Saudi Charities Report Donations Off Sharply This Ramadan Season

By Victor Comras

Saudi Charities have reported a significant decline in contributions this Ramadan season, particularly from overseas. The World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) reported that its charitable receipts had fallen by some 30 percent compared to pre 9/11. WAMY�s director, Saleh Al-Wohaibi told Arab journalists that the organization had experienced a particularly sharp decline in the United States. This is due, he said, to the �hostile treatment� it was receiving from American journalists. Dr. Al-Wohaibi also complained that WAMY officials were being harassed when visiting the United States. �That is why we do not want our people to go there,� he said. � Officials are held up at airports and interrogated. The situation both for WAMY and other charitable organizations is not as good as it once was.� Efforts are now underway, he said, to respond to this negative image with a well financed public relations campaign of their own. �We are conducting a public relations campaign through the US media,� he said. �With the help of some Saudi organizations, we have established Friends of Charity Association (FOCA), which is a lobbying group in Washington. It�s doing a good job in trying to reach out to government officials, congressmen and the media as part of our effort to explain our activities and remove misconceptions.�

FOCA�s membership, far from being broadly based, represents only a handful of Wahabi sponsored umbrella charities including the Muslim World League, International Islamic Relief Organisation, World Assembly of Muslim Youth, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, and Al Muntada, Makkah Al-Mukarrama Charity Foundation. These charities have all been linked to al Qaeda and Hamas terrorism financing concerns and one of them, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation was designated as an Al Qaeda terrorism financing organization by the U.S. Treasury Department and the UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee.

FOCA has been very active placing articles on the Internet and in Muslim community directed media outlets in defense of these charities. This included strident defense pieces on behalf of al Haramain and its other constituent charities. But, FOCA continues to lack credibility with mainstream media outlets or with Congress. Last summer Treasury Under Secretary Stuart Levey reiterated to the Senate Banking Committee his continuing concerns with he activities of the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), the World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), and the Muslim World League (MWL), all FOCA constituent charities. He referred, in particular to the continuing lack of Saudi government oversight over these charities� activities. Saudi Arabia had specifically excluded these charities from its own promised new Charities Oversight Commission. The first step toward rehabilitating any of these charities, in American eyes, has to be responsible management, transparency and effective monitoring and oversight. It is time for Saudi Arabia, and the umbrella Islamic charities it supports, to adopt the measures outlined by FATF in its Charity Oversight Best Practices Paper.

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