[Note from the Hindu Vivek Kendra: Is it not realistic that the same things are happening in India?]
A significant portion of the fund that the Islamic organisations in Bangladesh receive every year from foreign Islamic bodies is being used for the cause of Jihad, said the police after having carried out an investigation.
The investigation, launched after the August 17 countrywide chain- bombing, reveals that money is apparently being used for the cause of Jihad in the name of various religious activities like construction of mosques, madrassahs, orphanage centres and training of imams.
The investigators, tasked with inspecting local non-government Islamic organisations and verifying their financial status, have already found proofs of the channelling of money to the Jihad fund.
`Money is taken away from the funds received to spend for the cause of Jihad,' an official of the Special Branch official told New Age.
There are no statistics of the funds arriving in Bangladesh but sources in the NGO Bureau estimated that the amount ranges from Tk 400 crore to Tk 500 crore per year.
Investigators say the money is used to enlarge and strengthen the Jamaatul Mujahideen, Al Hikma and Alhe Hadith Andolon, by recruiting youths and motivating and training them to fight for turning Bangladesh into an Islamic state.
The Kuwait-based Revival of Islamic Heritage Society and Al Haramine (banned throughout the world) are the organisations which provide funds for the cause of Islamic revolution, they added.
It was found that the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society in 2001 donated Tk 27 lakh to the Jihadi fund of Alhe Hadith Andolon's leader, Dr Asadullah al-Ghalib, in the name of Tawheed Trust.
Ghalib, Rajshahi University's Arabic teacher, got contracts of the Society to construct mosques, madrassahs and orphanage centres, through which he made a huge amount of money. Ghalib is being tried for engineering the bomb blasts at NGO offices and cultural functions in the northern part of the country.
To channel the money to Ghalib's fund, said police, the Society deceived seven madrassahs located in Bogra, Rajshahi, Bagerhat and Satkhira districts. The Society, as per recommendations of Tawheed Trust, started funding the madrassahs in 1993 but stopped doing so in July 2001
`The sudden stoppage of funds made the madrassahs incapable of managing food, housing and educational expenses for 269 orphans,' said a police officer who is investigating the Islamic NGOs and their bank accounts.
In January 2002 the principal of the Tawheed Trust, Abdus Samad, wrote a letter to managing director of the Society's Bangladesh branch, Abdul Aziz Khalaf Malullah, informing him that the Trust was not receiving any money. Later, in October, he wrote him another letter but received no response.
An official of the Society said that funding was stopped because of a request from Dr Ghalib who said he himself wanted to distribute money among the orphans. But Ghalib did not do so and used the money for cause of Jihad.
Ghalib's nephew Sadrul Alam, who was arrested in Chittagong last week, reportedly told the police that a huge sum of money was drawn from a bank in Chittagong through a cheque signed by Ghalib before the August 17 bomb blasts.
The police, after investigating the activities of the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, recently submitted a report to the home ministry, recommending immediate banning of the organisation.
Al Haramine, after beginning its activities among the Rohingyas of Cox's Bazar in 1992, spent some Tk 200 crore for the construction of 80 madrassahs and four orphanages in the country before being banned at the end of last year.
Some 14 foreigners had worked in the banned organisation. Seven persons, including its country director, Sudanese national Hasan Adam, were arrested in September 2002.
Police later extracted sensitive information from them on the activities of the organisation and its financing of the training camps of militants.
Some 575 registered Islamic NGOs are now active all over the country with foreign funds coming from Libya, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran and Egypt. Funds also come from countries like India, Pakistan, US and UK.
Building religious institutions like madrassahs, mosques and places for ablution, and training imams and muezzins and those who carry messages of Islam to the masses are the objectives of these organisations.
These organisations can't use the funds for any other purposes, either overtly or covertly. But some NGOs like Revival of Islamic Heritage Society have been using the money for recruiting youths and training them.
According to the investigators, there are 35 large Islamic NGOs, known as mother organisations, which usually give sub-contacts to the small NGOs or distribute funds among them.
The NGOs prepare their audit reports
every year, describing their work and the money they have used. NGO Bureau
sources said they were deceived by the NGOs who hid the covert expenditure
for Jihad by inflating expenses for building mosques and madrassahs.