Islamic charity

New York Times:

For more than a decade, Suleiman Anwar Bengharsa has served as a Muslim cleric in Maryland, working as a prison chaplain and as an imam at mosques in Annapolis and outside Baltimore. He gave a two-week course in 2011 on Islamic teachings on marriage at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, where President Obama made a much-publicized visit this year.

But in the last two years, Imam Bengharsa’s public pronouncements have taken a dark turn. [Look who came out of the taqiya closet.] On Facebook, he has openly endorsed the Islamic State, posted gruesome videos showing ISIS fighters beheading and burning alive their enemies and praised terrorist attacks overseas. The “Islamic Jurisprudence Center” website he set up last year has condemned American mosques as un-Islamic and declared that homosexual acts should be punished by death.

Islam. Its principles don't become "nice" and "civilized" by a change in geography. It is as evil in Syria as it is in the US.

An affidavit filed in federal court by the F.B.I. says that Imam Bengharsa, 59, supplied $1,300 in June 2015 to a Detroit man who used it to expand his arsenal of firearms and grenades.

So, finally this imam was arrested. Right?

Yet Imam Bengharsa has not been arrested or charged. It appears that the authorities do not have clear evidence that he has broken the law.

Predictable.

In his checkbook, next to the notation for the $1,300 check, Imam Bengharsa wrote “zakat,” or charity, the documents show.

Here's what I wrote about Islamic charity on Sep. 11, 2016:

Late 1990s: Many shops in Saudi Arabia had small plastic donation boxes. I asked my dad about their purpose. He told me that the money went to the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. Arabs were freely supporting al-Qaeda.

People in the West raise money for their schools, communities, and for the downtrodden. Muslim charity (zakat) often goes to Jihad. The FBI is ignorant, incompetent or incredibly malevolent. You decide.