to orange yonason: islamistic charities are a real problem
Reader comment on item: Further on Israel's Winning Its War
in response to reader comment: Understanding the Moslem world

Submitted by Farid H. (Germany), Apr 12, 2006 at 23:21

I agree. Whenever islamistic political parties are trying to gather popular support in muslim countries, they set up charities as a vehicle to carry their ideology to disenfranchised people. Such charities are often funded by foreign money, esp. from wealthy private donors living in rich oil countries. This is a so widespread phenomenon, that people hardly take notice anymore. Yet it's important to shed MUCH more light on this, because that's one of the most destabilizing forces in the islamic world since decades. Whereever islamistic parties pop up and gather momentum, you can bet there's one of those "charities" involved. It's actually a blatant push towards radicalism, funded with a lot of petro dollars.

But what can we DO against this? A two pronged approach is being more or less successufully tried in some islamic countries, consisting of:

1. Helping disenfranchised people build up a sustainable life on their own, e.g. through micro credits (as the US discreetly yet effectively does, e.g. in oil-less countries like Jordan or Morocco); and through a at least minimal kind of welfare system that would catch the worst; so that people won't have to turn to those islamistic charities for their mere survival or medical care.

2. Tightening the control on international money transactions (follow the money trail), and trying to catch the petro dollars flow towards those charities; though it's politically difficult to outlaw this outright. Perhaps the international community could help here too by setting up a system similar to that used in isolating (drugs) money launderers.

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