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US Cong launches probe into Islamic charities

AFP, Washington
A leading US congressional oversight panel has launched an investigation into 25 Islamic charities operating in the United States in order to learn more not only about their spending but also their sources of financing.
The Senate Finance Committee said Wednesday it had asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide all tax forms filed by these groups -- as well as any audit materials the US tax agency may have on them, drawing a strong protest from a leading Islamic organization.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the investigative net has been cast so wide that it seemed to target all American Muslims as terrorism suspects.
"Its indiscriminate scope smacks of a McCarthyite witch hunt and creates the impression that the presumption of innocence no longer applies to Muslims," the council said in a statement.
But in a joint letter sent to the IRS, Republican Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and ranking Democrat Max Baucus said Congress was interested in these groups because the US government had identified "the crucial role that charities and foundations play in terror financing."
The senators also made clear they wanted to know the charities' contributors as much as their beneficiaries. "While much attention has been paid to where their money ends up, the source of their funds is equally important," they said.
The list includes groups like the Holy Land and Global Relief Foundations whose assets have already been frozen by the US government because of their suspected terrorist connections.
The US government has already publicly designated 320 individuals and entities as terrorists or terrorist supporters and frozen more than 136.8 million dollars of suspected terror-related money around the world, according to the Treasury Department.
But the Senate roster also mentions the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella organization which is home to a variety of religious and cultural groups operating across the United States and Canada.
The spotlight will also be trained on the Islamic American Relief Agency, which, according to its own statements, is trying to set up an orphanage in Baghdad for more than 3,000 Iraqi children.
Congressional investigators will also sift through the papers of the Islamic Assembly of North America, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based group, that boasts running over 700 Islamic libraries in the United States, and the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, an outfit affiliated with al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.