Al Qaeda’s coffers have long been filled mostly by zakat.  But how do they get it out of their accounts and into the hands of their sleeper cell members?

Looking back on this the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it bears revisiting the fact that the jihadist hijackers’ financing was made possible in part by “the anonymity provided by bustling financial center of Dubai,” according to the monograph on terrorist financing by the staff of the 9/11 Commission.  The total cost of the attack was about half a million dollars, but the hijackers themselves used about $300,000 of that.  The majority of that money came through wire transfers initiated by Khalid Sheikh Muhammed’s nephew in the United Arab Emirates.  Here are the details:

Upon their arrival in the United States, the hijackers received a total of approximately $130,000 from overseas facilitators via wire or bank-to-bank transfers. Most of…