Amazon facilitated charity donations to Islamic extremists

Amazon has come under fire in a piece from the
Times.
Mike
Segar/Reuters

• Amazon facilitated contributions to charities flagged
  as having links to Islamic
  extremism,
   The
  Times first reported.
• The donations were made through Amazon Smile, Amazon’s
  charity programme which lets online shoppers donate a small
  percentage of their purchase’s value to charity.
• Among Amazon’s listed charities were two backed by
  Haitham al-Haddad, an Islamic scholar described as a “hardcore
  Islamist” by thinktank Quilliam and identified by the UK
  government as an Islamist speaker.
• Amazon said in a statement that it relies on the UK’s
  charity regulator to determine which organisations are eligible
  to participate in Amazon Smile.

Amazon facilitated donations to UK charities with links to
Islamic extremism through its service Amazon Smile,
The Times reports.

The Amazon Smile scheme donates 0.5% of a shopper’s Amazon
purchases to their chosen charity. Amazon donates the money, and
the programme launched in the UK in November last year.

At least two of the charities listed by Amazon as eligible for
donations were backed by Haitham al-Haddad, a controversial
imam who has been classed as an Islamist preacher by the UK
government. The charities are the Muslim Research and Development
Foundation (MRDF), and Helping Households Under Great Stress
(HHUGS).

Al-Haddad is an Islamic scholar who advocates hardline orthodox
beliefs, such as homosexuality being a sin, that men should not
be questioned for beating their wives, and that the punishment
for adultery should be stoning. He has said that he is against
ISIS and other extremist groups.

While al-Haddad is now the former chairman of the MRDF, chief
executive of counter-extremism think-tank Quilliam Haras Rafiq
told Business Insider that he is still the spiritual head of the
organisation. He described al-Haddad as a “hardcore Islamist.”

The UK government’s counter-extremism commissioner Sara Khan told
The Times, “Haitham al-Haddad’s views are misogynistic, racist
and homophobic. They promote a supremacist ‘us versus them’ world
view that wrongly makes Muslims feel that they can’t be fully
British.”

Business Insider also spoke to Imtiaz Shams, chair of
Humanists UK’s Faith to Faithless group, which defends people who
have left their religion. Shams has met Haitham al-Haddad, and
described him as a “very, very slippery guy.”

“No charity should have someone like that,” he added. To Shams,
al-Haddad’s anti-gay and anti-apostate rhetoric means “he should
be treated like a neo-Nazi.”

The charities were first identified in a paper
published in February by the right-leaning thinktank the
Henry Jackson Society. Researcher Emma Webb, who specialises in
non-violent Islamic networks in the UK, told Business Insider:
“It became apparent to us quite quickly that a lot of these
groups had charitable organisations attached to them.”

In a statement sent to Business Insider, Amazon said that it was
investigating the allegations from The Times but that it takes
its cues from the UK’s charity regulator.

“We rely on the Charity Commission, the official charity
regulator in England and Wales, to determine which organisations
are eligible to participate. If a charity no longer has
charitable status because that organisation supports, encourages
or promotes intolerance or discrimination and has been removed
from the Commission’s register, we will remove them from the
service.

“The… organisations in question are approved by the Charity
Commission, however, due to the serious nature of these concerns,
we have referred these allegations to the Commission and will be
conducting a full review to ensure they do not violate our
policies,” an Amazon spokesman said. He also said that the
company has 6,000 charities listed on Amazon Smile.

It isn’t clear how much money Amazon may have funnelled to these
charities.

“In my view there has been a number of failures here,” said
Quilliam’s Rafiq. He said Amazon had a legitimate defence in
relying on the UK’s charity watchdog for guidance, but also that
the tech firm may need to look at how its platform could be
manipulated.

“Amazon is one of the last tech organisations to really look at
who they’re actually supporting,” he said. He attributed this to
the fact that social networks like Facebook and Twitter have had
to get to grips with extremist content on their platforms, while
Amazon is predominantly a shopping service.

Business Insider contacted the Charity Commission and the MRDF
for comment.