--- Begin Message ---
"Never will the Jews nor the Christians be pleased with you (O
Muhammad Peace be upon him) till you follow their religion. ... "
(2:120)
"They wish that you should compromise (in religion out of courtesy)
with them, so they (too) would compromise with you." (68:9)
----- Original Message -----0
From: >Ismail Royer
To: >[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; >mphs-dawah@= yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 3:43 AM
Subject: [Chicago-Net] The war on you
Assalaamu alaikum,
Along with those raided yesterday, some of the groups that have now
been targeted by the US government include Benevolence International,
Holy Land Foundation, Global Relief, the International Institute of
Islamic Thought, the Graduate School of Islamic Social Sciences, the
Muslim World League, the Fiqh Council of North America, North
American
Islamic Trust (part of ISNA), and International Islamic Relief
Organization. There's not a whole lot of major ones left. Soon you
all
will be stuck with Kabbani, who, coincidentally, has revamped his
website and looks rarin' to go.
Says Taha Jaber Al-Alwani (author of the infamous fatwa stating that
Muslims are Islamically allowed to fight Mus lims as part of the
American military), whose school was raided yesterday, "I'm very
upset, because after all our loyalty and service to our country, here
we see ourselves in this position."
As you read the articles below on the lates government raids on
Muslims in America, here's something interesting to think about, also
from the New York Times today, about the anti-Muslim riots in India:
"Among the hardest-hit Muslim establishments here are those that
served some of the city's most observant Hindus. [They] took pains not
to stick out in the Hindu-majority parts of the city. No posters of
Mecca and Medina hung on their walls. They employed Hindu cooks.
The names of their restaurants contained no trace of Islamic
identity. ...Explained Ismail Heera...'This was just to mix with the
rest of the people.'
"The urge to fit in turned out not to be enough."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/internati= onal/asia/21INDI.html
-----------------
March 21, 2002
THE MONEY TRAIL
Raids Seek Evidence of Money-Laundering
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/national/21FREE.h= tml
WASHINGTON, March 20 Federal law enforcement officials today
raided 15 organizations and individuals in Northern Virginia
and a chicken farm in Georgia, all of them, the authorities said,
suspected by the Treasury Department of laundering money for
Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
The raids were the first to be coordinated by the Treasury
Department's counterterrorism task force responsible for stopping the
flow of money to terrorist organizations in the United States and
abroad.
The department announced the raids in a single-page press release
that gave the number of targets but provided little other
information about them or the nature of what the authorities sought.
People close to the Treasury investigation said, however, that among
the main targets was a commercial building at 555 Grove
Street in Herndon, Va., where the SAAR Foundation, a Saudi-financed
charity that is now defunct, had an office until recently.
No representative of the foundation could be located for comment.
The Grove Street building, about 20 miles from Washington, also
houses offices of several other Islamic charities and individual
Muslims who, officials said, are being investigated for the
possibility of money-laundering activities.
That charity has a parent, the Muslim World League, that officials
said was also searched. Corporate records show that the Muslim
World League, which is financed in part by the Saudi government, is
based at the same address as the relief organization, in
Falls Church, but that it has used the Herndon building as a mailing
address.
Last October, the Treasury Department listed another Islamic charity
financed by the Muslim World League, the Rabita Trust, as
having connections to Al Qaeda.
Search warrants were also served today, officials said, on the
International Institute for Islamic Thought, which is at 500 Grove
Street, across the street from the SAAR Foundation. Officials said
the government had been investigating the institute for at
least three years.
An employee there, Tarik Hamdi, whose home was also raided today,
was mentionedin the New York trial resulting from the
bombing of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in
1998.
A battery for a satellite phone was carried to Afghanistan by Mr.
Hamdi that year; this phone, a prosecutor at the trial said, "is the
phone that bin Laden and others will use to carry out their war
against the United States."
Neither Mr. Hamdi nor anyone else connected with the institute could
be reached for comment today; a call placed to the lawyer for
the organization late in the day was not returned. But in the past,
officials of the institute have denied that any of its money
supports terrorist activities.
Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Customs Service, one of the agencies
involved in the raids, declined to comment on them. So did
Frank Shults, a spokesman for the office of the United States
attorney for Northern Virginia. The Treasury Department's
press release said no further information about the search warrants
could be disclosed.
But officials and others familiar with the inquiry said the
government was collecting bank records and other financial information
about several groups, including the SAAR Foundation, which, though
officially dissolved in 2000, until recently maintained an
office at the 555 Grove Street address.
Officials said SAAR had been financed in large part by Suleiman
Abdel
Aziz al-Rajhi, a Saudi banker and financier who is said to
be close to the Saudi ruling family. Mr. Rajhi, among other things,
is said to have an indirect financial interest in Piedmont Poultry,
in Gainesville, Ga., which federal agents also raided today.
The Treasury Department said the raids had involved more than 150
agents and officers of the Customs Service, the Internal
Revenue Service and several other Treasury agencies. Local police
departments in Virginia assisted.
The Treasury Department statement said the offices and residences
that were targets of the raids had been searched, and material
from them seized, without incident. It said federal investigators
had
begun processing the resulting evidence.
The statement also noted that no one was arrested during the raids
and that affidavits filed in support of the seizures were under
court seal.
Steven Emerson, a terrorism expert, focused on 555 Grove Street in
his new book, "American Jihad: Terrorists Among Us." In the
book, Mr. Emerson listed several charities at that address,
including
the SAAR Foundation and Safa Trust, which was also raided today, as
organizations that had financed groups and individuals connected to
terrorism.
In an interview, Mr. Emerson said he believed that the raids were
aimed at helping the government collect information about how
money that finances terrorism is laundered through Islamic charities
in the United States. Such cases are very difficult to prove and
prosecute, he said.
Officials confirmed today that the government was seeking
information
about possible money-laundering not just for Al Qaeda, but also for
what the State Department describes as other terrorist groups.
These include the Palestinian military group Hamas, which claims
responsibility for the scores of suicide bombings in Israel, and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is also suspected of having raised
money for its activities through humanitarian groups operating in the
United States.
In 1996, Congress passed a law making it a crime to raise money for
terrorist groups, even if the money is not directly used to support
terrorism.
--------
N.Va. Sites Raided in Probe of Terrorism
Federal Agencies Seek Information on Funds
By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 21, 2002; Page B01=20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/art= icles/A59144-2002Mar20.html
Federal agents yesterday raided 14 sites across Northern Virginia,
many with links to the Middle East, seizing boxes of documents
in an ongoing investigation of the funding of terrorist groups.
No arrests were made, and none of the businesses was closed down.
Government sources said the investigation is looking at charities
and
other organizations that may have contributed money to international
groups that sponsor terrorist activities.
Federal officials said the search warrants in Virginia and one in
Georgia were issued as part of Operation Green Quest, being
conducted by a counterterrorism financial task force created by the
Treasury Department in October. Affidavits giving the reasons
for the searches were sealed and were not provided to those who were
searched.
Agents from the U.S. Customs Service, which heads Operation Green
Quest, and officers from nine other federal agencies and from police
departments swooped into locations in Herndon, Falls Church and
Leesburg and other sites in Fairfax County about 10:30 a.m. Federal
and local officials would not disclose exact locations for any of the
searches.
But Customs agents were busy loading up boxes throughout the
afternoon at two offices in Herndon: at the International Institute
for Islamic Thought and at MarJac Investments, both on Grove Street.
Shortly before 4 p.m., the investigators drove a large U-Haul truck
into a parking lot near both.
Ahmed Totonji, a vice president at the institute, said he was
surprised by the federal interest in his firm, a nonprofit Islamic
think tank that has been in Herndon since 1981. He said no one had
told him why it was being searched.
"We have no knowledge of this kind of thing going on," Totonji said,
"and we will cooperate 100 percent."
The institute has branches in 12 countries in addition to its
Herndon headquarters and describes itself as "an intellectual forum
working from an Islamic perspective to promote and support research
projects, organize intellectual and cultural meetings and publish
scholarly works."
But the institute also has been linked to controversial groups in
the
Middle East. It has made large financial contributions to the
World Islamic Studies Enterprise in Tampa. In November, the Justice
Department called the Tampa group a "front organization that raised
funds for militant Islamic-Palestinian groups such as the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas. The PIJ, designated by the Secretary
of
State as a terrorist organization, has claimed responsibility for
several acts of terrorism."
Until the mid-1990s, the World Islamic Studies Enterprise was an
academic institute affiliated with the University of South Florida.
Federal agents searched its office in 1995 and eventually froze its
assets.
Tax records show that the Herndon institute made contributions to
the
group until at least 1994.
Steven Emerson, a journalist and author of the best-selling
"American
Jihad," said yesterday's raids were part of a money-laundering
investigation launched by the federal government since the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks.
"It is part of the ongoing problem of nonprofit humanitarian
groups commingling their funds with support for terrorist groups," he
said.
Federal agents yesterday also raided the Graduate School of Islamic
and Social Sciences on Miller Drive in Leesburg. Taha Al-alwani,
president of the school, said authorities arrived at 10:30 a.m.,
confined employees to the lobby and began searching computers and
financial records. They said little except that they were there to
examine the school's finances.
Each employee was interviewed separately about his job, and when
staff members asked to use the restroom, they were escorted by
armed agents. The school, which opened in 1996, was the first in the
country approved by the Pentagon to train Muslim chaplains.
Nine of the military's 13 Muslim chaplains have studied there.
"I'm very upset, because after all our loyalty and service to our
country, here we see ourselves in this position," Al-alwani said.
Agents also seized documents at MarJac Investments Inc., in Herndon,
a consulting firm that has offices in Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, Canada
and Chile.
Operation Green Quest was created to identify and shut down the
sources of terrorist funding by using the Treasury Department to
freeze accounts, seize assets and prosecute those assisting
terrorists.
Staff writers Maria Glod, Rosalind S. Helderman, John Mintz and
Valerie Strauss contributed to this report.
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When the time of Khalid RadhiAllahu `anhu came to depart from the
world, he said, "I reached every possible place for Shahadah, but
it was written in my fate that I should die on my bed. In my opinion
there is no deed more dearer than my waiting with my horse and
shield in the darkness of night, the sky to be glittering due to the
rain, waiting for the onset of dawn, so that I can attack the enemy."
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