Earlier this month, as the New York-based insurance giant benefited from $153 billion in tax-supported bailout funds, it launched a business unit offering Shariah-compliant insurance products in the U.S.
For the first time, homeowners' insurance policies "compliant with key Islamic finance tenets" will be marketed to Muslims in America.
"We are pleased to offer socially responsible solutions to this segment of the domestic market," the near-bankrupt AIG announced in a press release, explaining that the Islamic market represents "an important and emerging growth opportunity for AIG."
But there's little that is "socially responsible" about Shariah law, which regulates the "takaful" insurance AIG is selling, along with other Islamic finance.
Shariah law authorizes horrific human-rights abuses, including the kind of violence and oppression against women, homosexuals, apostates and non-Muslims seen in Saudi Arabia and earlier under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
To fully comply with Shariah code, AIG has hired a "Shariah Supervisory Board" composed of "Shariah scholars." Who are these so-called scholars?
One, according to its press release, is Muhammad Imran Usmani, who happens to be the son of Sheik Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, who supports violent jihad against Westerners. The elder Usmani is so radical that Dow Jones & Co. recently removed him from the board of its Islamic market index.
At a minimum, AIG has to do better due diligence if it's going to use taxpayer money for such a controversial enterprise. But what's the responsibility of the U.S. government here?
The Thomas More Law Center, a public-interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich., argues the U.S. is promoting a religious legal code at odds with democratic values and capitalism. And that makes the bailout unconstitutional. So it's suing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the Federal Reserve to stop all bailout funds from going to AIG.
According to the suit, use of taxpayer funds to acquire ownership of a business that intentionally promotes, endorses, supports and funds Shariah-based Islamic religious practices violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
"The U.S. government, through its ownership of AIG, is not only violating the Constitution," the suits claims, "but also promoting and financing the destruction of America using American tax dollars."
While that sounds over-the-top, a sizeable share of the profit and any interest earned by AIG's Islamic subsidiary must be "purified" by investing in Islamic charities. Such transfers will be controlled by Usmani and other Shariah advisers.
Since 9/11, dozens of major Muslim charities around the world, including several based in the U.S., have been tied to terrorism and shut down. So AIG — along with American taxpayers — could unwittingly finance terrorism against the U.S. and its allies.
The potential for terror money laundering deeply concerns two Republican leaders on the Hill, who on the heels of the Thomas More lawsuit fired off a letter to AIG CEO Ed Liddy warning him that the FBI could come knocking.
"We hope you can verify what hands your money passes through, because we would hate to see the FBI visit you one day, look into your books and tell you that money from AIG found its way into terrorist hands," wrote Reps. Frank Wolf, congressional Human Rights Caucus co-chairman, and Sue Myrick, co-chairwoman of the congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus.
What's odd is that the Treasury Department is the agency charged with cracking down on terror financing, yet it's encouraging firms like AIG to go into Islamic finance. In fact, Treasury co-sponsored a seminar in November titled "Islamic Financing 101" to promote Shariah financing to corporate America.
The seminar was jointly sponsored by Harvard University, which is heavily supported by Saudi petrodollars.
So it's not just AIG that's actively helping Shariah gain a foothold in America. It's also Washington.
Financial crisis or not, it's hardly in the economic interest of taxpayers or the U.S. to own part of a business that supports a Stone Age legal code championed by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
AIG should divest itself from Shariah business practices if it wants to keep its public bailout money.
