On Oct. 13, the Treasury Department designated the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), along with five senior officials, as supporters of terrorism. This action froze all accounts, funds and assets of IARA in the United States and criminalizes the provision or donation of money to any of its offices. IARA has no right to appeal or learn of the evidence against it. This effectively allows the government to treat organizations as guilty without the opportunity to demonstrate innocence. During a search of IARA's Columbia, MO, office building, the FBI seized boxes, computers and file cabinets. Thursday, the search expanded to storage lockers and the home of Mubarak Hamed, who served four years as the charity's executive director. He also worked as the charity's president from 1992 through 1998. According to the Treasury Department, the charity and five of its senior officials funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda in 1999, and that one of bin Ladin's lieutenants directed the group's operations in Afghanistan. The Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) is a 501(c)(3) that is focused on charitable work for orphans, disaster and famine relief, and aid to refugees. A spokesman for InterAction, the U.S. coordinating and policy body for more than 160 international charities, said that IARA was a member in good standing and was in compliance with the organization's voluntary standards for administration and procedures. Federal officials state that the charity belongs to a larger network, with headquarters in Sudan. In a four-page fact sheet on its website, the Treasury Department draws connections between terrorists and some of the charity's many offices and officials. However, no links were made between the Columbia office and terrorism. The organization's attorney, Shereef Akeel, said IARA-USA is a completely different organization than IARA-Sudan. IARA-USA is legally registered as an independent agency (not as a branch of any other organization) with its own board of directors, administrative structure, executive decision-making process, and legal and financial accountability obligations (for example, the IRS, to whom IARA-USA is subject to review and audit as an independent agency). None of these functions and responsibilities is shared with any other organization. Since 2001, federal authorities have raided and shut down 25 charities, freezing the assets of the organization and arresting or deporting its staff. Yet, not one staff member has been convicted on a terrorism-related charge. These recent developments have made American Muslim charities feel that they are in constant danger of ending up on a government watch list for aiding terrorism. This threatens donations to Muslim charities, especially during Ramadan, when giving is required by the Muslim faith. Muslim organizations say members are afraid to give money to Muslim charities -- and those who do are opting to give cash instead of checks. To make giving easier during Ramadan, Muslim charities requested the federal government draw up a list of Islamic charities to which they could donate without being suspected of terrorist ties. The request was denied by the Justice Department, which said it was impossible to fulfill. "Our role is to prosecute violations of criminal law," a Justice Department spokesman said. "We're not in a position to put out lists of any kind, particularly of any organizations that are good or bad." In a recent statement, Treasury Secretary John Snow encouraged American Muslims to continue to give to charities, but to educate themselves about the groups to which they donate to make sure the funds are not being used to support terrorism. Yet IARA was not on any government watch list before its assets were frozen. Muslims have no way of knowing which groups the government suspects of ties to terrorism. Consequently, donations to Muslim charities have declined significantly since last Ramadan.