CRY FREEDOM.net
Welcome to cryfreedom.net,
formerly known as Womens
Liberation Front.
A website
that hopes to draw and keeps your attention for both the global 21th. century 3rd. feminist revolution as well
as especially for the Zan, Zendegi, Azadi uprising in Iran and the
struggles of our sisters in other parts of the Middle East. This online magazine
that started December 2019 will
be published every week. Thank you for your time and interest.
You are now at the section on what is happening in the rest of the Middle
east
For the Iran 'Woman, Life, Freedom' Iran actual
news
For the 'Women's Arab
Spring 1.2 Revolt news
|
|
SPECIAL
REPORTS
Nov wk5 P3 --
Nov wk5 P2 --
Nov wk5 --
Nov wk4 P3 --
Nov wk4 P2 --
Nov wk4 --
Nov wk3 P2 --
Nov wk3 --
Nov wk2 P2 --
Nov. wk2 --
Nov. wk1
Click here for an overview by week in 2024
|
November 28- 26, 2024 |
November 24 - 21, 2024 |
When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so
called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali.
Al Jazeera - November 29, 2024 - By Thor Benson
<<Muslim charities face discrimination as Palestinians are desperate for
aid
The practice of 'de-risking' by financial institutions has had a
disproportionate impact on Muslim and immigrant-owned businesses, and
they are being cut off from access to essential banking services. As the
people of Gaza face famine and the continued bombing of their homes by
Israel, numerous Muslim charities and organisations are desperately
trying to help keep Palestinians alive and help those in need. However,
many of these organisations have found over the past year that the banks
they rely upon to help get this aid to the people of Gaza do not want to
work with charities that are run by Muslims - especially if they are
focused on Gaza. This has become referred to as "Muslim while banking".
"We used to joke when we started our company that we had 99 problems and
payments wasn’t one of them, and that quickly changed," says Amany
Killawi, co-founder of LaunchGood, a crowdfunding platform for Muslims.
"I do feel there's additional scrutiny on Muslim organisations."
LaunchGood is one of many organisations that are trying to help people
from Gaza who have found their payment accounts closed for no
discernible reason over the past year. Killawi says she thinks these
banks are afraid of receiving bad publicity for working with Muslim
organisations while the highly contentious debate over the future of
Israel and Palestine goes on. "You have two problems in our space: Most
banks are very risk-averse. They don't want to support humanitarian
work, even though it is all registered charities in good standing that
have gone through vetting," Killawi says. "The other issue you have is
that there’s been a politicisation of humanitarian aid." Killawi says
pro-Israel actors will write <hit pieces> in the media about various
Muslim organisations that are sending aid to Gaza, and this can cause
banks to not want to work with them even if they’ve ultimately done
nothing wrong. These charities are sometimes wrongly accused of aiding
armed groups, and those in the financial sector may not bother to
investigate such claims.
"I don't think it's conflict with US law because everything is legal.
There's nothing that violates their terms of use. My sense is that it's
adverse media," Killawi says. "... Israel-Palestine is a touchy subject,
to say the least. You have your average analyst out of New York who's
maybe never met a Muslim or worked with [a Muslim] organisation see that
and decide to pull out." LaunchGood has not only experienced account
closures related to financial services but other services as well.
Killawi says Wise, which helps LaunchGood pay contractors, has kicked it
off the platform. Cledara, a subscription service that helps LaunchGood
keep track of its software, also unexpectedly closed its account.
Cledara did not respond to a request for comment.
Wise told Al Jazeera that it provides its services to customers
"regardless of their personal characteristics, including their religious
identity" and that they are "also subject to strict rules governing how
we handle existing customer accounts. For legal and privacy obligations,
we're unable to provide details on individual cases, but we never take
the decision to deactivate an account lightly, and this is always the
result of a thorough review by our team," a spokesperson said.
"Sometimes we are victims of our own success. A charity or platform or
NGO will do really well, and once your account reaches a certain level,
it may be reviewed," Killawi says. "You might be assigned a new account
manager. That's my suspicion because we've continued to grow. We
actually don't know. How does someone at the bank come across LaunchGood
and decide, ‘We don't want anything to do with this?' Is there a file on
us somewhere?"
Bigger trend
Ilhan Omar, a Democratic member of the United States House of
Representatives, was part of a group of lawmakers who requested
information in February from major banks regarding why Muslim Americans
are being discriminated against. They said these account closures can
have "devastating impacts on consumers".
Muslim Banking
"The practice of 'de-risking' by financial institutions has had a
disproportionate impact on Muslim and immigrant-owned businesses,
cutting off access to essential banking services," Omar told Al Jazeera.
"This discriminatory behaviour is unacceptable." What is clear is that
these account closures are not isolated incidents but part of a larger
trend. Youssef Chouhoud, an assistant professor of political science at
Christopher Newport University and a fellow at the Institute for Social
Policy and Understanding, says banks have been closing the accounts of
Muslim-run nonprofit organisations at a "suspiciously high rate" for
years. Things have only gotten worse as the conflict in Gaza has
escalated and several humanitarian organisations in the US and Europe
that are trying to provide food to residents of Gaza have had their bank
accounts closed and transactions frozen since the start of the current
conflict, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing at least 30 incidents
from October 7 through late May. "American Muslims are significantly
more likely than the general public to report challenges while banking,
whether it be at the point of opening an account, completing a
transaction or maintaining an account in good standing," Chouhoud says.
"Around one in four Muslims in our survey reported such obstacles when
dealing with financial institutions, which is twice the rate among the
general public." The survey was conducted before the start of the war in
Gaza. Chouhoud says this problem is "concerning on its face", and it
appears to represent widespread discriminatory practices. He says Muslim
business owners and nonprofit executives are roughly twice as likely to
be told by banking institutions that an international transaction they
attempted was restricted, they are sending or receiving money from an
"unknown person" or that a "keyword in their transaction" was flagged.
"As we note in our report, it is rather remarkable that one in three
Muslims aged 30 to 49 has experienced difficulties when dealing with
financial institutions. This statistic is especially alarming as this is
the age cohort that is most likely to start businesses and purchase
homes, but they are being prevented from fully participating in the
American economy," Chouhoud says. Someone who is quite familiar with the
practice of banks closing people's accounts as part of this "de-risking"
practice is Anas Altikriti. He is a British Iraqi who is the CEO and
founder of The Cordoba Foundation. Altikriti had been a member of HSBC
for 29 years when his account and the accounts of his immediate family
were abruptly closed in 2014. The bank notified him that there was no
opportunity to appeal this decision and not to inquire about it. "This
was out of the blue. There was no issue. There was no problem,"
Altikriti tells Al Jazeera. Altikriti learned through the help of Radio
4 journalist Peter Oborne that The Cordoba Foundation had inexplicably
been labelled a terrorist organisation by a risk analysis company called
World-Check, which led to the account closures. "I was dumbfounded. I
said this is beyond belief,” Altikriti says. "Since then, I've had 18
accounts closed. It's become sort of a merry-go-round. You realise that
without a bank account, in this day and age, you simply cannot operate.
You can't get on a bus. You can't do the very simplest of things."
Muslim Banking
Solving this problem won't be easy, and it’s unclear how the election of
President-elect Donald Trump will affect the landscape, considering he
is a major supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
has promised to deport all immigrants who support Hamas and expel
students who are <anti-Semitic>. That said, Chouhoud and others in the
Muslim community remain determined to increase awareness of this problem
and do what they can to address it. "The letter that Senator Elizabeth
Warren and her colleagues in Congress wrote to the CEOs of JPMorgan
Chase and Citibank was certainly encouraging. There have also been a
number of good faith meetings with officials in the White House tasked
with rectifying the differential treatment Muslims, Black Americans and
recent immigrants face when banking," Chouhoud says. "The outcome of
this year's election - not just for president, but in the House and
Senate - will have a tremendous impact on how far these nascent efforts
for more equitable treatment will go."
Citibank and JPMorgan Chase both declined a request for comment.
Killawi says LaunchGood is working to become its own payment processor
with a company called PayGood, and it's trying to spread the word about
problems with "banking while Muslim". It hopes these efforts will help
reverse the trend of Muslims being unable to maintain access to
financial institutions.>>
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA:
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/11/29/muslim-charities-face-discrimination-as-palestinians-are-desperate-for-aid
|
"When the
world, and
"I
was 'not' a child |
Women's
Liberation Front 2019/cryfreedom.net 2024