The globalisation of Islamic Relief

by Ehsan Masood

London - The experience of one Islamic charity with modest English origins is symbol and portent of changes in the landscape of NGOs worldwide, says Ehsan Masood. In August 2002, a young executive dressed in a suit and tie approached me with his business card. I was in the press-conference hall of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, a gathering of the great and the good to mark the tenth anniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. A planned briefing from yet another honourable minister for the environment had been delayed, so I had loitered towards an exhibition of NGOs in search of more stimulating company.

The business card said "Islamic Relief Worldwide". Somewhat nervously, I asked if this was the same "worldwide" organisation that once had its headquarters in a small office in Birmingham, England. He replied that it did, that the United Kingdom head office now had more than 100 staff, and that there were field offices in other countries. Islamic Relief, he told me, was at the Johannesburg summit to observe the negotiations, lobby policymakers, and network with other NGOs.

This story came back to me as images from the Kashmir earthquake cascaded through the television screen in October 2005. There was Islamic Relief once more, this time next to Oxfam, the United Nations children's fund (Unicef) and other international organisations responding to calls for aid in the aftermath of a tragedy that has taken more than 79,000 lives. The charity had announced an immediate donation of 1 million. This has since been more than doubled. It all seemed a world away from 1984 when Islamic Relief opened for business with a donation of 20 pence.

Why should this be surprising?

At one level it shouldn't. Islamic Relief today operates as would any large international charity based in Britain: it sources its income from a mix of individual donations, business, and government. It has a network of worldwide field offices. Its senior officials - not just its founder, Hany El Banna - have access to heads of state, ministers, top-level civil servants and the media in the countries it works in. And it has its teeth sunk firmly in the international aid policy agenda.

Yet, while none of this is innovative for an international non-profit in the modern age, it does represent a milestone of sorts. What we are witnessing is possibly the world's first international NGO with origins in Islam. Add to this the fact that this particular NGO is headquartered not in Riyadh or Cairo but in London, and its story becomes even more interesting. Islamic Relief may be the largest of its kind, but it is not alone: other British Muslim aspirants for international NGO-dom are the charities Muslim Aid and Muslim Hands. The message is clear: watch this space.

A new horizon

It has been a long journey that reveals a mix of continuity and change. Like other, older British charities, Islamic Relief, Muslim Aid (1985) and Muslim Hands (1993) began life as small organisations, deeply serious about the practice of religion and focused on helping people of the same faith. Today, they are big, still serious about the practice of faith, but no longer consumed by a desire to help people of their own faith alone.

What has happened is that they have grown up and they have modernised. The "Islamic" in Islamic Relief today refers to the act of giving. The "Muslim" in Muslim Aid is the same as the "Christian" in Christian Aid: the charity's recipients do not have to be Muslim, or religious at all, to be eligible for assistance. True, the majority of the staff of Britain's Muslim charities are still Muslim, but it is only a matter of time before this next milestone is crossed.

The principal tension for charities such as Islamic Relief is to maintain the support of their traditional donor base as they expand, while at the same time knowing how to handle the many overtures from governments that inevitably come their way - especially when a charity based in the United Kingdom becomes large and influential in parts of the world where the British government is not very popular. Islamic Relief's close links to the British government will not be lost on those of its donors who are angry with Tony Blair's support for and participation in the invasion of Iraq.

A secondary tension is that most ordinary Muslims in Britain are not at all used to the modern, professional charity run by people who carry laptop computers and write their emails on a Blackberry. The idea that hard-earned donations from the people on low incomes in Britain could be used to recruit lobbyists, campaigners, researchers and press officers (as opposed to directly helping the poor in other countries) will for many not be altogether welcome.

Modernisation and international expansion have inevitably brought new tensions. But these trends also offer something different and potentially very exciting: the prospect of real change within the world of international NGOs, still dominated by wealthy and powerful organisations based in the rich countries of the global north.

For if a relatively small twenty-year-old British community charity called Islamic Relief has the ability to go global in a relatively short space of time, the potential for much larger organisations elsewhere to think bigger than they do at present is there for the taking.

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Ehsan Masood is project director of the Gateway Trust.

Source: www.openDemocracy.net, November 29, 2005

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