Western Vs. Islamist NGOs

Relief work: Western Vs Islamist NGOs?
Iqbal Khattak
The Friday Times, October 13-19, 2006 - Vol. XVIII, No. 4

Locals dispel as a myth the claim that Islamist groups hindered the relief activities of foreign workers but there is some evidence that Islamists are influencing local people against western NGOs
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BALAKOT: While the international community is being lauded for its unprecedented response to the October 8 quake in Pakistan, observers say the prompt response by some Islamic organisations and their volunteers was also monumental and should not be ignored.

Locals say that the first relief workers who pulled bodies from beneath debris and provided first-aid medical treatment to people in Azad Kashmir and Mansehra district in the Frontier province were what Islamabad and the rest of the world call “Kashmiri jihadis”. They also dispel the myth that these Islamist groups hindered the relief activities of foreign workers. “This myth has also been supported by a British charity in a latest report,” says one source.

There is evidence, however, that the assertion that Islamists may be trying to influence the people may not be entirely wrong.

The communication officer of a western NGO says Islamists are using religious scholars to convince people to stay away from the “western religious influence” of foreign relief organisations. “These [Islamist] NGOs are horrified by the fact that western female aid workers are working out there in the fields among the men. They think this is a bad influence on locals. They also propagate that foreign NGOs are actually here, not for relief work, but to convert people to Christianity,” says the communication officer.

In fact, insiders say one foreign NGO packed up and left just before Ramzan when the local community stood up in protest against what was the “preaching of Christianity in the name of relief activities” among quake survivors in Battal area of Mansehra district. On the other hand, critics of the Islamists say they are taking part in humanitarian assistance for their own “self-interest”. “This is a ready-made recruitment drive for them [Islamists],” says an observer.

There are also those who claim Islamist NGOs have worked hand in hand with foreign workers. “UK-based Ummah Welfare Trust extended a helping hand to Islamist NGOs,” Ismail Siddiqui, the manager of Al-Khidmat Welfare Society in Balakot told TFT. “It is wrong to presume there is a clash of interest between the NGOs of the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. We have been helped by many western NGOs like Charity Australia, Germany’s Daimra and British Bradford.”

Siddiqui is a senior aid worker of a Al-Khidmat Welfare Society which is the humanitarian wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami. “Al-Khidmat is working with Turkey to launch an international level NGO that will be the Muslim world’s show of power during humanitarian crisis,” says Ismail. “Islamic NGOs did what they could but there was still lack of recourses and capacity. This will be taken care of through this international NGO. But we will not work under the United Nations because its mission and objectives are very different. We will be independent,” he added.

Siddiqui also feels that it is this problem of funding that puts Islamist NGOs behind their foreign counterparts even though they have more dedicated workers who know the area inside out. The Islamist NGOs working in NWFP include Al-Khidmat Welfare Society, Jamaat-ut-Dawa previously called Lashkar-e-Tayba, and Al-Rashid Trust, a Karachi-based trust that allegedly provided financial help to the Taliban before their ouster from Afghanistan in late 2001. The Islamists also take credit for doing what Westerners did not deem important: rebuilding damaged mosques, which in NWFP alone numbered about 400.

While relief workers may have wrapped up their businesses and moved on, twenty-year-old Muhammad Sabir carries on with his work. He sells audiocassettes of speeches by religious scholars from the Punjab province. He makes use of a kiosk set up as a distribution point for relief goods soon after the October 8 earthquake.

“The business is good. It started soon after the quake,” Sabir tells TFT, showing off a tape of late Maulana Azam Tariq, head of an anti-Shia militant organization. “These speeches [by Maulana Tariq Jameel, Maulana Abdul Nadeem and Maulana Azam Tariq] do not spread hate. They are only a reminder of why the earthquake came and that people should be good Muslims to escape God’s wrath.”

As Sabir explains this, Azizullah, a cab driver, buys a tape from him. “The earthquake struck us because we are increasingly moving away from Islam. My belief is that if we practise our religion the way Islam has asked us to, God will protect us from all miseries and sufferings,” Azizullah says.

Most people in Balakot second this view and believe that they suffered because they “forgot God”; they also say these audiocassettes Sabir and others sell remind them of how Muslims should live, keeping a distance from the “material world” and staying under “God’s protection”.
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