by Sam Westrop
After an initial silence, Islamic Relief decided to doctor its advertisements for the event by expunging all mentions that its leading anti-Jewish official would be speaking
U.S. Department of Agriculture hosts the 2018 Interfaith IFTAR Celebration with Islamic Relief USA.
Earlier this week, we broke the news that Islamist-linked
congresswoman Ilhan Omar (already in the news after publishing
anti-Semitic tweets) was due to speak at an event organized by Islamic
Relief – an international aid charity accused of funding terror and
extremism – alongside a senior Islamic Relief official who has published
social media posts praising the killing of Jews.
[You can read the details of the Islamic Relief official's virulent anti-Semitism here.]
Our research was quickly picked up by a number of media outlets, including the Jerusalem Post, Washington Examiner, Daily Wire, JNS
and others. The story went somewhat viral. Our blog post and the media
articles covering our report were aggregately shared by over 70,000
people on Facebook, and another 40,000 on Twitter – reaching millions.
No wonder, then, that Islamic Relief started to feel the pressure.
After
an initial silence, Islamic Relief decided to doctor its advertisements
for the event by expunging all mentions that its leading anti-Jewish
official would be speaking – even amending a glossy poster that it had
previously published all over social media.
Islamic
Relief and one of Rep. Omar's staff then promptly set about claiming
that the official was never in fact due to speak. Unfortunately for
them, there were boundless copies and screenshots of the posters and event webpages available to expose this lie rather quickly.
A
number of media outlets roundly criticized Islamic Relief and Rep.
Omar's denials, referring to their denials as "absurd." In a follow-up
piece, the Washington Examiner's Quin Hillyer mused:
Meanwhile, the group sponsoring the dinner, IRUSA, denies any anti-Semitic activity, but still employs a man whose tweets express approval for the act of killing more than 20 Jews and firing missiles into Tel Aviv, along with one calling on God to "destroy [Zionists] as you destroyed the peoples of Ad, Thamud and Lot." And somehow, this IRUSA employee was mistakenly billed as a speaker at an event with Omar, due to ... an internal printing error?
Islamic Relief then lashed out at the Middle East Forum, telling the Jewish Journalthat:
As it's been mentioned previously to Middle Eastern Forum [MEF], which has a history of rehashing the same old falsehoods, IRUSA has taken steps to address individual employees' actions and behaviors that are contrary to the organization's values. Perhaps MEF conveniently left out mentioning a powerful column that was published regarding IRUSA's trip to the Holocaust Museum, as it would be inconsistent with their constant smear tactics. A simple Google search would have done the trick.
Notably,
Islamic Relief does not mention what these "falsehoods" might be. Its
spokesman is perhaps referring to a letter it sent to Member of Congress
in July 2018, offering obfuscations and denials in response to a 2018
Middle East Forum report, cited in congressional testimony, exposing Islamic Relief's long history of ties to extremism and terror. At the time, we debunked Islamic Relief's denials thoroughly.
That
we did not mention Islamic Relief staff visited a Holocaust museum
seems a reasonable omission on our part. Better evidence that the
international charitable franchise rejects anti-Semitism would be to:
fire its anti-Semitic officials (including Islamic Relief USA's chairman); stop giving anti-Semitic clerics platforms at Islamic Relief events; and stop subsidizing the genocidally anti-Semitic terrorist group Hamas.
Amazingly, the Ilhan Omar debacle was not the only Islamic Relief story we published this week. Writing in the Rabwah Times, Islamist Watch revealed
that Islamic Relief's branch in Tunisia had reportedly been implicated
in a Tunisian terror finance investigation, according to a leaked
government report.
Islamic
Relief Worldwide, the Islamist franchise's headquarters in the U.K,
quickly condemned our coverage, referring to it as "deeply misleading"
and stating, "The Tunisian Commission for Financial Analysis (CTAF), a
government body cited as the source of the leaks, has publicly denied
issuing the alleged report and has issued a public statement distancing
itself from the allegations."
This
attempt at evasion had in fact been preemptively addressed in our
article. The Tunisian governmental body did indeed deny publishing a
report, but as we and the Tunisian media pointed out: no one claimed the
report was published; it was leaked. More interestingly, the government
pointedly refused to deny that the report in facts exists, only stating that it hands its findings "exclusively to the Public Prosecutor's office."
Politicians
and journalists all around the world are beginning to investigate the
extremism and duplicity of the Islamic Relief franchise. That it has
chosen to rush out ill-considered denials and launch attacks on its
critics is only helping speed that process along.
Sam Westrop is the Director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.Source: https://www.meforum.org/57801/islamic-relief-strikes-back-misses
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