Muslims dismiss allegations against Islamic charity

BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. -- Janaan Hashim doesn't care what federal prosecutors say about Benevolence International Foundation. She doesn't believe their charges that the Islamic charity has ties to Osama bin Laden and terrorists who tried to get their hands on nuclear weapons.\n"I've worked with them," said Hashim, as she dropped off her two young daughters at an Islamic school in this Chicago suburb. "I know what they do is help to a lot of people, they get into countries and help people where other organizations don't have access to."\nHashim is not alone. Here, where Muslims remember angry protesters trying to march on their mosque after the Sept. 11 attacks, where they saw their own loyalty and patriotism questioned without proof, many people aren't about to believe the worst about a charity.\n"They (protesters) said the same thing about us," said Said Hasan, after he drove from his home in nearby Hickory Hills to drop his daughter off at the school where she teaches. "Some of us were (soldiers) in Korea and Vietnam."\nSo Hasan, whose faith calls on him to give to charity, is not about to abandon Muslim charities. "I am not going to stop giving," he said, declining to say to which charities he donates.\nNeither is Tavis Adibudeen. "There is in Islam the concept that whatever action we take we are rewarded for what we intended," said Adibudeen, a librarian at the school. "If we give with the best of intentions, God will reward us."\nStill, if there is concern about giving more money -- and there is -- it is not with the Palos Hills-based charity and executive director Enaan M. Arnaout. Both are charged with perjury for claiming in a civil lawsuit that they did nothing to provide assistance to terrorist groups, violence or military activity.\n"We are not worried about our organizations," said Sabri Samirah, president of the United Muslim American Association in Palos Hills. "They operate in the public and their books are open. We know how they collect the money and how they spend it."\nInstead, the concern of Samirah and others stems from the government's freezing of the assets of Benevolence and another Chicago-charity in December.\n"You wonder if your hard-earned money you give to help innocent people in Palestine will be seized again," said Fadwa Hammad of Bridgeview, before walking her daughter into the school.\n"What good is giving money if it's not going to get to who you want," agreed Hashim.\nThat fear has resulted in reports from various Muslim charities that donations have dramatically slowed, said Samirah.\n"I am waiting to see how things are going to come out," said Fawzi Ottman, an executive chef who lives in Hickory Hills, explaining why he has recently cut back on the amount of money he gives to charity.\nFor his part, Nasir Mulk, a Chicago cabbie who lives in Bridgeview, is now keeping his charitable donations close to home.\n"I give to my mosque," he said. "I feel safer about that because the mosque is going to buy things like tissue paper, (pay) the water bill."\nHashim, a DePaul University law student, expects the charges against Benevolence and what she sees as anti-Muslim information coming out of the Middle East will prompt Muslims to "reassess" where they give money.\nRather than give money directly to needy people in the Middle East, Hashim said she thinks more Muslims will give to politicians and political organizations in this country.\n"If we really want to change things over there we have to get American legislators to realize what's going on," she said.\n"We have to get them to see the people overseas through us"