Up In Alms Jury Deliberating On Holy Land Foundation Trial — Verdict Could Change Charity Standards

DALLAS, Texas A guilty verdict in a federal trial ending this week in Dallas may scare humanitarian aid organizations away from helping people in need in the most war-torn areas of the world, like the Middle East.

This potential flight hinges upon the question: should the U.S. government stop the flow of charity if an employee or volunteer of an aid organization has links to a designated terrorist group at any stage of aid delivery?

A 12-person jury is currently deliberating on the issue along with the fate of five defendants who worked for the Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), which was the largest Muslim charity in the country at one time.

The trial was expected to take at least three months in U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish’s court. But the jury’s decision could come as early as this week after eight weeks of testimony.

The United States government, though, seemed to take its sweet time in bringing HLF to court in the first place. The FBI started secretly monitoring its leaders’ activities in 1993. Then, three months after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush closed the non-partisan, non-profit organization by executive order. A 42-count indictment against HLF finally came down in July 2004.

HLF is in essence accused of indirectly funding a designated terrorist organization via faith-based yet non-partisan grassroots committees in the occupied territories of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza). While the U.S. government dropped allegations that HLF’s resources went to purchase weapons, federal prosecutors argue that HLF’s alms were intentionally redirected to support the families of terrorists.

The defense contended, however, that such favoritism runs counter to the nature and structure of charity distribution in the Muslim world. Zakat (the Arabic word for charity) is one of the five holy sacraments of the Islamic faith in part because the religion’s founder, the Prophet Muhammad, was himself an orphan. Muslims place such a high standard on charity that they perform it without prejudice and pretension.

Charity distribution for Muslims, hence, comes in the form of independent “zakat committees.” The idea behind them is that they must operate in a non-partisan fashion, like impartial juries, to distribute aid; otherwise, they would lose credibility among people by taking sides with the latest political wind, according to the defense.

Through the course of its 12-year existence, HLF collected over $57 million for such people in need as those living in Turkey after a string of earthquakes, Bosnia/Serbia during their war, and Oklahoma City, Okla. after the bombing of a federal building.

The defense in its closing arguments said that HLF’s heads, CEO Shukri Abu Baker and president Ghassan Elashi, did everything in their power to keep their non-profit compliant under U.S. law. John Bryant, a former U.S. congressman who HLF hired as a lawyer, however, testified that even he was refused a “white list” of zakat committees from the federal government. HLF has said that the U.S. government froze $5 million of its assets when it closed its doors in 2001.