Muslim Group Must Reveal Who’s Been Funding it

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One thing Muslim groups in America really don’t like to do is reveal the sources of their funding. After all, who wants people to know that supporters, or even members, of designated terror groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are also supporting you? One such group is American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), that has been trying to prevent government investigators from finding out who has been funding it. But now the AMP has come to the end of its fight to keep its funding sources hidden; a circuit court judge has become its nemesis, demanding that the AMP provide that financial information it has been fighting to keep hidden.

There is something else aside from worry over reputational damage that explains AMP’s desperate fight to keep its funders secret. The AMP is essentially a fiction, a renaming of a pre-existing group called Islamic Association For Palestine (IAP); the IAP has a judgement against it for $156 million. If it turns out that AMP not only employs many of those who were previously working for IAP, but also receives funding from the same sources as IAP, that will make the government’s case — that AMP is simply IAP under a new name — stronger still. More on this decision, which has caused panic at AMP headquarters, can be found here: “US Judge Orders Anti-Israel Nonprofit American Muslims for Palestine to Reveal Funding Sources,” by David Swindle, Algemeiner, May 13, 2025:

A circuit court judge in Richmond, VA, ruled on Friday that American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a nonprofit which has sponsored a series of anti-Israel protests following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks across southern Israel, must provide financial information which the activist group has long guarded from government investigators.

Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares has said that the organization possesses connections to terrorists and has submitted multiple filings to compel AMP to provide its donor list. He said his office “has a legal obligation to ensure that charitable organizations operating in Virginia are following the law” and vowed to “continue to enforce state law without exception or delay to protect Virginians.”

Judge Devika Davis’s decision represents the end of AMP’s efforts to legally delay Miyares’s investigation.

It could be the end of the line for AMP. Now it must supply Virginia’s attorney general, Jason Miyares, with a complete list of its funders and the amounts they have given. And that list will be compared to the funders for IAP.

Labeling Miyares’s claims a “defamatory smear,” AMP lawyer Christina Jump said the “vague accusations that AMP has anything to do with Hamas or Oct. 7 just got thrown out completely by a federal court judge.” She referred to the dismissal last week of a Nevada lawsuit against the group.

A second suit in Illinois remains ongoing, arguing that AMP is a resurrection of the former organization Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which a judge found liable for $156 million due to its support for Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.

In order to avoid paying the judgement against it of $156 million, the IAP appears simply to have dissolved, and then resurrected itself under a new name, American Muslims for Palestine.

Individuals formerly involved with IAP and now supporting AMP include AMP’s current executive director, Osama Abuirshaid; Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Rafeeq Jaber, a former president of IAP who speaks at AMP events; former AMP executive director Abdelbaset Hamayel, who worked for IAP as executive director and secretary general; Kifah Mustafa, who worked for IAP in Illinois; and Raeed Tayeh, a former IAP member….

The overlap in personnel is staggering. AMP appears to be simply IAP under a new name, but not new management. Thus does IAP hope, by renaming itself, to avoid having to pay that $156 million judgment against it.

Founded in 2006 by Hatem Bazian — a senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and the group’s current national board chairman…

AMP works closely with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), another anti-Israel activist group also cofounded by Bazian. Jump told the Daily Mail in an April 2024 statement that AMP provides between $500 and $2,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace and SJP in support of protest events.

According to NGO Monitor, an independent, Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations, “SJP is the campus organization most directly responsible for creating a hostile campus environment saturated with anti-Israel events, BDS initiatives, and speakers. Each SJP chapter operates independently and is responsible for forming its own constitutions, finding funding sources, and organizing activities.”

A praiser of Hamas who accuses Israel of being like Nazi Germany, an open antisemite who claims that the Palestinians in Gaza are living in a “Warsaw Ghetto,” Hatem Bazian is the founder of AMP, which took over the personnel of IAP, follows the same script as IAP, and is indistinguishable from the IAP except, of course, the AMP is not — at least for now — legally responsible for paying the $156 million judgement against the IAP. But if the government can prove that the funders for IAP and AMP are the same, that should prove that AMP is merely a construct, to pretend IAP no longer exists. That’s why AMP has been fighting so fiercely not to reveal the names of its funders.

Jason Miyares, Virginia’s attorney general, will now be given the names of AMP’s funders and can compare them to the funders of IAP. I suspect they will be almost identical. The conclusion is clear: AMP is simply the IAP under a new name. The $156 million judgment should, therefore, continue to be imposed on the group that calls itself AMP. Lawfare is the only way to shut down the Muslim groups, and individuals such as Hatem Bazian, who spread their antisemitic hate across the land.

One final question: given his history, with his defense of Hamas, and his lies about the atrocities he denies took place on October 7, 2023, why is Hatem Bazian still employed as a senior lecturer at UC Berkeley, with an annual salary of more than $100,000? He doesn’t have tenure. He should be fired.