The Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) is a charity that funds legal work and programs to defend the rights of Muslims in US courtrooms, prisons, and communities. [1] They provide funding for cases that impact the civil rights of Muslims in America, issue grants for projects to increase the legal community's ability and defend Muslims, and conduct informational campaigns to spread awareness of issues and cases that impact Muslim communities. [1]
The MLFA believes that Muslims in America are subject to unjust prosecutions and unfair trials. They further maintain that excessive sentences, cruel prison conditions, and religious intimidation are acts committed against Muslim prisoners. The MLFA works under the premise that Islam came to establish justice between people; thus the MLFA believes that they have a religious obligation to support and promote justice. Working as a community and pooling collective resources, the MLFA believes that they can make a positive impact on the state of justice for Muslim Americans. [1]
MLFA works on cases that involve constitutional issues such as freedom of religion, speech, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, trial by jury, rights of the accused, illegal searches and seizures, due process, right to legal counsel, excessive bail, and cruel and unusual punishment. In addition, the MLFA will assist with individuals approached by federal law enforcement, particularly when people are approached due to the fact that they are Muslims. [2] However, cases that involve being justifiably fired from a job, domestic issues, denial of benefits, tenant disputes, and state cases are not generally funded by MLFA. [2]
The MLFA's flagship project is the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America, which is a nonprofit law firm directed by attorney Charles Swift. The center focuses on two primary missions: (1) "Challenging governmental security measures affecting Muslim communities which encroach upon the constitutional liberties guaranteed to all" and (2) "protecting the rights of Muslim individuals and organizations in the United States to exercise their constitutionally and statutorily protected right to worship." [3]
The MLFA has been involved in many controversial, high-profile terror finance cases, some of which and have received international attention.
In 2003, computer science teacher at the University of Florida, Sami Al-Arian, was arrested as part of a federal terrorism investigation and accused being a leader of the terrorist group Palestinian Jihad. [4] He was acquitted of most charges after pleading guilty, in 2005, to charges of conspiracy to provide, make, or receive funds, goods, or services for the benefit of a terrorist organization. [4] The MLFA used funding to challenge the denial of substantive and procedural due process rights to Dr. Sami. [5]
After his prison sentence, Al-Arian was expected to be deported. However, he was later charged with criminal contempt for refusing to testify in another terror-related case in 2008. After the case was dismissed Al-Arian was deported in 2015. [4]
After completing his sentence in 2011 for crimes of racketeering, misusing charity money for boots, uniforms and other equipment for Islamic fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya, the feds argued that Enaam Arnaout should be stripped of his citizenship and deported. [6] The case against Enaam Arnaout involves allegations that Arnaout lied about his past as a fundraiser for Osama bin Laden and other mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan when he applied to become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1993. [6] The MLFA is currently seeking the return of documents and items seized in raids by the government after malicious government prosecution. [5]
The Holy Land Foundation (HLF) was the largest Islamic charity in the U.S. In 2001 the U.S. government deemed it a terrorist organization, seized all of its assets, and shut it down. In 2004, 5 officers and employees (The Holy Land 5) were charged with providing material support to Hamas. On October 22, 2007, after a two-month jury deliberation, Judge A. Joe Fish declared a mistrial because the jury could not deliver unanimous verdicts and failed to convict on a single count brought against the defendants. A year later the government retried the case and made several adjustments including dropping charges against some of the defendants, calling new witnesses, and displaying exhibits seized from the Palestinian Authority. On November 24, 2008, the jury convicted five former HLF officials—Mufid Abdulqader, Shukri Abu-Baker, Ghassan Elashi, Mohamed El-Mezain, and Abdelrahman Odeh—of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. The trial against the Holy Land Foundation was the largest terror-funding trial in U.S. history.[ citation needed ]
MLFA is a founding member of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), an umbrella group of Islamic organizations in the United States. [7]
The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group. It is headquartered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., with regional offices nationwide. Through civil rights actions, media relations, civic engagement, and education, CAIR's stated purpose is to promote social, legal and political activism among Muslims in America.
Sami Amin Al-Arian is a Kuwaiti-born political activist of Palestinian origin who was a computer engineering professor at University of South Florida. During the Clinton administration and Bush administration, he was invited to the White House. He actively campaigned for the Bush presidential campaign in the United States presidential election in 2000.
The Minaret of Freedom Institute is an Islamic libertarian organization established in 1993 and based in Bethesda, Maryland. It is dedicated to educating both Muslims and non-Muslims. It was co-founded by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, its president, and Shahid N. Shah, its treasurer. Its early board of advisers included former Richard Nixon advisor Robert D. Crane, a convert to Islam, and Charles Butterworth, a University of Maryland Islamic scholar. Its current board of directors and board of advisers include religious, academic and business leaders.
The Benevolence International Foundation, was a purported nonprofit charitable trust based in Saudi Arabia. It was determined to be a front for terrorist group Al-Qaeda and was banned by the United Nations Security Council Committee 1267 and the US Department of the Treasury in November 2002. The BIF's chief executive officer Enaam Arnaout began a ten-year sentence in 2003 after pleading guilty for racketeering in a U.S. federal court.
The American Muslim Council (AMC) is an Islamic organization and registered charity in the United States. Its headquarters is located in Chicago, Illinois.
Steven Emerson is an American investigative journalist, author, and pundit on national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism. He is the founder and director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, and received a George Polk Award for the 1994 documentary Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) states that it is "the largest Arab American grassroots civil rights organization in the United States." According to its webpage, it is open to people of all backgrounds, faiths and ethnicities and has a national network of chapters and members in all 50 states. It claims that three million Americans trace their roots to an Arab country.
Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America is a documentary by Steven Emerson. It first aired in the United States in 1994 on PBS. The documentary has won numerous awards for journalism, including the George Polk Award for best television documentary.
Enaam M. Arnaout is a Syrian American who pleaded guilty to using charitable donations to support fighters in Bosnia without informing the donors of this, during his tenure as a director of the charity Benevolence International Foundation.
The Global Relief Foundation (GRF), also known as Foundation Secours Mondial (FSML), was an Islamic charity based in Bridgeview, Illinois, until it was raided and shut down on December 14, 2001, and listed among the "Designated Charities and Potential Fundraising Front Organizations for Foreign Terrorist Organizations" ("DCPFFOFTO") by the United States Treasury Department in 2002. According to the US Treasury, "The Global Relief Foundation (GRF) … and its officers and directors have connections to, and have provided support for and assistance to, Osama bin Laden (OBL), al Qaeda (aQ), and other known terrorist groups (OKTG)." It was one of the few organizations registered with the Taliban.
Louay M. Safi is a Syrian-American, a scholar of Islam and the Middle East, and an advocate of Arab and Muslim American rights. He published on such issues as social and political development, modernization, democracy, human rights, and Islam and Modernity. He is the author of 11 books and numerous papers, and speaker on questions of leadership, democracy, Islam, and the Middle East. He is also a spokesperson for the Syrian National Coalition, a league of Syrian opposition groups fighting Syrian President Assad, which was formed in November 2012 in Doha, Qatar.
Ghassan Elashi is a Palestinian-American businessman who was sentenced to prison in 2008 for his work with the Holy Land Foundation, a group that was designated by the United States as a terrorist organization in 2001. At the time, Elashi served as vice president of InfoCom Corporation, an internet company based in Richardson, Texas.
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim is a Kurdish co-founder of the Islamist terrorist network al-Qaeda. He was arrested on 16 September 1998 near Munich. On 20 December 1998, he was extradited to the United States, where he was charged with participating in the 1998 United States embassy bombings.
The "Golden Chain" is a list of names that was seized in March 2002 in a raid by Bosnian police of the premises of the Benevolence International Foundation in Sarajevo. The Golden Chain is a list of sponsors of Al-Qaeda.
Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, also known as Sami Al-Hussayen, is a teacher at a technical college in Riyadh. As a Ph.D. graduate student in computer science at the University of Idaho in the United States, he was arrested and charged in 2003 by the United States with running websites as a webmaster that were linked to organizations that support terrorism. Al-Hussayen is one of the few people at the time to have been charged under a provision that has been described as "overly broad and vague." He was also charged with immigration violations.
The Holy Land Foundation, originally known as Occupied Land Fund, was the largest Islamic charity in the United States. Headquartered in Richardson, Texas, and run by Palestinian-Americans. The organization's mission was to "find and implement practical solutions for human suffering through humanitarian programs that impact the lives of the disadvantaged, disinherited, and displaced peoples suffering from man-made and natural disasters."
A communications management unit (CMU) is a type of self-contained group within a facility in the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons that severely restricts, manages and monitors all outside communication of inmates in the unit.
Sami Al-Arian indictments and trial began on February 20, 2003, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Sami Al-Arian had been arrested as the alleged leader of the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the U.S., and Secretary of the PIJ's central worldwide governing group. It also charged three others living in the U.S., as well as four outside the U.S. These included Al-Arian's long-time top USF/WISE associate Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who had been designated a Specially Designated Terrorist by the U.S. in 1995, and was accused of being Secretary General of the PIJ.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group founded by Steven Emerson in 1995. IPT has been called a prominent part of the "Islamophobia network" within the United States and a "leading source of anti-Muslim racism" and noted for its record of selective reporting and poor scholarship.
There is a notable population of American Muslims in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Dallas-Fort Worth is home to sixty-two Sunni mosques and five Shia mosques. According to Abdel Rahman Murphy, a Chicago-born, Irving-based Islamic teacher and Muslim community leader, other U.S.-based Muslims now refer to Dallas as the "Medina of America". Not only is Dallas Masjid Al Islam the oldest Muslim community in the DFW area, it established the first mosque in the city of Dallas and established the first Muslim school in the DFW area. As of 2021, many major Muslim organizations and charities have headquarters or operations in DFW, mostly located in Richardson, Texas such as: ICNA Dallas, Muslim American Society, Muslim Legal Fund of America, Helping Hands for Relief & Development, Sabrina Memorial Foundation, Islamic Relief USA, CAIR-Texas, and MA’RUF. There are also several institutions of research and higher education such as: Qalam Institute (Carrollton), ISRA Foundation (Plano), Bayyina Academy (Euless), and The Islamic Seminary of America (Richardson). -