US Muslims wary of giving charity amid crackdown

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DETROIT, (Michigan), Sept 9 (AFP): As Ramadan approaches, many US Muslims are worried about how they will manage to fulfill their charitable obligations without raising the ire or attention of federal authorities.
The start of Ramadan sometime next week coincides with the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks which prompted anti-terrorism crackdowns that many here say unfairly target Muslims.
Six major Muslim charities operating in the United States have been shut down after being designated as fund raisers for terrorist organizations and several others have been raided or closed.
"These are indirect ways of having Islamic charities close down without due process," said Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"It scares away the donors and even some employees."
There has also been a very suspicious pattern of raids taking place just ahead of Ramadan when Muslims typically do the bulk of their required giving known as "zakat", said Shereef Akeel, a lawyer who represents two of the raided charities.
In 2004, Missouri-based Islamic American Relief Agency was shut down in the days leading up to Ramadan because of alleged ties to the militant Palestinian group Hamas and Al-Qaeda. It was indicted in March for providing aid without a license in Iraq while the country was under US sanctions.
In 2005, federal agents knocked on the doors of prominent Detroit-area Muslims and asked them if they were planning on donating to Michigan-based Life for Relief and Development and other charities.
And in 2006, Life was raided and every local television station was on hand to capture images of federal agents carting away computers and boxes of documents.
While it is important to ensure that charitable funds are not diverted to terrorist activities, the federal government's inability or refusal to provide hard evidence against the charities has created a backlash, said Akeel.