“There is no truth whatsoever to these claims. The report published by a local Arabic newspaper is baseless and is only aimed at creating tensions,” said the society’s Madinah branch director Sheikh Abdul Mohsen bin Muaidth Al-Harbi.

He also said the alleged involvement of police in the case was equally untrue.

“This never happened. The newspaper was publishing lies about the involvement of government departments,” he said.

Al-Harbi said the newspaper’s claims that the Muslim World League had held an urgent meeting to discuss the society’s failure to distribute Zakat Al-Fitr was also completely untrue.

“Our society has a thorough financial and accounting system, which places it at the top of other service institutions. Many Madinah people are sponsoring orphans in our care on a monthly basis,” he said.

Al-Harbi said the quantities of rice seen near the society’s office, reported as evidence that the organization had failed in its duty, did not actually belong to them.

“The journalist who wrote the report saw 17 rice bags weighing only 45 kilograms that belonged to a neighboring trade establishment. The establishment put this quantity of rice in front of our office months ago for the municipality to come and take away,” he said.

Al-Harbi said the society had distributed more than 24,000 bags of rice during the Eid night alone. “We are sponsoring more than 3,000 orphans living in various districts of Madinah. We have distributed Zakat among their families,” he said.

Al-Harbi said the distribution of Zakat to the needy and poor people continued until the early hours of the first day of Eid.