Humanitarian and charitable associations in the Arab world: necessity and potential
The importance of humanitarian and charitable associations has never been a subject of debate in countries where a culture of doing good is deeply rooted (“whoever volunteers good, it is better for him” [Qur’an 2:184]). In popular and religious tradition, charitable work brings together basic notions, first among them duty, worship and obligation. It is also one of the means by which human communities defend themselves against misfortune, calamity and the vicissitudes of time.
It is well known that from the earliest years of Islam the waqf emerged as the most important form of the right to solidarity rooted in Islamic culture. Private endowments were established alongside official ones, and the private waqf stood outside the laws of historical despotism in all their forms and guises: it could not be disposed of, sold or confiscated.
Thus, while governments were weak at some times and strong at others, there were constants relating to the right to education, health, places of worship and help for the vulnerable, which were provided by non-governmental community institutions. Schools spread, medical centres for teaching and treatment were founded, public and private libraries multiplied, and many forms of protection and assistance emerged for travellers, the unemployed and students, and even for animals.
Charitable work was thus an essential means of spreading knowledge, fighting poverty and disease, training people and strengthening solidarity within society, its cohesion and its civil peace. These principles became so deeply rooted in Arab and/or Islamic culture that they came to be taken for granted, affected only in very exceptional circumstances and limited experiences that prevented them from playing a central role in the life of society.
This brief reminder was necessary to recall that the idea of a non-governmental space preceded the European idea of bourgeois civil society, and was a common denominator of the great pre-capitalist civilisations worldwide. In this sense, it was in every age one of the elements protecting society from the arbitrariness, neglect or absence of power. The Western Enlightenment did not pass without affirming this fundamental space, regarded as the infrastructure needed to rationalise the exercise of power, ensure public oversight of the separation of powers, and strengthen the role of society and the nation so as to guarantee a minimum of the right to self-expression and to participation in public life outside any vision imposed from above and in advance: what might be called the humanisation of human society and resistance to treating it as a herd of subjects.
The first changes came in the last decades of the Ottoman caliphate under pressure from Europe, and continued under the national liberation movements against colonial Europe; in both cases, society did not feel it fully belonged to what was happening around it. When the post-colonial Arab state came to power, it took away, in most cases, the margin that citizens had held during this period of historical transition. The confiscation of both the historic private endowments and the new community associations began, with the aim of strengthening so-called popular organisations and the like. Even in states not infected by modern closed ideologies, the authorities were jealous and determined to hold the entire margin of public action. In Saudi Arabia, the Afghan “miracle” may have played the decisive role in turning humanitarian and charitable associations from a merely local phenomenon under government supervision and monitoring into a community phenomenon in every sense of the word, whose right to a strong existence was supported at once by the state, the religious establishment and the United States. For obvious political and ideological reasons, the American administration realised that confronting the Soviet threat and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan required broadening the view set out by John Foster Dulles in his book War or Peace, in which he proposed countering communism with Christian missions, so as to include Islam, particularly in the Afghan experience and in the Muslim republics of the Soviet Union. This alliance of interests allowed mutual facilities and extensive cooperation between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and during this period community society was given an opportunity to express itself within a significant margin, as long as the purpose was to support this joint strategy. But society tasted independent action, voluntary organisation, mutual support and cooperation across borders, and the strengthening of the idea of solidarity, righteousness and benevolence. The phenomenon of charitable and humanitarian organisations thus spread to many countries on every continent, and to issues ranging from relief in wartime to the building of schools, hospitals and mosques.
The reason for this success may lie in the fact that charitable and humanitarian associations had put down roots in the collective consciousness over long centuries. This made changes to the laws on associations a mere formality in the face of the traditions of cooperation, benevolence, solidarity and assistance in Arab-Islamic history, which in popular culture have become not only a necessity for reducing violence, lessening want and easing people’s suffering, but also a religious duty in every sense of faith known to Muslim societies in all their diversity. Whether a charitable association is licensed by the Ministry of the Interior or by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour, the primary sense that charitable work is necessary is a moral and religious sense of its necessity. It is one of history’s farces that humanitarian and charitable associations were struck down with the rise of the authoritarian model of government, which carried progressive ideologies that saw themselves as the guardians and arbiters of state and society and as the holders of all the magic solutions to their problems. These associations declined sharply in the “modern” states, which abandoned both the good traditions of Arab society and the good features of Western society. Thus, within a short period, the number of community organisations in the Arab world fell at the very time when non-governmental organisations were carrying out their quiet, peaceful revolution worldwide. Associations for memorising the Qur’an and for employing the infirm were banned on the grounds of links to an opposition current or of being used by a banned party. Cultural and sports clubs and trade unions were nationalised, and forming a community grouping became punishable under emergency laws. In a large number of Arab states, this confined the phenomenon to what may fairly be called “governmental and semi-official associations”.
However, the disintegration of single-party systems and totalitarian power, and the outbreak of wars of liberation or civil wars in a number of Arab and Muslim countries, restored the standing of humanitarian and charitable organisations and the need for them. It is noticeable that as soon as there is even a limited margin in the laws on associations and freedom of assembly, as with the December 1990 law in Algeria, or a collapse of the state’s executive institutions, as in Iraq in 2003, the idea of non-governmental associations quickly grows again. Likewise, the Palestinian experience in exile was able to lend great support to Palestinian steadfastness in the camps and under occupation, and community associations in Palestine succeeded in preserving the cohesion of the social fabric and national and civic consciousness in the inhuman conditions of the occupation.
Although most humanitarian associations of Gulf origin have taken on an Islamic character, there are great differences between them: in the nature of their relationship with official institutions, such as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Saudi Arabia; in their relationship with the political Islamic movement or the Salafi movement; and finally, over the last two decades, with what is known as the jihadist movement.
Today, humanitarian and charitable associations are the only organisational structures capable of self-financing in the Arab and Muslim worlds. As such, they form the hard core of civil rights, civil peace and social solidarity, and fill the gaps left by states and governments. It is no secret that more than ninety per cent of professional human rights centres in the Arab world live on foreign funding and would die, or decline sharply, if it were cut off, whereas most charitable and humanitarian associations are able to live on their own resources and to continue with the support of the society around them.
Islamic humanitarian organisations have been able to learn important lessons from international and Western humanitarian organisations, and to cover areas neglected by Western organisations or by those influenced by the Western outlook. Although some of these organisations include active members of radical political tendencies, they have shown a high degree of professionalism and integrity, which has limited incidents of corruption and misuse of public money, something that has not been the general rule among well-resourced community associations, religious or secular. At the same time, we cannot overlook that they have fallen prey to the worldwide disease known as co-optation: because of their reputation and the trust society places in them, they have become a target for many banned political movements and an outlet for many political regimes unable to market their political wares.
This phenomenon is known to exist in the West as well: the ministries of cooperation and foreign affairs of northern countries fabricate organisations to order when needed or in times of crisis. The difference, however, is that in European countries, for example, where civil societies are strong, this phenomenon coexists with associations that are non-governmental and independent in word and deed, whereas the weakness of civil society in the countries of the South has a strong and lasting effect on charitable and humanitarian associations whenever there is an attempt to exploit them or drag them into partisan or governmental projects.
Despite the many weaknesses we see in the countries of the South, charitable associations have come to be seen as a threat to local governments and to coercive foreign interference, and even to the Western view of community work, whose agenda is shaped by Western public opinion.
The American administration recently imposed a condition on all non-governmental organisations receiving assistance from an American institution, requiring them to sign an undertaking not to deal with any organisation that the American administration classifies as terrorist. To put it plainly: a Palestinian NGO has no right to contact the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to ask about its prisoners and detainees, while there is nothing wrong with its contacting any extremist racist organisation in Israel. The administration is now intervening directly in the main countries with experience of charitable work in the Gulf. In his statement to Congress on 24 March 2004, Thomas Harrington, deputy assistant director of the FBI, said:
“Saudi Arabia has taken other measures in support of the joint efforts against terrorist financing. The Ministry of Labour has developed a database containing financial information on all its charities, which it updates quarterly on the basis of the financial reports submitted. Efforts are under way to include in this database the associations licensed by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. In addition, the Ministry of Labour audits all licensed charitable institutions, which means its licensed charities are covered as well.
The Saudis have begun to set up an official government money-transfer system in order to combat directly unlicensed transfers such as hawalas and other informal financial systems. The licensed transfers are called ‘Fast Cash’ and are linked to a commercial bank, so they are subject to all the requirements of the core bank. Representatives of the Saudi private sector have said that the service has been useful to business, and Saudi officials state that they have begun to crack down on unlicensed money transfers.”
The totalitarian tendency is the easiest, simplest and most useful tendency for every dictatorship. Demanding all of an association’s account records and financial registers, comprising general ledgers, general records, subsidiary books and records, invoices and income records, cash vouchers and expenditure records, sales and purchase books and records, income and expenditure account books, bad-debt records, cost-of-goods-sold records, books of loans received and granted, income statements, budget statements and all expenditure instruments, including invoices paid in cash, statements of the organisation’s objectives and programme of services, its statutes and organisational structure (and the organisational structure must include a definition of its structure and hierarchy, including offices at home and abroad if it has branches, addresses and telephone numbers, a list of employees and their positions and any other identifying information), detailed identities, identification documents attached to applications, payment records and all other documents relating to the recipients of grants, loans, expenditures, scholarships, salaries and other payments: demanding all this on the pretext of the war on terror means placing the non-governmental space in the archives of the CIA and of the intelligence services of the country concerned. It is a method that recalls the Soviet intelligence services, the Stasi and the defunct totalitarian model, now returning in clothes embroidered with the slogans of American liberalism.
We must never tire of recalling the constructive effect of non-governmental bodies and spaces in the countries of the South and the Muslim world. Since Arab and Islamic associations have become more strongly present, the nature of the relationship with oneself and with the other has changed, and so has the level of performance. We see today that administrative expenses are lowest in Islamic organisations, out of religious austerity; that society and activists hold them strictly to account in cases of corruption; and that there are competitive programmes in research, education and health. The broad presence of southern organisations and the multiplicity of sources of financial aid have led to greater independence and strengthened the idea of a global civil society, and the equation now rests on the need to think globally rather than in Western terms. For the activists of the South have their own institutions, reject any relationship of coercion or domination, and aspire to equal cooperation based on mutual respect and necessary complementarity.
The onslaught that Islamic and southern humanitarian organisations face today requires us to reconsider and reassess their make-up, role and performance. On the one hand, there is no sense in demanding that these organisations be neutralised in everything relating to their own view of the world: every humanitarian organisation in the world has objectives and a programme, and whether it is called Médecins du Monde, Secours Catholique or Islamic Relief, what unites its members includes a view of the world, of the non-governmental organisation, of the concept of solidarity, and of action at global level. This does not justify being drawn into direct conflicts or vulgar exploitation, whatever the country of origin and whatever the motives behind the organisation’s founding. Yet today, whether they like it or not and whether they are aware of it or not, humanitarian and charitable associations have gone beyond their immediate task of feeding a family, educating an orphan or easing the tragedies of war, to become one of the central guarantees for the defence of economic, social and cultural rights in the world, and one of the essential means of ensuring the cohesion of the social fabric in the countries of the South. In this sense, they no longer belong to a party political programme or a government so much as they are the common property of society.
It is this central position, growing in step with external pressure and internal need, that leads us to call for networks linking cultural elites, community initiatives and human rights organisations, with the aim of improving performance on the basis of studies and sociological field surveys paving the way for a critical assessment of their experience. This would make it possible to dissect structural and functional problems on the one hand, and open the way to overcoming current weaknesses for the better on the other. But if the crisis is dealt with from above, by the grey hats, that is, by the officials of unelected governments, we are about to assassinate the first seeds of the non-governmental space in the Muslim world. In this sense, we face a relapse into a bureaucratic model that led the Warsaw Pact to the ruin of the state and the fragmentation of societies, and whose chronic persistence in Iraq caused the loss of every standard of self-determination for individuals, groups and the state.
