New York County Lists Influence, Islamist Groups for Earthquake Relief

Fol­low­ing the Feb­ru­ary earth­quakes, which claimed tens of thou­sands of lives in Turkey and Syr­ia, there have been many calls for dona­tions and human­i­tar­i­an aid. Accord­ing to a  CBS News report, Nas­sau Coun­ty of New York has shared a list of “vet­ted agen­cies for mon­e­tary dona­tions,” which includes var­i­ous Turk­ish influ­ence groups and groups tied to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB):

• The Turk­ish Amer­i­can Nation­al Steer­ing Committee
• Islam­ic Relief USA
• Diyanet Cen­ter of Amer­i­ca (US branch of Turkey’s Direc­torate of Reli­gious Affairs or Diyanet)
• Help­ing Hand for Relief and Development
• Mus­lim Aid USA
• Zakat Foun­da­tion of America

Many believe that Islamist groups such as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood or Hezbol­lah gain pop­u­lar sup­port by offer­ing social ser­vices through their vast net­work of char­i­ties, clin­ics, and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters. This has long been seen as a cru­cial aspect of Islamist out­reach and orga­ni­za­tion, help­ing to estab­lish their rep­u­ta­tion for hon­esty and effec­tive­ness and giv­ing them a polit­i­cal advan­tage while pro­mot­ing the Islamiza­tion of soci­ety. How­ev­er, there are some researchers that chal­lenge some of the com­mon­ly held assump­tions about the nature and impor­tance of these social services.