Thin Mints are a favorite Girl Scout cookie variety, but a Muslim troop in St. Louis got in trouble when they skipped selling cookies to instead raise money for Palestinian kids. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

By Beth Harpaz February 29, 2024

An all-Muslim Girl Scout troop in St. Louis was threatened with legal action after the troop skipped selling cookies to instead raise money to help injured Palestinian children.

The eight-member troop made bracelets with letter beads spelling out “Palestine” or “Gaza” and sold them online for $5 to benefit the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

But after troop leader Nawal Abuhamdeh posted word of the project on Instagram and Facebook, saying “cookie season is going to look a little different for Troop 149 this year,” the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri asked her to remove Girl Scout branding from the effort — or face legal action. 

“That was shocking. I was scared at first,” Abuhamdeh told a local NBC affiliate.

Neither Abuhamdeh nor Girl Scouts of the USA, the organization’s national headquarters, responded to requests for comment.

Outside fundraising in the past

The regional council told Abuhamdeh in an email that she had to remove Girl Scout branding from her effort because the Girl Scouts are a “non-partisan organization that does not take sides in political situations.” 

Abuhamdeh questioned that reasoning, since her troop was raising money for a medical charity. Girl Scout fundraising for other humanitarian causes — like Ukraine — has been permitted in the past.

Although Abuhamdeh said she wasn’t aware of it at the time, Girl Scouts of the USA, the group’s national organization, had also lifted an official ban on outside fundraising on Oct. 10, three days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. That green light allowed Girl Scout troops to aid victims in the Israel-Gaza war as long as the money went to charities listed with Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits based on accountability and other practices.

The charity chosen by the St. Louis troop, the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, aids children who need specialized surgery. That charity happened to have a four-star rating (the highest given) from Charity Navigator. 

But GSUSA ended the outside fundraising period on Jan. 10, just as annual Girl Scout cookie sales kicked off for the season. A few days later, Abuhamdeh’s troop opted to make bracelets instead of selling cookies after “debating whether we had the energy to put into a cookie season as we were grieving,” Abuhamdeh told NBC. Thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, have been killed and injured as a result of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Abuhamdeh told the Forward she was “never aware of the lift to fundraise for Palestine/Israel from October-January. All of the correspondence with Girl Scouts never mentioned it during the emails either. It was always about violating policies related to political and partisan (issues). If I would have been approached more kindly, telling me that I had just missed the window, things would look a little differently right now.”

An apology 

GSUSA CEO Bonnie Barczykowski eventually apologized for the kerfuffle. She was quoted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as saying that the national office had not approved the threatening email and other messages sent by the regional council to the troop. The apology came after the Council on American-Islamic Relations asked the national organization to investigate what happened.

But Abuhamdeh’s troop has now left the Girl Scouts altogether. She told The Washington Post the girls decided to leave because “they didn’t think we did anything wrong.” But she intends to keep them together doing community service work and other Girl Scout-type activities.

It’s not unusual for Girl Scout troops to consist of members from a single ethnic group or religion. For example, GSUSA trumpeted the creation of an Orthodox Jewish Chabad-sponsored troop in 2010.

GSUSA also recently announced that Noorain Kahn was the first Muslim American to become president of its national board. Kahn did not respond to a request for comment.

The handmade beaded bracelets are now sold out, the Post-Dispatch reported, but the girls’ webpage allows for donations. So far they have raised $10,000 for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

“This isn’t political,” Abuhamdeh told the Post. “It’s very simple actually: We saw a need. We saw people hurting, and we wanted to help those people.”

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