Florida: Muslim Charity Helping Hand for Relief & Development’s Terrorist Ties

SARASOTA, FL. – The Muslim Charity Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD) has a YouTube video on the Islamic Circle of North America Central Florida channel. The video is titled HHRD Orphan Aid Event In Sarasota FL Masjid:

The HHRD website lists the Islamic Circle of North America as one of its “partners.” Other Florida based partners include: The Islamic Society of Sarasota & Bradenton, Inc., FL, and the School of Islamic Studies of Broward, Inc. FL,

The Investigative Project on Terrorism reports:

The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is preaching a global Caliphate and Islamic Shari’a law over America to its members, according to the 2010 ICNA Member’s Hand Book. This is a very different message than the group’s public outreach efforts, and contradicts claims that the organization is a tolerant, mainstream Islamic group.

As the hand book spells out, the organization’s ultimate goal is “the Establishment of Islam” as the sole basis of global society and governance. It also encourages members to deceive people in its proselytizing campaign to help fulfill this goal. This aim is one that ICNA has been actively pursuing as the group has set its sights on America’s constitutional separation of religion and state.

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As the hand book explains, ICNA doesn’t just believe that religion is a private affair. “Establishment of the Religion” extends beyond the individual and family and into the society, state, and world. “These words [Establishment of the Religion] include not only practicing the religion in individual and collective life and propagating its true teaching to others, but also striving to make this Deen [religion] a way of life for all,” the hand book reads.

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In a September 2013 article titled Helping Hand honored despite close ties to a Hamas-funding Pakistani charity, Money Jihad reports:

Charity Navigator, a leading evaluator of nonprofit groups in the U.S., has published 15 different “top 10” lists to help donors assess charities.  Among those lists is a list of 10 charities with low overhead costs that rely on private donations.  Helping Hand for Relief and Development, a Michigan-based Islamic charity, ranks seventh on that list.

Charity Navigator does not appear to have factored in Helping Hand’s ongoing cooperation (see here and here) with the Al-Khidmat Foundation, a Pakistani charity which gave a 6 million rupee check to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in 2006.

The Pakistani tie-in is even more alarming considering that the auditing firm that prepared Helping Hand’s financial statement for 2011, the most recent year available, divulged that “We did not audit the financial statements of the Organization’s operations in Pakistan which reflect total assets and revenues constituting 55 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of the related consolidated totals.”

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The Muslim advocacy group ICNA has also congratulated Helping Hand for the rating in a press release.  But the ICNA statement should be taken with a grain of salt because 1) ICNA is a partner organization with Helping Hand, and 2) ICNA has received a loan from Helping Hand with favorable financing terms.  ICNA’s indebtedness to Helping Hand was not disclosed in the press release.

Read more.

As Floridians across the state attend memorial services honoring the fallen on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attack, perhaps it is best to understand that Islam and its teachings are alive and well in the Sunshine State.

The same ideology that led Mohammed Atta to fly a plane into the World Trade Center is the same ideology that led Omar Mateen, a Muslim who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, to slaughter 49 at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando, Florida.

Nothing has changed.

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