Until 2019, the German foreign office supported an aid organization with close ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood without knowing how the funds were actually being used.
This information appears in a newly released confidential audit by Germany’s Federal Court of Auditors, which the Institute for Secular Law (Institut für Weltanschauungsrecht or IFW) has been trying to obtain for five years.
Until now, unsuccessfully.
The audit concerns state funding for the organization Islamic Relief, purported to have ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The now-public documents reveal, according to ifw advisory board member Seyran Ateş, “a shocking naivety on the part of the Foreign Office.”
Islamic Relief Germany (IRD) had long been regarded in Germany as a respected Muslim charity organization. Several consecutive German governments, including former chancellor Angela Merkel’s second, third, and fourth cabinets, provided IRD with millions of euros in funding.
IRD was a member of the German aid alliance Aktion Deutschland Hilft, and gained prominent supporters for its “Meals for Orphans” campaign, including former President Christian Wulff and his successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
However, in 2019, the Foreign Ministry stopped funding the organization, and, in 2020, IRD’s membership in Aktion Deutschland Hilft was suspended.
On April 15, 2019, the German government noted that both Islamic Relief Germany and its parent organization, Islamic Relief Worldwide, had “significant personnel connections to the Muslim Brotherhood or organizations close to it.”
The government also admitted that since 2014 it had known that “Islamic Relief Worldwide,” including its German branch IRD, was banned in Israel, regarded as “part of the financial system of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood movement,” and therefore classified as a “terrorist organization.”
It is worth noting that the IRW is also banned in the UAE, due to its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The German government refused to provide detailed information on how public funds given to Islamic Relief had been used, instead referring to an ongoing audit by the Federal Court of Auditors.