Dutch Government Announces Large Grant For Muslim Brotherhood-Linked Charity

Dutch media is report­ing that the Dutch gov­ern­ment has recent­ly announced a “Pow­er of Voic­es” pro­gram which will allo­cate a total of €825 mil­lion to sup­port var­i­ous NGOs over a five-year peri­od, includ­ing Islam­ic Relief World­wide (IRW), a char­i­ty linked to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Accord­ing to a Wynia’s Week arti­cle:

Decem­ber 14, 2020 From Jan­u­ary 1, 2021, Min­is­ter Sigrid Kaag (D66) of devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion and trade will start a new round of large dis­tri­b­u­tion. The fun­da­men­tal­ist Mus­lim Broth­ers will also ben­e­fit this time, now that the Islam­ic Relief World­wide orga­ni­za­tion linked to the fun­da­men­tal­ists in many ways receives an amount from the Dutch sub­sidy pool. That Islam­ic fund was recent­ly involved in scan­dals in Ger­many and Eng­land. How­ev­er, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has so far sup­port­ed Min­is­ter Kaag’s pro­gram with a large majority.

(Trans­lat­ed with Google Translate)

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In June, a Dutch char­i­ty had report­ed that as part of its Pow­er of Voic­es pro­gram, the Dutch gov­ern­ment was coop­er­at­ing with an inter­faith alliance known as CMC — Mensen met een Missie (CMC Peo­ple With Mis­sion) and which includ­ed IRW. Accord­ing to a Tear­fund press release:

The Dutch Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, under the pol­i­cy frame­work Pow­er of Voic­es, has invit­ed the con­sor­tium Joint Ini­tia­tive for Strate­gic Reli­gious Action (JISRA) to co-cre­ate a strat­e­gy to advance free­dom of reli­gion and belief in sev­en coun­tries. JISRA is an inter­na­tion­al inter­faith con­sor­tium con­sist­ing of Mensen met een Missie, Faith to Action Net­work, Tear­fund (UK and Nether­lands), Islam­ic Relief World­wide and Search for Com­mon Ground. […]

The unique com­po­si­tion of the con­sor­tium, allows JISRA to work with­in faith com­mu­ni­ties as well as with high lev­el deci­sion makers.

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Accord­ing to a Dutch gov­ern­ment doc­u­ment, CMC — Mensen met een Missie will receive over €37 mil­lion in sub­si­dies between 2021–2025.

Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ing on branch­es of Islam­ic Relief and their ties to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has included:

• In Decem­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment had stopped fund­ing for Islam­ic Relief Ger­many as a result of its ties to the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

• In Novem­ber 2020, the GIOR iden­ti­fied the father of a Dutch par­lia­men­tary can­di­date as a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader and Islam­ic Relief CEO in that country.

• In Octo­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed that indi­vid­u­als rep­re­sent­ing Islam­ic Relief USA had par­tic­i­pat­ed at the annu­al con­ven­tion of the Islam­ic Soci­ety of North Amer­i­ca, a part of the US Mus­lim Brotherhood.

• In Octo­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed that Islam­ic Relief USA had spon­sored a vir­tu­al inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence attend­ed by dozens of orga­ni­za­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.

Islam­ic Relief World­wide is a UK-based inter­na­tion­al char­i­ty orga­ni­za­tion whose senior man­age­ment has includ­ed many lead­ers of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Estab­lished in 1984, IRW co-founders includ­ed Essam El-Had­dad, a senior Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mem­ber who lat­er became an advis­er to Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Mohammed Mor­si, and Hany El-Ban­na who lat­er found­ed the Mus­lim Char­i­ties Forum (MCF), which was stripped of UK pub­lic fund­ing over its ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Hamas. A for­mer long-time IRW trustee is Ibrahim El-Zay­at, a leader in both the Euro­pean and the Ger­man Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. El-Zay­at was also a trustee of the Ger­man branch of Islam­ic Relief.  Anoth­er for­mer IRW direc­tor is Ahmed Al-Rawi, the for­mer head of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (for­mer­ly FIOE) and for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Mus­lim Asso­ci­a­tion of Britain . Cur­rent IRW chair of trustee Lamia El-Amri is a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Forum of Mus­lim Women, part of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Muslims.