Amazon’s Charity Program Supported an Islamic Extremist Group

Amazon’s charity program, known as Amazon Smile, included an organization founded by radical British Islamist Haitham al-Haddad — who supports female genital mutilation, child marriage, and death by stoning for adulterers, The (U.K.) Times reported.

“[Amazon] relied on the government’s charity regulator in the U.K. to pass muster for these things, so you’ve got big corporate and big government and they can’t get things right,” said Raheem Kassam, a senior fellow of the Gatestone Institute, Monday night on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”

“The British government isn’t exactly hot on tackling radical Islam, unfortunately,” he added. Kassam is a former chief adviser to Nigel Farage.

Kassam was theorizing about how the Muslim Research and Development Foundation (MRDF) could have been included in the popular Amazon Smile program; Amazon donates 0.5 percent of the purchase price of eligible products to charities on the company’s approved list. The program launched in the U.K. in November last year, as Business Insider noted.

Haitham al-Haddad, MRDF’s founder, was named as “’one of the most dangerous men in Britain’ by the head of the counter-extremism Qulliam Foundation,” according to The Times article, which initially exposed the apparent error.

The Saudi-born Salafist scholar has referred to Jewish people as “apes and pigs,” according to Kassam. He advocates death for apostasy and called homosexuality “an evil crime,” according to Breitbart.

“Why aren’t the types of women who are banging on the doors of the Supreme Court today banging on Amazon’s doors saying, ‘Why are you supporting this guy? Why are you giving money to a radical Islamist cleric who wants women’s clitorises mutilated’? It’s extraordinary. It’s disgusting,” said Kassam Monday night.

Amazon said in a statement to Business Insider that it’s investigating the allegations.

“If a charity no longer has charitable status because that organization supports, encourages or promotes intolerance or discrimination and has been removed from the Commission’s register, we will remove them from the service.”

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

“The … organizations 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,” the statement continued.

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Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to LifeZette.