{"id":2235,"date":"2010-06-02T17:25:41","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T17:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch.php"},"modified":"2010-06-02T17:25:41","modified_gmt":"2010-06-02T17:25:41","slug":"muslims-push-white-house-on-ch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch","title":{"rendered":"Muslims Push White House on Charitable Giving Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) A Muslim legal advocacy group urged Muslims to flood the White House with phone calls on Friday (June 4) to complain about federal laws they say make it impossible for Muslims to contribute to charities without fear of being questioned or arrested.<br \/>\nThe campaign comes one year after President Obama acknowledged concerns about charitable giving in a historic speech in Cairo, and barely a week after a top Treasury Department official told Congress that federal laws had &#8220;chilled&#8221; Muslim charitable giving.<br \/>\nIslam requires Muslims to pay &#8220;zakat,&#8221; a tax of usually 2.5 percent on income and capital, to help the poor. After the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration gave the Treasury Department and the FBI broad emergency powers to monitor and investigate charities as possible fronts for terrorist organizations.<br \/>\nAt least six Islamic charities have either been shut down or prosecuted by the Treasury Department, while many Muslim donors have been questioned or arrested by law enforcement over their charitable contributions.<br \/>\nFarhana Khera, executive director of the San Francisco-based group Muslim Advocates, said the vague orders allow federal agents to profile Muslims. &#8220;You don&#8217;t see that kind of scrutiny with other faith communities,&#8221; Khera said.<br \/>\nThe group also complained that Muslims considering donations face a complicated process to verify the legitimacy of intended charities, including checking five different watch lists that identify charities with alleged terrorist connections.<br \/>\nDaniel Glaser, the Treasury Department&#8217;s assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, told a House subcommittee on May 26 that federal authorities recognize the tactics &#8220;have had the unfortunate and unintended consequence&#8221; of a &#8220;chilling effect&#8221; of Muslim charitable giving.<br \/>\nGlaser defended those tactics, however, as necessary to preventing terrorism financing.<br \/>\nThe lack of change is especially disappointing to Muslims who were buoyed by Obama&#8217;s Cairo speech on June 4, 2009. &#8220;In the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat,&#8221; Obama said at the time.<br \/>\n<em>&#8212; Omar Sacirbey<br \/>\nCopyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) A Muslim legal advocacy group urged Muslims to flood the White House with phone calls on Friday (June 4) to complain about federal laws they say make it impossible for Muslims to contribute to charities without fear of being questioned or arrested. The campaign comes one year after President Obama acknowledged concerns about charitable&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Muslims Push White House on Charitable Giving Rules<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Muslims Push White House on Charitable Giving Rules\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(RNS) A Muslim legal advocacy group urged Muslims to flood the White House with phone calls on Friday (June 4) to complain about federal laws they say make it impossible for Muslims to contribute to charities without fear of being questioned or arrested. The campaign comes one year after President Obama acknowledged concerns about charitable&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-02T17:25:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mconsoli\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Muslims Push White House on Charitable Giving Rules","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Muslims Push White House on Charitable Giving Rules","og_description":"(RNS) A Muslim legal advocacy group urged Muslims to flood the White House with phone calls on Friday (June 4) to complain about federal laws they say make it impossible for Muslims to contribute to charities without fear of being questioned or arrested. The campaign comes one year after President Obama acknowledged concerns about charitable&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2010-06-02T17:25:41+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch","name":"Muslims Push White House on Charitable Giving Rules","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-06-02T17:25:41+00:00","dateModified":"2010-06-02T17:25:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/muslims-push-white-house-on-ch#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Muslims Push White House on Charitable Giving Rules"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6","name":"mconsoli","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","caption":"mconsoli"},"description":"\"Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d -Benjamin Disraeli","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/mconsoli"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}