Head of UK’s Largest Muslim Charity Called Jews “Grandchildren of Monkeys and Pigs”

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Heshmat Khalifa 

It’s happened again. Another “smyler with the knyf under the cloke” has been caught — there are so many. Is this the hundredth time, or the thousandth time, or the ten thousandth time? A perfectly respectable – so we are led to believe – Muslim is found to have posted on Facebook, or at some other social media site, many months or years ago, statements supporting terrorists, expressing antisemitism, urging genocide. And so that perfectly respectable Muslim will remain silent, because in truth he doesn’t regret a word of what he wrote, or he may choose to brazen it out, in high dudgeon claiming – without the least evidence – that he (or she) has been misunderstood, or misquoted, or “no longer holds those views and deeply regrets having made such remarks.”

The latest story is here:

The leader of Britain’s largest Muslim charity labelled Jews the “grandchildren of monkeys and pigs” and called Egypt’s president a “Zionist pimp,” The London Times reported on Friday.

Heshmat Khalifa was a trustee and director of Islamic Relief Worldwide, whose £570 million income over the past five years included substantial contributions from the United Nations, the European Commission and the British taxpayer.

Before we get to the wretched Mr. Khalifa, we – you and I — have a few questions about the funding for the group he headed, Islamic Relief Worldwide. Why is the U.N. contributing to Islamic Relief Worldwide, which is clearly a sectarian group? Does the U.N. also donate to Christian groups? What about Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist groups? Does the U.N. give the same, or different amounts, to each religious group? Do all of the U.N. members – for example, the U.S., Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Myanmar, Brazil, India, and Israel — want the U.N. to be supporting Muslims worldwide? No, I thought not. And what about the European Commission? When did the people of Europe get to vote on whether the tax money their governments sends to E.U. bureaucrats in Brussels should go to Islamic Relief? They never did. Their well-paid Eurocrats in Belgium decided for them. How many of today’s European taxpayers, now living in countries where millions of Muslim economic migrants have been allowed in, and who are already paying huge sums for the many benefits those Muslim migrants receive, in the form of free or greatly subsidized housing, free medical care, free education, unemployment benefits (even without having been previously employed), and family allowances, will want to support still other Muslims all around the world? As for the long-suffering British taxpayers, who have been on the receiving end of Muslim gratitude, expressed in exploding rates of Muslim crime, including such horrors as the Pakistani grooming gangs responsible for ruining the lives of tens of thousands of English girls, sky-high numbers of unemployed Muslims, and no-go neighborhoods where Infidels fear to tread, they must be wondering who in the British government decided that they, the taxpayers, should be supporting “relief” for Muslims worldwide.

Need it be pointed out that there are countries in this world awash in money — trillions of dollars in total – the result not of any hard work or entrepreneurial flair on the part of their peoples, but only of an accident of geology. These are the Muslim states of OPEC, whose natives enjoy a cradle-to-grave welfare state. These countries all have huge sovereign wealth funds. Tiny Abu Dhabi has $697 billion; the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) has $600 billion; Saudi Arabia has two funds — SAMA Foreign Holdings of $506 billion, and a Public Investment Fund of $320 billion, for a total of $826 billion; Qatar has $320 billion; Dubai (part of the UAE) has $240 billion, and another UAE fund has $230 billion. For just these four countries – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and Qatar – their sovereign funds alone amount to about $3 trillion dollars.

Given those fantastic sums, why should any non-Muslims be asked to contribute to the Islamic Relief Worldwide? Should people in the poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South America be giving, through the U.N., to the world’s most well-heeled group? Should the taxpayers of Europe, who already transfer huge sums from their non-Muslim taxpayers to Muslim economic migrants, be made, without their assent, to contribute to the “relief’ of Muslims worldwide – when just four Muslim states have $3 trillion, from which charity – zakat – for fellow Muslims might so easily be given? And since Muslims are inculcated with contempt and hatred for Infidels, those whom the Qur’an insists are “the most vile of created beings” (98:6), isn’t it still more maddening for those Infidels to be made to contribute to the care and feeding of those who are taught to hate them?

It is not just Heshmat Khalifa who needs to be held up for inspection, but the organization he headed till just the other day – Islamic World Relief. Who exactly is contributing, and how much, and under what circumstances (i.e are these contributions voluntary, or being exacted without the permission, or even the knowledge, of Western taxpayers?) to this supposedly “charitable” organization? Are any groups connected in any way to Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, or the Muslim Brotherhood, among the organization’s recipients? And let’s compare what European taxpayers provide to Islamic World Relief, with what comes from fabulously wealthy states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and Qatar. The results should be startling — and infuriating.

Now we come to Heshmat Khalifa, with his vile but orthodox views. He wrote on his Facebook page that Jews are the “grandchildren of monkeys and pigs.” When his comment was found out by Times reporters, he resigned from his position, without apologizing. And why should he? It is the Qur’an itself, in three separate verses — 7:166, 2:65, and 5:60—that claims that Jews were turned into “apes” or “monkeys” and into both “apes and pigs” in 5:60 alone. What the reader who is unaware of these Qur’anic verses is left with is the mistaken belief that what Heshmat Khalifa said was of his own concocting. All Muslims know perfectly well where he got the idea that Jews were – in a slight variation of the Qur’anic verses – the “grandchildren” of “monkeys and pigs.” (Some Islamic scholars do claim that only those 7th century Jews, and not their descendants, became “monkeys and pigs.”) But they are not about to tell inquiring Infidels about that, any more than they will mention the Qur’anic verses that tell Muslims they are the “best of peoples” and non-Muslims “the most vile of created beings.” That would never do.

Khalifa resigned after reporters from the Times confronted the global aid charity with antisemitic comments that Khalifa made on his Facebook page.

“War is deceit,” said Muhammad. And Heshmat Khalifa, by quickly and silently resigning, shielded the Qur’anic verses that supported his Facebook post from prying Infidels. It’s clear that the Times reporters who confronted the charity with Khalifa’s Facebook remark had no idea that he was referring to three verses in the Qur’an. It would be salutary if, in a follow-up article, the reporters who “confronted the global aid charity” would, by way of explaining Heshmat Khalifa’s post about Jews, quote and discuss those three Qur’anic verses. For their non-Muslim readers, this would be a revelation.

Khalifa also described Egyptian president Abdelfattah El-Sisi as a “Zionist pimp.” What did he mean? He meant that the security cooperation between Israel and Egypt in the northern Sinai, against remnants of both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, is illegitimate, for in his view Muslims must never take the side of non-Muslims against other Muslims. He fails to recognize that it is the Egyptian security services who are being attacked by these jihadis, and who profit both from the intelligence Israel can provide, and from Israel’s help in bombing the jihadi fighters.

Khalifa used social media to describe the terrorist Palestinian organization Hamas as “the purest resistance movement in modern history.” He said that declaring its armed wing a terrorist organization was a “shameful disgrace to all Muslims.”

Hamas is the terror group that “claims credit” for blowing up women and children at pizza parlors, massacring elderly Jews at a Passover service, murdering schoolgirls in classrooms, bashing in the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl against a rock, in front of her father, before killing him, stabbing to death a Jewish woman and her three small children, and for many hundreds of other acts of surpassing savagery and cruelty. This is the group Heshmat Khalifa calls “the purest resistance movement in modern history.” He finds a “shameful disgrace to all Muslims” not the acts of Hamas, but those who describe Hamas as a “terrorist organization.”

The charities regulator has launched a preliminary investigation.

The charity said that it “sincerely regrets any offense caused” by the Facebook posts, which “contravene the values and principles of Islamic Relief Worldwide.”

No, the charity does not “sincerely” regret “any offense caused” by the Facebook remarks of Heshmat Khalifa, and especially not that about Jews, because that remark is based squarely o the Qur’an itself. Islamic Relief Worldwide “insincerely” regrets — remember that for Muslims, “war is deceit” — or rather, regrets only having the charity’s head exposed as an antisemite (but how, as a good Muslim, could he be otherwise?) and a deep admirer of the terror group Hamas.

Mr Khalifa, 63, a British citizen since 2005, has held senior roles with the charity or its overseas branches since 1999.

Until a few days ago, he was chairman of Islamic Relief Australia and a director of its branches in Germany and South Africa.

The Times should make this story into a teaching moment. As I noted above, the Times reporters should examine the contributions exacted from unwitting taxpayers by Western governments, so eager to contribute to Islamic Relief Worldwide, to show how much they respect Islam and Muslims. Those reporters should compare the contributions made by Muslim oil states – with their available trillions in sovereign wealth funds — to those made by non-Muslims to this “for-Muslim-recipients-only” organization.

Then they should put Heshmat Khalifa’s claim about Jews into its proper perspective, by presenting the source for that claim in three Qur’anic verses describing Jews being turned into apes and pigs. These verses deserve to be discussed in The Times – and ideally on the BBC as well — at great, and horrified, length. And similar attention should be given to the verses telling Muslims that while they are “the best of peoples,” non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings.

Finally, The Times reporters should follow up with reports on where Heshmat Khalifa ends up. For he won’t be out on the street. Muslims are not ashamed of him. He’s a hero. Having resigned from Islamic World Relief, but without expressing any shame or remorse either for his antisemitic Facebook remark, or for his praise for Hamas, he will no doubt be quickly rescued. He will likely be put in charge of another Muslim organization, or be provided with a sinecure by one or more of his many admirers in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Iran, or in the U.K. itself. All devout Muslims know that Khalifa was merely expressing what the Qur’an claims, when it describes Jews in Muhammad’s time as having been turned into “apes and pigs,” and thus, according to a widely-accepted interpretation, today’s Jews are “descendants (sons, grandsons) of those apes and pigs.”

In the pages of The Times, prompted by the example of Heshmat Khalifa, these Qur’anic verses should be printed: 3:110 (Muslims), 98:6 (non-Muslims), 7:166, 2:65, and 5:60 (Jews as descendants of “apes and pigs”) for study and discussion.

And let the seminar begin!

First published in Jihad Watch.