The Senate Finance Committee has quietly ended a two-year probe of 25 Muslim-American organizations, announcing that nothing in their tax records suggested terrorist financing.
According to the Religion News Service, Muslim leaders welcomed the Nov. 18 decision, but expressed frustration that the organizations have not been cleared more publicly.
“We did not find anything alarming enough that required additional follow-up beyond what law-enforcement agencies are already doing,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee chairman, said in a statement. According to a spokeswoman at Grassley’s Senate office, the statement was initially sent only to The Washington Post, in response to a reporter’s inquiry on the matter.
A more public statement was not forthcoming because “the tax documents involved were strictly confidential,” said Jill Gerber, press secretary for Grassley and the finance committee, which reviewed donor lists, applications for tax-exempt status and other information released by the Internal Revenue Service.
The probe began with a January 2004 letter to the IRS, in which Grassley and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Max Baucus (D-Mont.), seemed to imply wrongdoing by the organizations under question. The letter stated that “many of the groups” about whom they were requesting information abused their tax-exempt status and charitable reputations to “hide and move their funds to other groups and individuals who threaten our national security.”
Among the now-cleared organizations is the Islamic Society of North America, the largest Muslim umbrella organization in the United States.
“We wish the committee would make a stronger statement that (the Islamic Society) and other organizations are legitimate,” said Louay Safi, director of the Islamic Society’s leadership development program.
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