MEF Reveals Qatari Support for Jihad; Seeks Crowdsource Researchers

Philadelphia – November 30, 2021 – The Middle East Forum has uncovered documents revealing almost 46,000 grants issued by the Sheikh Eid Bin Mohammad Al Thani Charitable Association, also known as the Eid Charity, to Islamic organizations around the world.

These grants, issued between 2004 and 2019, total over US$770 million. A substantial proportion of these monies ended up in the pockets of jihadist groups and their proxies.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has described Eid Charity as “probably the biggest and most influential activist Salafi-controlled relief organization in the world.” Eid Charity founder, Abdulrahman al-Nuaimi, was named as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on December 18, 2013.

Over the next several weeks, writers and researchers given early access to the data will be publishing multiple articles in media across the globe revealing details about the Eid Charity’s beneficiaries, which include fronts for Al Qaeda and other designated terrorist organizations.

In addition, the Forum will be soon publishing a full copy of the original raw data, comprising over 45,000 grants and hundreds of thousands of sub-records, allowing other organizations and individuals to investigate Qatari regime funding for themselves.

Sam Westrop, director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch program, notes: “Crowdsourcing the research into the hundreds of organizations receiving monies from this major regime institution will yield important, additional understanding of Doha’s agenda. There is clear funding of jihadists in the areas one would expect: Yemen, the Palestinian territories, Pakistan, inter alia. But there is plenty to investigate further. The extraordinary level of investment by Qatar, the chief purveyor of international Islamist finance, into recipients in West Africa, East Africa and the far-East, for instance, deserves particularly close examination by citizen journalists and investigative organizations.”

Gregg Roman, director of the Middle East Forum, adds: “On Giving Tuesday especially, it is of great importance to understand what happens when radicals exploit charitable systems. To identify such abuse, the most important step the public can take is to partner with and support organizations such as the Middle East Forum, which are working to expose and counteract the Qatari regime, its Islamist partners, and their international jihad.”


The Middle East Forum promotes American interests in the region and protects Western civilization from Islamism. It does so through a combination of original ideas, focused activism, and the funding of allies.

For immediate release
For more information, contact:

Sam Westrop
Westrop@MEForum.org
+1 (215) 546 5406

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