Exploiting the Koran to Fund Terror
According to Daniel Pipes
Pipes states that the judgment did four things:
1. First, it validates and operationalizes a 1992 U.S. law that prohibits sending any money to terrorist organizations, not just money specifically tied to violence. Even funds used for medical care or education, the logic correctly goes, ultimately forward violence.
2. Second, this marks the first decision by a jury penalizing Americans who support terrorism abroad and making them liable to pay civil damages.
3. Third, it shows that “the American court system is prepared to bankrupt the Islamic terror network,” just as it earlier destroyed the Klu Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, two extremist and violent organizations, “by bringing unpayable large judgments against them.”
4. The case confirms the pattern of culpability among even the most innocent-appearing of Islamic institutions. According to Pipes, two of the three liable groups have known ties to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group; Holy Land Foundation serves as “its fundraising arm, Islamic Association for Palestine, it’s political front.” The Quranic Literacy Institute, a religious group based in a Chicago suburb that since 1991 hs engaged in the pious work of translating Islamic sacred texts from Arabic, then publishing them in English, appeared wholly unconnected to Hamas. In June 1998, Federal authorities seized $1 million in cash and assets, and have charged QLI with having for nine years supported “a conspiracy involving international terrorist activities and domestic recruitment and training in support of such activities.
Appearances can be deceiving. Moderate-appearing groups sometimes are “reactionary, harboring criminals, funding terrorism, and are involved in various illegal schemes, even “schemes of assassination.”
Counterterrorism efforts got a major boost last week when a U.S. district court found three Muslim organizations and one individual, mostly based in the Chicago area, guilty of funding Hamas and fined them an astonishing $156 million.
Pipes states that the judgment did four things:
1. First, it validates and operationalizes a 1992 U.S. law that prohibits sending any money to terrorist organizations, not just money specifically tied to violence. Even funds used for medical care or education, the logic correctly goes, ultimately forward violence.
2. Second, this marks the first decision by a jury penalizing Americans who support terrorism abroad and making them liable to pay civil damages.
3. Third, it shows that “the American court system is prepared to bankrupt the Islamic terror network,” just as it earlier destroyed the Klu Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, two extremist and violent organizations, “by bringing unpayable large judgments against them.”
4. The case confirms the pattern of culpability among even the most innocent-appearing of Islamic institutions. According to Pipes, two of the three liable groups have known ties to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group; Holy Land Foundation serves as “its fundraising arm, Islamic Association for Palestine, it’s political front.” The Quranic Literacy Institute, a religious group based in a Chicago suburb that since 1991 hs engaged in the pious work of translating Islamic sacred texts from Arabic, then publishing them in English, appeared wholly unconnected to Hamas. In June 1998, Federal authorities seized $1 million in cash and assets, and have charged QLI with having for nine years supported “a conspiracy involving international terrorist activities and domestic recruitment and training in support of such activities.
Appearances can be deceiving. Moderate-appearing groups sometimes are “reactionary, harboring criminals, funding terrorism, and are involved in various illegal schemes, even “schemes of assassination.”
The lesson is clear: Wahhabi organizations like the QLI cannot be taken at face value but must be scrutinized for extremist, criminal, and terrorist connections. Extensive research, including undercover operations, is needed to find out the possibly sordid reality behind a seemingly benign exterior.
posted by Eleanor © @ 12/16/2004 07:31:00 PM
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