Thursday 18th April 2019
“Allegations surfacing in the German media claiming that Islamic Relief Worldwide has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are damaging, defamatory and false. Islamic Relief is a purely humanitarian organisation, which categorically has no ties to any political group. Our mandate is to respond impartially during times of humanitarian emergencies and empower communities out of poverty through long term projects.
In November 2014, we were surprised and shocked to hear that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had listed Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) as a “terrorist” organisation along with 80 other groups. This included several other civil society and community associations based in Europe and the USA. This happened despite IRW never having any presence in, or connections with, the UAE. On the list of organisations, IRW was described as ‘Islamic Relief Worldwide of the Global Muslim Brotherhood’.
We made it clear that IRW was not in any way connected to this group or organisation and, equally importantly, it was not connected to us. Categorising Islamic Relief Worldwide in this way was factually wrong.
We categorically denied what was an unfounded and hugely damaging allegation linking Islamic Relief to terrorism. Despite our attempts to engage the UAE authorities we have not been provided with any evidence to help us understand or substantiate this assertion. As our charitable registration in the UK requires, we have no political affiliations of any kind and no external organisation influences, let alone controls IRW. We continually demonstrate this to the satisfaction of the UK Charity Commission.
For several years we sought to challenge this misunderstanding in the UAE through the country’s proper legal processes.
However, we have found the legal procedures to be extremely challenging and, to date, have not had what we hoped and expected would be a fair and impartial judicial review of the designation of IRW. All our attempts to get an open hearing in front of a judge have been rejected on procedural technicalities.
The uncertainty this has created for IRW as a global charity has been extremely difficult and frustrating. As one of the world’s leading international faith-inspired aid agencies, which is trusted by western governments, major international donors and UN bodies to deliver aid on their behalf, we have prided ourselves on being open, responsive and extremely diligent in following complex legal and operating procedures around the world. We have stringent checks and balances, which go beyond minimum standards required of us by law to ensure that funds and aid are not diverted. Over the past decade we have been audited countless times and on each of those occasions we have been able to demonstrate that we have no links to any political or ideological groups.
Islamic Relief Worldwide is an independent and purely humanitarian aid organisation, working with communities in more than 40 countries to lift themselves out of poverty, regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.