At a time when the Religious Right has been waging a furious Neocrusade against Islam within the United States, a curious claim has emerged about one Religious Right group. The Washington Post reports on a claim that the Fellowship Foundation — which, among other things, sponsors the National Prayer Day Breakfast — may have taken money from a suspected terror-supporting Islamic group (WebCite cached article):
A group of Ohio ministers has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the organization that sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast because it received money six years ago from an alleged Islamic terrorist organization trying to finance illicit lobbying. …
The foundation, an Arlington-based religious enterprise associated with a house at 133 C St. SE where several members of the House and Senate have rented rooms, acknowledged Wednesday that it had received two $25,000 checks, in May and June 2004, from the Missouri-based Islamic American Relief Agency.
The charity was included on a Senate Finance Committee list of terrorist financiers in January of that year.
The Fellowship Foundation, of course, claims it didn’t keep the money … but that’s something the IRS will have to verify. WaPo goes on to explain this payment:
The Islamic American Relief Agency was raided and shuttered by federal agents in October 2004, but in the months after its inclusion on the Senate committee list, it mounted a quiet lobbying effort to clear its name. …
Extensive government wiretaps and data collected in the raid led to multiple federal indictments of the relief agency’s officers. They culminated in a guilty plea four months ago by chief executive Mubarak Hamed in which he acknowledged sending a $25,000 check to the International Foundation in May 2004. [The group’s president Richard E.] Carver said that was one of the names for his group.
Hamed, in his plea, said the purpose was to pay for lobbying by former congressman Mark D. Siljander (R-Mich.), a prominent social conservative who promised to help the agency get off the Senate terrorist financing list. Siljander, in a July courtroom appearance, pleaded guilty to serving as the charity’s unregistered agent in meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and admitted lying to federal officers about his role.
Curious how no one has been reporting on this guilty plea by Siljander, a fundamentalist Christian. Hmm.
Of course, this same group (also known as “the Family”) running afoul of IRS regulations concerning non-profit organizations, is not really new, either (cached).
Photo credit: Politics Daily.