009, IR has received tens of thousands of pounds from the Charitable Society for Social Welfare, whose founder, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, was a close associate of Osama bin Laden and, in 2004, was designated a terrorist by the US Treasury Department. In addition, according to reports from 2010 and 2011, IR has also received hundreds of thousands of pounds from the International Islamic Charitable Organisation, which is a key sponsor of Hamas.

More recently, in 2014, IR was officially designated a terrorist organization by the UAE. In the past, El Banna has offered outspoken admiration for Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna, the chief ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood. Other former directors of IR include Ahmed al-Rawi, who, in 2004, called upon Muslims to wage jihad against Western troops in Iraq.

Bangladesh has suffered years of extremist attacks on secular activists and the genocide of its people during the 1971 War remains a key issue. In fact, it was during Hany El Banna’s tenure at Muslim Aid that Bangladeshi commentators repeatedly expressed concern over claims that the charity was funding Jamaat-e Islami.

In 2012, Muslim Aid was subject to a similar injunction against assisting the latest influx of Rohingya refugees entering the country. Even successfully-vetted charities may only work for up to two months and must restrict their activities to providing healthcare, sanitation and shelter.

In spite of their express concerns, the Bangladeshi government has yet to make any specific allegations towards Muslim Aid or IR. Nevertheless, the extremist history of these two charities has been well documented over a number of years, and leaves no doubt as to the extent of their Islamist links. Even if both charities had no intention of radicalizing the Rohingya refugees, to treat these organizations as responsible aid groups would distract from their extremism and enhance their legitimacy in the eyes of the international community, to the detriment of those moderate Muslim charities that do not promote and fund hate.