Alms Still Funding Jihad

Saudi Arabia implemented a number of financial controls by 2004 in response to 9-11.

Many of these measures would be against the law in the US, but the measures (See below) show ways that Salafist Mosque donations were being funneled to al Qaeda and other islamist groups.

Cash collections in Mosques were being taken to Hawalas in Saudi Arabia. The money was being picked up in places like Yemen, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan Somalia, Sudan, Algeria. It was very simple to collect for one thing, and then pay for another in a Jihad Country. Many contributors may have know full well what the funds were collected for, with a wink and a nod.

It was even simpler to do this from Western Mosques. Though some Muslim Charities were put out of business since then, and it has become harder to create non-profits and transfer funds, it is not impossible. Suffice it to say that there are still loopholes.

Things to watch:

• cash gift card purchases
• Visa cards issued by jihad friendly banks, especially in South East Asia
• Planned captures of ships off the Somali coast
• Legal Hawalas
• Hawala house accounts in Banks in places like San Marino, Lichtenstein, the Bahamas etc.
• Multi-national Jihad-Friendly Muslim businesses in a variety of ways

There are a long list jihad-friendly multi-national Muslim NGOs who provide funding. While a volunteer travels for that Muslim NGO, they legally can use hawalas to transfer in large amounts of cash that they can use anyway they choose.

-Shimron Issachar

'Department of the Treasury official have listed various recent measures

taken by Saudi Arabia to put a stop to terrorist financing. Most of these measures

have been designed to improve oversight of charitable collections, and include:

• A law adopted in August 2003 making money laundering and terrorist financing criminal offenses.
• A ban on cash collections at mosques and on transfers abroad of charitable funds collected in Saudi Arabia, except with Foreign Ministry approval and subject to stringent reporting requirements.
• A requirement for charitable organizations to have single disbursement bank accounts and an approved official with signatory authority to facilitate tighter controls over such accounts.
• Closure of unlicensed money exchange houses and closer supervision of informal money transfer houses used to send funds abroad, known as hawalas.
• New rules governing the insurance sector and capital markets, and establishment of a financial intelligence unit (the SAFCU) to collect and share information on suspicious financial transactions.

• Vetting of religious clerics and supervision of money given to them by their congregations. The government suspended more than 1,000 clerics in 2003 and 900 clerics so far in 2004 supposedly “on the grounds of negligence.”
• Announcement in early December 2003 of a rewards program, ranging from $270,000 to $1.87 million, for information leading to the arrest of suspects or disruption of terrorist attacks.
• Announcement in late November 2004 that Saudi Arabia will participate in the newly established Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF).
• Membership in the regional body commits Saudi Arabia to implementing the internationally recognized anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing standards designed by FATF."

-Congressional Research Service Report, 2004