A Virginia court ordered the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) organization to produce documents detailing organizational structure, employees, and donors, among other pieces of information, state attorney general Jason Miyares (R.) announced Tuesday.
Miyares and his office opened an investigation into AMP in October 2023. The attorney general hopes to determine whether AMP has solicited contributions without having registered with the necessary state agencies, as well as the veracity of allegations that AMP has offered support to terrorist organizations.
In the civil investigative demand Miyares issued to AMP in October, the attorney general’s office wrote that, based on its investigation, it has reason to believe the organization may have “knowingly used or permitted the use of funds raised by a solicitation of contributions to provide support to terrorists, terrorist organizations, terrorist activities, or family members of terrorists.”
AMP has received attention for its role in supporting the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization, which has established chapters on college campuses across the country. Those chapters, in turn, have been behind waves of anti-Israel, pro-terror protests in higher education and on American streets since October 7.
It is a connection to a different organization that has drawn AMP, and by extension its satellite groups on college campuses, such legal scrutiny.
AMP arose in the wake of the dissolution of organizations including the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), which both disbanded in 2004 after being found to have provided material support to Hamas and to have acted as fundraisers for the terrorist organization. The latter was founded by Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook.
Seven Holy Land Foundation officers were indicted after the group closed down, with two fleeing the country and five being convicted for funding Hamas.
Salah Sarsour, an American Muslims for Palestine board member who has also raised money for Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), was formerly an employee of the Holy Land Foundation. According to a 2001 FBI memo, the money he raised for the nonprofit was “actually for HAMAS,” and a 1999 Israeli police report detailed Sarsour’s stint in a Ramallah prison on charges related to his involvement with Hamas.
A man named Jamal Said, who regularly speaks at AMP fundraisers, raised money for the Holy Land Foundation while the organization existed and was an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial. The same is true for Kifah Mustafa, who runs an Illinois-based foundation that shares a P.O. box with AMP.
Former AMP board member Hussein El-Khatib, who died in 2018, worked for five years as an HLF regional director.
American Muslims for Palestine also has relationships with many former Islamic Association for Palestine staff members, like former IAP president Rafeeq Jaber, who helped launch AMP’s financial sponsor, the AJP Educational Foundation.
Osama Abuirshaid, the current executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, served as the editor of the Islamic Association for Palestine’s official newspaper — considered by the United States government to be a Hamas propaganda outlet — before joining his new organization.
Hamas’s military wing featured Abuirshaid on its website in 2014. The current AMP executive director has ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization as well, frequently meeting with a man named Sami al-Arian, who was found to have provided material support to PIJ.
At an AMP conference in 2017, the organization featured a panel on how to “navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.”
“At the very least, AMP is a hate group with roots in Hamas fundraising organizations that were shuttered for a reason,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior vice president for research Jonathan Schanzer told the House Ways and Means Committee in November 2023. “It could be far worse.”
While the anti-Israel protests on campuses and in cities since October 7 appear to have direct ties to Hamas, they have received support from Hamas’s benefactor, Iran, as well.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced in a statement earlier in July that the Islamic Republic has used anti-Israel demonstrations to “stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.”
“We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters,” Haines wrote.
The reach of terrorist organizations has extended to classrooms like those at Northwestern University’s satellite campus in Qatar.
Ibrahim Abusharif, a professor at NU-Q, served as treasurer of the Quranic Literacy Institute, a defunct nonprofit that had a relationship with the Holy Land Foundation, gave money to Hamas operatives, and received a loan from a Saudi businessman who financed Al Qaeda.