by the way, if anyone is still reading this message board, what do you think of Seeds of Peace International Camp?

it never shies away from working with American imperial interests

This is the only attitude that guarantees any funding, so you can imagine how many “regional” (but US-based) organizations would jump at the opportunity, and as much as they claim to be “independent” it’s quite obvious that government-related sources are funding their efforts, either directly or indirectly. AIC has never once in its existence criticized U.S foreign policy in the Middle East, in fact they embrace and encourage it, and when I did imply this in my essay, they deleted it before offering an “honorable mention” which is hardly an honor for me, but rather an embarrassment as it suggests my incredibly brief involvement with their trash.

It’s funny when AIC talks about “interfaith,” they do so under the banner that even Muslims support US policies in the USA. When I confronted them about this, instead of refuting my concerns with factual information, they simply dropped all contact with me and are now refusing to hand over access to MeFaith.com, angered that I “attacked them.” So much for an organization that is pro-free speech, when we are denied the rights to our own, copyrighted work, simply for disagreeing to be associated with their US-sponsored organization.

AIC claims it does not receive any funding from the U.S government, although I came across a source that states otherwise, and maybe I am misunderstanding something but:

Contributions: £290,843
Government Grants: £470,788
Program Services: £0
Investments: £0
Special Events: £0
Sales: £0
Other: £0
Total Revenue: £761,631

Nowhere in their own website is any of this transparent. Nowhere do they reveal where they get their money from despite having fulltime staff and offices in 3 countries.

With this much money, Zainab Al-Suwaij, AIC’s Executive Director, claims that $65 is “seed funding” for MeFaith.com which we (Mideast Youth) led entirely by ourselves, and another volunteer who helped by designing it, who was wary himself about our involvement with AIC, but I assured him that they were simplying trying to help. Al-Suwaij instructed her staff not to deal with me on this, and to basically ignore my many requests for help.

For many months we have been requesting access to our work (2 years worth of development and content) which they have aggressively refused, claiming that we did not respect their “funding” and “involvement” – despite the fact that they did absolutely nothing and in fact refused to fund the site’s design and development which we had created on our own.

In fact, read this from the same source I provided:

GOALS AND RESULTS
Accomplishments for Fiscal Year Ending 31 December 2006

Helped to establish the Middle East Interfaith Bloggers network: a group of young Middle Easterners of varying religion and ethnic backgrounds who are committed to improving interfaith relations via an online forum. For information, please visit http://www.mefaith.org

Paying 5 bucks for a domain and 65 for hosting is not SEED FUNDING and if the work within it is not their own, they shouldn’t claim that it is! I am working hard to remove this association entirely. If only they would stop ignoring our requests and start treating us professionally, we could’ve solved this within a day. But since they rely on OUR work, as they don’t actually contribute anything to human rights in the Middle East, besides hold some useless and irrelevant conferences where they recruit people to do the work for them (and for free), they can’t afford to make their funders aware of the fact that none of this was of their own doing.

I am disgusted with these organizations that seem to be multiplying like insects, any organization that is openly associated with AIC is either completely naive or equally corrupt and abusive. It was sad to see the Tharwa Project being really close to them, I immediately had to distance myself from them too. This is after helping AIC by designing and hosting FreeHaleh.org, free of charge, only because we believed in the case.

AIC requested that we join them instead of going through the “hardships” of starting our own NGO (which is actually a very simple process), we immediately refused knowing fully well that their growing interference would cause nothing but trouble and credibility issues. When we applied for grants and awards, Jesse Sage, an employee at AIC, claimed that it’s the “best and only option” to state that AIC is the overhead organization behind Mideast Youth. All AIC employees know that they had nothing to do with the creation of this site, and such an association is insulting to me personally when I invested my own resources and funds for years to make this site what it is today, and still entirely independent. For them to aggressively attempt to claim our work and our projects as their own is just unacceptable. I cannot believe that they continue to feel that they had a hand in MeFaith, we already offered to pay them back for the cheap hosting that they got us, even though we hosted THEIR work free of charge.

They also offered to pay for FreeKareem.org, in an effort to also claim the work as their own, thankfully that never happened. I am still personally paying for this site from my pocket and on behalf of Mideast Youth. Zainab is also angry that we never “credited” them for the site despite them doing NOTHING but creating a petition for it (of which we have 5 of, and their petition was actually poorly done and full of spam and having less signatures compared to the rest.) What credit do they expect us to give? They are shameless plagiarists.

Shame on AIC, who continue to take advance of young people for their disturbing goals, which are far from what they claim (US-sponsored political goals,) clearly embraced and funded by the current government which actually only contributes to human rights abuses in the Middle East and has made 0 efforts to tackle them.

Stick to what you’re good at AIC (cheating and lying to naive young Middle Easterners) and stay out of our way.

AIC had a non-existent role in anything related to MEY, and the only “funding” we got was them paying for the MeFaith.com domain name and its associated host way back in 2006, the amount of which is $65. It is actually due to their stubborness that we have lost complete access to MeFaith.com which they seem to be refusing to recover despite the site being a result of our hard and independent work, simply because we do not wish to be associated in any way to their highly political and overwhemingly self-important and biased organization.

I regret my involvement with them and their weird intentions, which is really far from actually “helping” Middle Eastern youth, as a matter of fact they seem to be taking advantage of them to further their own dangerous agenda. I fell into this trap and it’s hard to get out. I can only warn other young people who were equally naive not to commit this same mistake, and to hold on to their independence despite aggressive attempts by organizations like AIC to claim ownership over their material (and indeed over words like “freedom.”)

but it’s completely unrealistic to ignore them!

Seconded. This is also a matter of opinion, and it wouldn’t be right to dismiss certain essays merely because they didn’t like the opinion of the author. I’m sure some of the best essays never made it to the top, for example, because it lacked a pro-America stance perhaps.

Great article though and I’m really glad someone said it. My friend Minoo from Iran who also writes here wrote a similar article about HAMSA and its sponsorship, it’s why she never took part in it.

And I e-mailed you back.

He was cool when I calmed his fears about a “conspiracy”. Apparently that’s what he was worried about

Hey I emailed you!