Arab media is reporting that the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has launched a worldwide media campaign. According to a report tin the Arab News:
That’s Why” is the name of a worldwide media campaign that the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has launched to raise public awareness about its economic and social development efforts around the world. Nine short videos are being aired via CNN, France 24 and Al-Jazeera networks, coinciding with the 35th annual meeting of the IDB in the Azeri capital of Baku last month. Each video focuses on an important social challenge and what it means to ordinary people, before describing — that’s why — the action that the IDB is taking by itself and jointly with other development financing institutions around the world. The campaign is supported online through its presence on social media such as YouTube, flickr, Linked-in, Facebook, Vimeo, etc. The content of the videos covers the bank’s overall vision of human dignity for all, along with its efforts in bringing electricity to rural populations, eradicating famine and hunger, providing health care, improving literacy, establishing infrastructure projects, fighting poverty, providing safe drinking water and strengthening capacity of government ministries and organizations through capacity building. This is the first time the bank is undertaking a communications campaign of this nature. The main objective is letting people know how the bank is inspired by its Vision 1440H (2020G) to improve the human condition, thus helping to bring meaningful change to people’s lives. One of the aims of this campaign is to promote a better understanding of the bank as a world-class organization that provides assistance with a wide range of economic and social development activities to communities in both member and non-member countries. The IDB works with 56 member countries and Muslim communities in more than 100 countries worl [From ‘That is why’ IDB is needed! – Arab News]
In an article on “financial jihad”, authors Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen provide some useful information about the role of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), known to have funded many global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas-related projects:
In 1969, the Saudis convened Arab and Muslim states to unify the “struggle for Islam,” and have ever since been the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s (OIC’s) major sponsor. The 56 OIC members include Iran, Sudan, and Syria. The Jidda-based, “pending the liberation of Jerusalem,” OIC’s charter mandates and coordinates “support [of]the struggle of the Palestinian people, . . . recovering their rights and liberating their occupied territories.” The OIC charter includes all the MB principles. Its first international undertaking in 1973 was to establish the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) “in accordance with the principles of the shariah,”as prescribed by the MB—and to launch the fast-growing petrodollar-based Islamic financing market. The IDB, more a development than commercial bank, was established largely “to promote Islamic banking worldwide.” “[A]n Islamic organization must serve God… and ultimately sustain …the growth and advancement of the Islamic way of life,” writes Nasser M. Suleiman in “Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking.” And the IDB has done just that. Between 1975 to 2005, the IDB approved over $50 billion in funding to Muslim countries, ostensibly to develop their economic and educational infrastructures, but effected little regional economic impact. Its educational efforts, however, paid huge yields—via the rapid and significant spread of radical Islam worldwide. Moreover, in 2001 alone, the IDB transferred $538 million23 raised publicly by Saudi and Gulf royal telethons to support the Palestinian intifada and families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IDB has also channeled UN funds to Hamas, as documented by bank records discovered in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet, the IDB received UN observer status in 2007. According to a 1991 U.S. Library of Congress report on Sudan, the IDB also supported Faisal Islamic Bank, established in 1977 under Sudan’s Faisal Islamic Bank Act by Saudi prince Muhammad ibn Faisal Al Saud and managed by local Muslim Brotherhood members and their party, the National Islamic Front. Soon other political groups and parties formed their own Islamic banks. Together, Sudanese Islamic banks then acquired 20 percent of the country’s deposits “providing the financial basis to turn Sudan into an Islamic state in 1983, and promoting the Islamic governmental policies to date.” Sudan Islamized its banking in 1989. However, Pakistan was the first country to officially Islamize its banking practices, in 1979.
Previous posts have discussed the role of the IDB in funding a project of a Ukrainian Brotherhood organization, in financing the projects related to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and sponsoring a philanthropic conference held by ana organizaton with Brotherhood ties. Another post noted that IDB representatives were in attendance at a Saudi charity seminar attended by Wael Julaidan, possibly the known founder and financier of Al Qaeda.
As discussed in an earlier post, in May of this year ISNA President Ingrid Mattson attended a meeting of the Islamic Development Bank to select members for the bank’s Women’s Advisory Panel. Also attending that meeting was Saleha Abedin, the the Vice Dean of institutional advancement at Dar El-Hekma College in Saudi Arabia who was also one of the founders of the women’s College. Ms. Abedin is also the mother of Huma Abedin, a Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton who, as reported in an earlier post, paid a visit to the college in February. As that post discussed, Dar El-Hekma is known to have been also founded by Yaseen Abdullah Kadi (aka Yassin Abdullah Kadi), designated as a terrorist by the U.S as well as by important Saudi bankers and members of the Bin Laden family. Saleha Abedin, along with her late husband Syed Z. Abedin, were also founders of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a London organization that is known to have been close at one time to the Saudi Muslim World League.