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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Hamas-linked CAIR’s research director endorsed jihad-supporting charity

Sep 8, 2019 12:00 pm By Robert Spencer

Surprised? Don’t be. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.) CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager is an open supporter of Hamas.

But all this sort of thing is mainstream on the Left and in the Democrat Party now, so CAIR and Barzegar have no need to fear any fallout from this revelation.

“CAIR’s Research Director Endorsed Jihadist Supporting Charity,” by John Rossomando, IPT News, September 5, 2019:

The lead author of the Council on American Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) 2019 Islamophobia report has repeatedly endorsed a terror-tied Turkish charity.CAIR research director Abbas Barzegar, the lead author of “Hijacked By Hate: American Philanthropy and the Islamophobia Network,” has supported the Turkish-based IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation for years even though IHH has provided financial, logistical and political support for jihadists.

IHH worked the “front lines of the Syrian conflict,” helping tens of thousands of refugees fleeing to Turkey, Lebanon an Jordan, Barzegar wrote in a 2015 Washington Post op-ed with a Georgia State University colleague.

The op-ed argued that Muslim non-governmental organizations are “the glue, preventing struggling communities from spiraling out of control.” As such, IHH “should be leveraged for more than just routine aid work … Indeed, with the right communications infrastructure training, they could quickly become ideological gatekeepers as well. Online images of violence, suffering and catastrophe are key elements in the process of radicalization, which drive many volunteer fighters to participate in violent extremism,” Barzegar wrote. “Radical groups such as the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra Front systematically use tormenting images of human misery in their online messaging and recruitment efforts.”

Barzegar either didn’t know about or ignored IHH’s role in enabling the same jihadist ideology. Its involvement in a scheme to recruit and equip jihadists in Syria was well reported by 2014.

Barzegar did not respond to a request for comment.

Major news outlets, including Al-Jazeera, reported in January 2014 that Turkish authorities accused IHH of evacuating wounded jihadists from the battlefield. Sensitive government documents obtained by Turkish journalists have corroborated those reports.

IHH also reportedly transported fresh recruits and weapons to the battlefield – under the guise of providing aid – for al-Qaida linked jihadists. At least 23 people were arrested on suspicion they had ties to Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate at the time. Testimony later disclosed that IHH worked closely with Turkey’s intelligence agency to carry out this scheme.

“I think Muslims or non-Muslims alike must be gravely concerned about the IHH and their endorsers and supporters,” said Turkish journalist Abdullah Bozkurt, who obtained some of the sensitive Turkish government documents linking IHH with al-Qaida jihadists in Syria. “The IHH serves as a conveyor belt for radical views that get promoted by armed jihadist groups. Anybody who tries to sell IHH as a mainstream Muslim organization must be ignorant at best, or a malicious person to mislead at worst.”

IHH has close links with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which views modern Turkey as a continuation of the Ottoman Empire.

Court documents implicated IHH in al-Qaida’s 1999 Millennium Bomb plot to attack Los Angeles International Airport.

“The IHH is an NGO, but it was kind of a type of cover-up in order to obtain forged documents to obtain different forms of infiltration for Mujahadeen in combat … And finally, one of the responsibilities that they had was also to be implicated in weapons trafficking,” French counter-terrorism magistrate Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere testified in the case of would-be Millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam.

IHH co-sponsored a 2006 memorial service in Istanbul for Shamil Basayev, the Chechen terrorist responsible for the 2004 Beslan school attack in Russia that killed 330 people, including 186 children. A State Department cable noted Basayev had al-Qaida links.

Turkish investigators raided IHH offices in December 1997 and found that IHH purchased automatic weapons from jihadist groups. Investigators determined that IHH members planned to fight in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Chechnya – the jihadist hotspots at the time.

IHH and Erdogan share the same ideology and work together to achieve the same goals, said former Turkish National Police Counterterrorism official Ahmet Yayla.

Documents uncovered by Bozkurt show that IHH supported jihadists in Syria just as it had years earlier in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. IHH began shipping supplies to terrorists in Syria starting in 2012, and Bozkurt found a close link between IHH President Bülent Yildirim and Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey’s national intelligence organization, the MIT…

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Filed Under: CAIR, Featured, Islamic charities Tagged With: Abbas Barzegar, IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation


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Comments

  1. livingengine says

    Sep 8, 2019 at 2:50 pm

    CAIR vs Joe Ricketts

  2. gravenimage says

    Sep 8, 2019 at 9:40 pm

    Hamas-linked CAIR’s research director endorsed jihad-supporting charity
    ……………

    Zakat is often mistakenly translated as “charity”, but it also includes funding violent Jihad.

    • Angemon says

      Sep 9, 2019 at 1:11 pm

      Indeed – zakat is giving alms to the ummah alone, not to the general population.

      • gravenimage says

        Sep 9, 2019 at 8:49 pm

        True, Angemon.

  3. SAFI says

    Sep 9, 2019 at 9:24 am

    IHH’s links with the Turkish “Deep State” and islamist groups have been well known for years. If memory serves me well the 2010 “humanitarian” flotilla aimed to “lift the siege” on Gaza which led to the incident of the “Mavi Marmara” raid by Israeli special forces had been organized by Turkey-based IHH islamists (although there were also European leftist politicians on board some of the other vessels.)

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