Muslim Leaders In Australia Are In It For The Money

Inside the AFIC: Where does the revenue come from?


Amir Butler, co-convenor of the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network (AMCRAN), writes:

I was recently sent a copy of the now infamous Worrells report into the management of the Australian Federation of Islamic Council's (AFIC) financial affairs. Worrells are forensic accountants who were called in by the committee to investigate the financial and accounting practices of the organisation. You can download the report from here.

AFIC purport to be the "leaders" or "representatives" of the Australian Muslim community. Whilst they have been fairly successful in convincing government of this ridiculous assertion, it is obvious to anyone that has spent time working with the fractured and fragmented Muslim community of this country that this is simply not true. Few, if any, Muslims would consider these people to be their leaders and, despite any claims to the contrary, ordinary Muslims have absolutely no mechanism whatsoever for either being elected to the board of AFIC or influencing its decisions. Instead, AFIC remains protected from reform by a convoluted set of rules and policies which ensure only those people already part of the "system" can ever assume leadership of the organisation.

Anyway, the report contains a few things which will interest Australian Muslims.

Firstly, it will undoubtedly surprise the Australian Muslim community to learn that, according to the report, 13.5% of AFIC's revenue is derived from interest. Of course, Islam's prohibition of interest (what is known in Arabic as riba) is well known. If the report raises good questions about AFIC's financial management, then surely it also raises equally important questions about whether AFIC's operations are compliant with the religion they claim to represent. 13.5% is not an insignificant percentage: at least one out of every ten dollars that AFIC earns is derived from interest.

Secondly, it is interesting to note that 66% of AFIC's revenue is received from the Malek Fahd School in Sydney. This amounts to approximately $900,000. As the auditor rightly notes, Malek Fahd School itself owes $7.9 million in interest-based loans, and it is possible that the money being drawn by AFIC from the school might affect both the school's ability to maintain its infrastructure and its ability to repay this very substantial debt. In terms of value to the Muslim community, I think it is fair to say that this $900,000 would achieve far more good if it was spent on the education of Muslim children rather than being used to fund an organisation such as AFIC.


Comment: Most of the money coming into sunni muslim groups in Australia comes from Wahhabi Fascists in Saudi Arabia, who are the financiers of al Qaeda. Stop them.

Is anyone awake in Canberra?