monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Islamic Relief and
the Myth of the Non-Discriminating
Muslim Charity

Mention that Islamic charities do not contribute to the needs of non-Muslims and critics will protest. After all, organizations like Islamic Relief say right there on their website that they "pay no heed to color, race or creed." It must be true if they say so, right?

Not really.

In fact, let’s use Islamic Relief as an example, since this mainstream Muslim charity is so often cited by those skeptical of the claim that such organizations generally exist to help Muslims. Although the group certainly appears to be assisting with worthy projects around the world, the question is whether Islamic Relief is like the Red Cross and other Western charities which focus only on need. How non-discriminatory of “creed” is this organization in choosing the people and projects that will receive its assistance?

As a public charity, Islamic Relief is bound by law to publish a good bit of financial information each year about its operations. From the group's Annual Report from 2007, we can glean rudimentary insight into who gives to the organization and who generally receives.

The closest that this document comes to reporting which countries received assistance is in the Restricted Funds section, where the total resources expended comes to about £37 million. Interestingly, just over 10% of this is allocated to Qurbani and Ramadhan, two decidedly Islamic religious practices that certainly don’t involve non-Muslims. An additional £7 million goes to the rather cryptic category of “Orphans”. The remaining expenditures (about £26 million) can be tracked by the country or region in which the resources were spent.

Most of the 27 countries/regions listed on Islamic Relief’s list are majority Muslim. But the six that are not in this category are even more telling of where the organization focuses its resources. Three of these countries have very substantial Muslim minorities - Ethiopia, India and Sri Lanka – and only the Muslim regions of these countries are mentioned in the details (Kashmir in India, the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, and the Kalmunai district in Sri Lanka – the country’s only majority Muslim municipality).

Only three of the countries listed as recipients of Islamic Relief aid have a small enough Muslim population in which the identity of the aid recipients might otherwise be assumed to be non-Muslim by the casual observer. These are Kenya, China and Malawi.

However, in the case of Kenya, Islamic Relief touts its work among the Mandera ethnic group, which is Muslim. The two minor projects in Malawi are focused in the Chikwawa and Nsanje regions, where the Yao Muslims are concentrated. And in China, a nation that is only 1% Muslim, Islamic Relief does work in the remote Gansu region, one of the most heavily Muslim provinces in the country (see photo below).

Obviously it is not a great leap to assume that if Islamic Relief goes to such lengths to assist only the obscure Muslim populations of non-Muslim countries, they are probably not terribly interested in the tiny non-Muslim minorities of, say, Pakistan and Bangladesh. This is not to say that the organization necessarily checks the ID cards of those lining up for food to see which god they believe in. But, against the list of project locales, only the most naïve person could possibly belief that the charity targets need rather than needy Muslims.

In fact, of all the 37 million pounds expended in 2007, only a miniscule £247,891 appeared to be devoted toward a non-sectarian relief project. This one exception was for the victims of flooding in the United Kingdom (noted as an "Other Country"). This amount not only represents less than one percent of total expenditures, but it is almost exactly 10 times less than the amount of aid that Islamic Relief devoted to providing slaughtered animals for Qurbani.

A cynic might also suggest that this “aid” to the UK was more of a calculated PR stunt, particularly since the British provided Islamic Relief with over £13 million that year, or about 45% of total revenue. 50-1 is quite a return on investment.

According to the 2007 report, the only real pluralism is found in the list of donors rather than recipients.

Of the £8.7 million in individual grants received in 2007, the vast majority was from non-Islamic organizations in the West. Only 20% came from Islamic groups, almost all of which was specifically designated for projects assisting Muslims. Amazingly, Christian charities (including Christian Aid and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) actually accounted for just over 10% of the individual grants received by Islamic Relief – or nearly half of that donated by Muslim groups!

These non-Muslim donations are important because the majority of funds received by Islamic Relief can be assumed to have come from Muslim individuals satisfying the obligation of zakat (similar to the Christian tithe but generally much less - about 2.5% of wealth increase or income). According to Islamic law, this money is not supposed to go toward anyone outside the Islamic faith. So how does Islamic Relief justify the tiny proportion of its relief funds that do assist non-Muslims?

Simple. As with all legitimate Muslim charities, the donations that Islamic Relief receives from non-Muslims exceeds by far the amount of aid spent on non-Muslims. The organization is simply passing along non-Muslim aid to non-Muslims (and probably benefiting from the window-dressing as well, since such a large amount of their funding comes from non-Muslim donors).

We have no problem with Muslim charities helping Muslims - at least those that aren't funneling donations to terrorists, such as the Holy Land Foundation and CAIR. However, it is disingenuous for these organizations to pretend that they don't discriminate by creed when over 99% of their assistance is clearly targeted toward members of their own faith.

President Donald Trump has decided to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to replace departing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, according to three people familiar with the decision.

Nauert, 48, is an unorthodox choice for the UN role given that she had little experience in government or foreign policy before joining the administration in April 2017 after several years as an anchor and correspondent for Fox News, including on the “Fox and Friends” show watched by Trump. Haley also didn’t have foreign policy experience when she took the UN posting, but she had twice been elected governor of South Carolina.

Nevertheless, Nauert has gained Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s trust after being excluded from the inner circle of his predecessor, Rex Tillerson. She is also closely aligned with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner.

One senior administration official, who discussed the move on condition of anonymity, said that Nauert would make a great UN ambassador because she is a great communicator.

The president picked Nauert after considering other potential nominees including former White House aide Dina Powell, ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft and ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Congress on Thursday approved a two-week stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown, setting up a potential showdown over President Donald Trump's proposed border wall later this month.

Without action by Congress, funding for several federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, State Department and Department of Homeland Security, had been set to expire this week. The stopgap bill extends funding through Dec. 21.

Before the stopgap bill expires, the Republican-led Congress is expected to consider a $450 billion bill to fund the departments through the fiscal year that ends next Sept. 30.

Trump has demanded $5 billion this year as part of his plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico that Democrats argue would be ineffective at keeping out illegal immigrants and illicit drugs.

Instead, Democrats want to continue improving less costly fencing and employing high-tech instruments to detect illegal border crossings. They have agreed to include $1.6 billion for additional border security.

"Let me be clear: the $1.6 billion cannot be used to construct any part of President Trump's 30-foot-tall concrete border wall. It can only be used for fencing, using technology currently deployed at the border, and only where the experts say fencing is appropriate and makes sense," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Thursday.

Trump has threatened to force a partial government shutdown if Congress does not give him the money he wants for the wall.

For that matter, how about all the liberals who gleefully celebrated the 9/11 attacks?

ballocks. pure uber right conspiracy theorist wet dream fantasy on oralloy's part.

Likd trump's disproven lies about seeing thousands of arab americans celebrating the fall of the twin towers on tv.

For that matter, how about all the liberals who gleefully celebrated the 9/11 attacks?

The writing is on the wall, nothing is going to stop these arrests from happening. Nothing. And this is going to be a big week. The world is about to change.

He merely misremembered the location and nationality of the celebrations. Hardly a lie.

It is unclear who the replacement would be. Nick Ayers, the vice president’s chief of staff, is seen as a leading candidate. He is supported by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the president’s son-in-law and daughter, who both serve as senior West Wing advisers and who, according to several officials, are trying to expand their influence internally and in the re-election campaign.

Hugh Jass