The Liberal government has awarded the Mississauga-based organization with $25,787 despite knowing the group’s past affiliations.
The Islamic Society of North America-Canada (ISNA-Canada) has been approved to receive the Canada Summer Jobs grant despite its charity status being suspended for one year by the Canada Revenue Agency over concerns of financing terrorism.
The Liberal government has awarded the Mississauga-based organization with $25,787 despite knowing the group’s past affiliations.
“ISNA-Canada abhors and rejects terrorism in all its forms, and categorically denies any terrorist links. We remain politically impartial and are not linked to any political or extremist group,” says the organization about the alleged affiliations.
However, in 2018 the charity was suspended by the CRA for one-year and fined $550,000 for allegedly transferring a large sum of money to an area dominated by a militant Pakistani group engaged in fighting India.
According to audit documents, ISNA-Canada gifted $90,000 to the Relief Organization for Kashmiri Muslims (ROKM) and $46,000 to the Kashmiri Relief Fund of Canada. Both groups have known links to the Pakistani political party Jamaat-e-Islami and its armed wing the Hizbul Mujahideen, who are listed as a terror group in both the United States and Europe.
“Canada’s public policy recognizes that the tax advantages of charitable registration should not be extended to organizations whose resources may have been made available, knowingly or unknowingly, to a terrorist entity,” wrote the CRA about its decision to suspend ISNA-Canada’s charity status.
Under the one year suspension the group is no longer able to issue tax receipts for any donations and had to undergo monitoring for it activities.
ISNA-Canada is currently only one of two charities with a suspended status.
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