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American Muslims Demand Release
of Zakat Funds
AMP Report
American Muslims have urged the U.S. Department of Treasury to release the seized Zakat funds to Muslim organizations and not to Israeli interest groups represented by lawyers.
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and several other American Muslim organizations held a conference in Chicago to discuss the issue of the Zakat funds seized when a number of American Muslim charity organizations were banned in 2001.
All the participants of the conference urged the administration not to re-direct the funds to lawyers representing Israeli interests, which is actually taking place in two lawsuits to acquire these funds, one initiated by a Washington-based lawyer, Nathan Lewin, and another by David J. Strachman.
“If the zakat funds are given to these lawyers, the US government, which is now the trustee of these funds, will for the first time be an instrument of diverting funds from one religious group to other groups that represent special interests contrary to the will of the donors,” they said.
Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who led the initiative with the Treasury Department to transfer bloced funds to other charities for distribution, led a workshop that discussed the issue of frozen assets of three American Muslim charities. Al-Marayati stated that, "MPAC's plan to unfreeze funds by directing them to operating charities has been accepted by the US government. Moreover, the plan was adopted and supported by all of the charitable organizations at the conference."
There was consensus among the participants of the conference that demonstrating transparency and accountability was a paramount goal. The US government needs to be more specific on what the Muslim Charities need to look for in avoiding disbursements into the wrong hands. Responsibilities of the US government should not be transposed onto responsibilities of the Muslim Charity organizations. Rather, the government needs to identify who is disqualified from receiving funds from any American-based groups.
Juan Zarate, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, a keynote speaker at the conference, reiterated the need for American Muslim charities to continue their work as a continuation of the great American tradition of charitable giving. He acknowledged that many of the steps promoted in the Guidelines for US-based Charities may not always be feasible or cost-effective, especially for smaller charities with limited operations. But, he added that it is equally important to recognize that the problem we face is difficult.
It may be recalled that Ladale K. George, an attorney with Foley & Lardner and an advisor to American Muslim groups concerned with the issue of charities, has been consulting with American Muslim charities on the process of trying to comply with the United States Government's "best practices" guidelines. In the post 9-11 era, George says that a fundamental problem is that even those who do follow these guidelines to the letter do not receive any assurances that they will be safe. George has suggested that the government should provide more reasonable and modest guidelines to rectify this problem.
Meanwhile, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development filed a request on April 9 to the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control to unfreeze $50,000 to be sent to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, which seeks to provide free medical care for Palestinian children in the Middle East.
The Bush administration in 2001 accused Holy Land, a Texas-based group, of financing the militant Islamic group Hamas and ordered U.S. banks to freeze its assets. Holy Land says it has never donated money or provided services to Hamas, a group the government says is a foreign terrorist organization.
The release of the funds of the Holy Land Foundation in accordance with the wishes of American Muslim donors will mark the beginning of a process that results in the legitimate distribution to those in need, said the Muslim Public Affairs Council which is following this matter with the Treasury Department.
Unfortunately, the assets of the other American Muslim charitable organizations have been depleted by administrative and legal costs, according to the MPAC. “The remaining funds should not be diverted to groups or individuals who are currently using the legal system to achieve dubious political gains on behalf of special interest groups,” the organization concluded.
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