Saudi Alms for Jihad

[Orange County Register] Mark Steyn - Last week, the Cambridge University Press agreed to recall all unsold copies of Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, by J. Millard Burr, a former USAID relief coordinator, and the scholar Robert O. Collins - and pulp them. In addition, it has asked hundreds of libraries around the world to remove the volume from their shelves. This highly unusual action was accompanied by a letter to Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, the personal banker to the Saudi royal family and head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, until he sold it to the Saudi government. The Mahfouz bank was wiring money to the principal Mahfouz charity, the Muwafaq (or "Blessed Relief") Foundation, which in turn transferred them to Osama bin Laden. In October 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department named Muwafaq as "an al-Qaeda front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi businessmen" and its chairman as a "specially designated global terrorist." As the Treasury concluded, "Saudi businessmen have been transferring millions of dollars to bin Laden through Blessed Relief." Indeed, this "charity" seems to have no other purpose than to fund jihad.

2007-08-06 01:00:00

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