Reports link terrorist, student organizations

By Rachel Makabi
Daily Bruin Reporter

Various national media recently reported that Muslim student
groups have financially supported organizations that the U.S
Department of the Treasury has listed as being linked to terrorist
groups.

Many Muslim groups think they are being viewed unfairly because
of their history of donations to three of the organizations on the
list. The national chapter of the Muslim Students Association
““ which is not affiliated with the MSA at UCLA ““ claims
the association stems from false allegations that members had
raised money for organizations such as the Holy Land Foundation for
Relief and Development, one of the largest Islamic charities, whose
assets the government recently froze.

Bilal Khan, the president of MSA at UCLA and a third-year
computer science student, said he does not think his organization
has ever done any formal fundraising for the charities.

“I think the MSA record speaks for itself,” Khan
said. “We work primarily in the community in medical clinics
and tutoring high school students and people in prison. We have
nothing to hide and hopefully people will look more critically at
these articles and realize that no real facts are being pulled out
of any of them.”

Another student group, Al-Talib, the Muslim newsmagazine at
UCLA, ran ads for three of the organizations in their November
edition before the department linked them to terrorist groups.

The Department of the Treasury listed the HLFRD on Dec. 4 for
allegedly being linked to terrorist groups.

The department later froze the assets of the Benevolence
International Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation on Dec.
14 for alleged links to terrorist groups as well.

The three, full-page color ads in the November edition of
Al-Talib depict poor children and solicit donations for food,
shelter and medical supplies. The ads contain no political
statements or references to terrorist groups.

If the listed organizations were still able to advertise, the
magazine would consider reprinting the ads as long as the groups
were not proven guilty, Al-Talib editor Mostafa Mahboob said.

“The conclusion that people are coming up with is that
just because Al-Talib ran this ad, we are supporting Hamas,”
said Mahboob, a fourth-year history student. “Of course no
one wants to donate to any cause that would go against human
beings.”

A government freeze on an organization prevents it from using
any of its funds or receiving donations from others, said
Department of the Treasury spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos.

“There are several innocent people whose money was being
used to fund terrorism unknown to them,” she said.
“That is another reason why we blocked these
groups.”

There must be “credible evidence” connecting
organizations that have their assets frozen to terrorism, Scolinos
added.

In a Dec. 4 press release, the Department of the Treasury
financially linked the HLFRD to the Hamas organization.

The State Department’s Web site classifies Hamas as a
foreign terrorist organization which uses “both political and
violent means, including terrorism, to pursue the goal of
establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of
Israel.”

In a Dec. 4 statement posted on its Web site, the HLFRD
“denies allegations that it provides any financial support to
terrorist groups or individuals.”

Though MSA National issued a joint statement with nine other
Muslim organizations asking President Bush to reconsider the freeze
on the HLFRD, its president, Altaf Husain, said MSA National is not
currently financially supporting the HLFRD.

“We are not defying the government at all, and we have no
intention to do so,” Husain said.

Khan said the government has unfairly targeted many Muslim
groups on the list.

“Nothing has been proven in a court of law yet,”
Kahn said. “It is politically driven because all these
organizations are in the Middle East.”