Administration Scrutinizes Muslim Charities
The president's father claimed to see "a thousand points of light" in the charitable organizations "that are spread like stars throughout the Nation." The current administration praises private efforts to help the unfortunate while it harasses Muslim charities. One victim of the administration's double standard is Dr. Rafil Dhafir, whose arrest TalkLeft discussed here.
In direct response to the humanitarian catastrophe created by brutal sanctions on Iraq, Dhafir, a man of Iraqi descent and Muslim faith, and an American citizen for almost thirty years, started the charity Help the Needy (HTN). ... When the deaths of children over the age of five and adults are added, the number killed as a direct result of the sanctions rises to between 1.5 and 2 million dead civilians. ...For the crime of breaking the U.S. and U.K. sponsored UN sanctions on Iraq and sending humanitarian aid to sick and starving civilians, Dhafir was held without bail for thirty-one months and then sentenced to twenty-two years in prison.
The linked article recaps the case against Dr. Dhafir, a case that ran on twin tracks: a fraud prosecution for activities that, according to its prosecutors, had no link to terrorism; and contradictory claims by federal authorities that Dr. Dhafir's charitable activities assisted terrorism.
The article reports the administration's efforts to tout the use of white collar criminal statutes to attack "terrorist financing," and provides evidence that the administration targets Muslim organizations.
[T]hese "powerful prosecution tools" are being used mostly against Muslim charities and individuals associated with those charities, while violations by large corporations like Halliburton, which did billions of dollars worth of business in defiance of IEEPA, go largely unpunished. At the most these corporations have gotten a slap on the wrist and a fine, but no individual board member or officer has ever faced prosecution. [62] And although many non-Muslim charities work in the same troubled regions of the world as Muslim charities, not a single non-Muslim charity has been closed.
More information about Dr. Dhafir and his appeal can be found here.
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