Mali: Islamic charity channels $3 million a year of Gulf oil money for mosques and Qur’an schools teaching Wahhabism
Ibrahim Kontao “studied theology in Saudi Arabia, heads Mali’s wealthiest Islamic charity, known as Al-Farouk, which channels $3 million a year from donors in Gulf Arab states and Turkey.” This money goes to open health clinics in remote areas, but also for mosques and Qur’anic schools. Kontao busily signs checks “as men and women line up outside his air-conditioned office in the Malian capital, Bamako, to ask him for donations and help with their children’s school fees.”
Critics say it and other groups are championing the stricter Wahhabi school of Islam that inspires al-Qaeda- and Islamic State-affiliated militants who claim attacks across West Africa.
All over the world, oil money is fueling the global jihad. That is common knowledge. And such efforts are not limited to the spread of Wahhabism in mosques. Islamic leaders buy the minds and hearts of needy families, and their children, too.
“They gain people’s trust by taking care of their needs,” said Brema Ely Dicko… head of the Social Anthropology Department at the University of Bamako. “Today you see women wearing niqabs, something that used to be very foreign to Mali.”
“Gulf Cash Fuels Fight for Muslim Hearts and Minds in Africa,” by Katarina Hoije, Bloomberg, November 27, 2018:
Ibrahim Kontao is busily signing checks as men and women line up outside his air-conditioned office in the Malian capital, Bamako, to ask him for donations and help with their children’s school fees.Kontao, who studied theology in Saudi Arabia, heads Mali’s wealthiest Islamic charity, known as Al-Farouk, which channels $3 million a year from donors in Gulf Arab states and Turkey to open mosques, Koranic schools and health clinics in rural areas starved of social services. Critics say it and other groups are championing the stricter Wahhabi school of Islam that inspires al-Qaeda- and Islamic State-affiliated militants who claim attacks across West Africa.“They gain people’s trust by taking care of their needs,” said Brema Ely Dicko, the 36-year-old head of the Social Anthropology Department at the University of Bamako. “Today you see women wearing niqabs, something that used to be very foreign to Mali.”Mali teetered on the brink of collapse when a loose alliance of ethnic Tuareg separatists and Islamist insurgents, bolstered by an influx of weapons from Libya, seized the north in the wake of a 2012 coup that left the army in tatters.Timbuktu Attacks
The militants shocked the international community with a series of attacks in Timbuktu on the centuries-old buildings with tombs of holy men, turning sites into piles of rubble because they were considered idolatrous by the insurgents. The International Criminal Court, in an unprecedented ruling in 2016, jailed the leader of the raids for nine years.Despite the deployment of a 15,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping mission and a French military force, jihadist attacks have spread to Mali’s center, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of troops and civilians…..
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