Consisting of some 86 Muslim organizations from around the world, the International Islamic Council for Da’wa and Relief (IICDR) works principally to “promote the message of Islam, improve the relations between Islamic peoples, and provide aid and assistance to the needy, orphans, and widows” in the Muslim world. Among the Council’s additional stated objectives are to: “achieve security and justice on the earth according to will of Almighty Allah”; “organize the efforts of the Islamic Ommah (nation)” to advance the well-being of the faith and its devotees; and “assure unity of the human family.”

The term “Da’wa” in IICDR’s name means, literally, “issuing a summons” or “making an invitation” for non-Muslims to join the faith. In practice, Da’wa frequently takes the form of aggressive, wide-ranging proselytism. As the Council puts it: “it is among the duties of the scholars and the jurists who are well-versed in religious matters to propagate Islamic Da’wa, to explain its principles … and to convey it to all people in the east and west and the remotest parts of the earth.”

IICDR is an organizational member of the Union of Good, a coalition of Muslim charities that give financial support to the terrorist organization Hamas. Because of those ties to Hamas, IICDR has long been banned in Israel.

IICDR’s secretary-general is Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, former vice president of Saudi Arabia’s prestigious King Abdulaziz University and founder of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA). An Islamic extremist with a significant history of ties to al Qaeda, Naseef served as secretary-general of the Muslim World League from 1983-93. In 1988, Naseef created a Pakistan-based pseudo-charity known as the Rabita Trust, which, because of its own connections with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, was eventually designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government. And in 2004, Naseef was named as a defendant in a multi-trillion-dollar civil lawsuit filed by the surviving relatives of many victims who had died in the 9/11 al Qaeda attacks.

Another IICDR official was the late Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, who served as the Council’s president until his death in 2010. Tantawi, who was also the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University (in Cairo, Egypt), was an anti-Semite who derided Jews for “their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e., killing the prophets of Allah, corrupting His words…, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness.”

A noteworthy IICDR board member is Saleha Mahmood Abedin.

Among IICDR’s “affiliated organizations” are the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (which was in fact created by IICDR), the International Islamic Relief Organization, the Muslim World League, and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.