The US Department of Health and Human Services recently gave a grant of $270,000 to a Muslim Brotherhood linked charity, according to The Daily Caller.

Islamic Relief Worldwide, a UK based charity and the largest Islamic Charity in the world, has been banned in Israel and the United Arab Emirates for dispersing funds to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Last month it received the money for its work in Kenya, specifically aimed at promoting “global health security as an international priority” as part of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s global health security partner engagement initiative.

While the specific program the US government is funding may be perfectly innocuous, the charity itself is not.

“The IRW is one of the sources of Hamas’s funding and a means for raising funds from various countries in the world” Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said in July 2014. “We do not intend to allow it to function and abet terrorist activity against Israel.”

In 2006 Israel arrested and deported Iyaz Ali, IRW’s Gaza branch project director, for working “to transfer funds and assistance to various Hamas institutions and organizations.”

In 2014 Islamic Relief Worldwide announced they had conducted an independent audit which found no ties to terrorism whatsoever.

“Islamic Relief abhors terrorism in all its forms” the group said in a statement. “We are an impartial, independent, purely humanitarian organization whose sole focus is to alleviate poverty and suffering.” They refused to name the auditor due to “sensitivities in the region.”

Israel and the United Arab Emirates rejected the findings and stood by their designations. Israel charged that Islamic Relief Worldwide “funnels millions of dollars a year to Hamas institutions.”

This is not the first time the US government has funded Islamic Relief Worldwide despite concerns being raised about the group’s links to terrorism.

In December 2015 the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded a grant of $100,000, also for the organization’s work in Kenya.

By continuing to fund charities with ties to terrorism, the US government is legitimizing all aspects of their work, not just those areas they are directly supporting.

There are plenty of underfunded and laudable projects around the world with no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas.

Why isn’t the US government funding them instead?