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| Africa: Subsaharan |
| Islamic charities under scrutiny due to al-Qaeda fears |
| 2005-10-15 |
| Africa's Islamic charities are booming but their success is also stoking suspicions -- are they genuinely trying to help the destitute or are they preachers of religious fundamentalism using aid operations as a front? Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Islamic non-governmental organisations (NGOs) -- the fastest growing charities in Africa -- have come under close scrutiny. Some of those operating in the world's poorest continent have had their assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department on suspicion of raising funds for al Qaeda. Others have been shut down at Washington's request. Yet advocates of Islamic NGOs -- some of which are based locally while others are funded from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Libya -- say they are not trading aid for faith. They argue it is precisely their Islamic inspiration that helps reach out to those who would not listen to their Christian or secular counterparts. "We work in different fields -- educational, cultural and humanitarian," said Idris Al Hareir, a professor of Islamic history and senior official from the World Islamic Call Society (WICS), a Libyan-based charity active in sub-Saharan Africa. "We teach Arabic to those who want to learn, we try to improve literacy, and we've been digging water wells in West African countries like Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso," Al Hareir told Reuters by telephone from Paris. Organisations like WICS are increasingly working alongside United Nations agencies and Western charities in parts of Africa where winning over religious leaders is key to convincing sceptical Muslim communities to accept outside help. When the government of Senegal -- a West African state which is 95 percent Muslim -- first started trying to fight HIV/AIDS by sending doctors into villages to teach people about condoms, they were given a hostile reception. Religious leaders thought promoting condoms risked creating a generation of promiscuous infidels. Among those who helped persuade them otherwise was an Islamic charity, Jamra, based in the capital Dakar. "People were hostile. They thought their children would be taught to have sex, would be turned into perverts, would have their morals destroyed," said Jamra chairman Abdou Latif Gueye. The organisation helped broker a deal between the government and religious leaders under which clerics would preach abstinence and fidelity but not criticise the use of condoms. "We focused our studies on religion ... We said 'leave us to convince the imams with Koranic verses and you tell the medical story'," Gueye said. The strategy paid off. Just 0.8 percent of adults aged 15-49 in Senegal were living with HIV/AIDS by the end of 2003, the second lowest prevalence rate in sub-Saharan Africa. "The imam has an audience that no doctor or NGO could hope for. Five times a day he has a congregation which represents all of society: the old, young, rich and poor," Gueye said. In a similar more recent case in Niger, over 100 Islamic religious teachers spoke out this month against "marabouts" -- local spiritual leaders -- who oppose vaccination of children against polio on the grounds the vaccines are harmful. In Nigeria, Africa's most populous state, Muslim politicians and clerics blocked a 2003 polio immunisation drive, saying they suspected vaccines had been tainted with AIDS and infertility agents by Western powers waging war on Islam. The ban divided the powerful Muslim elite in northern Nigeria and charities were caught in the middle. The temporary boycott caused the crippling disease to spread to some African and Asian countries previously declared polio-free. A scientist working for Jama'atu Nasril Islam (Congregation for the Propagation of Islam), a major Muslim organisation which is also involved in health-related activities, took part in a series of tests that found some vaccines were contaminated. It was only when a deal was struck to import vaccines from Indonesia -- the country with the biggest number of Muslims in the world -- that northern Nigerian governors lifted the ban. Some security experts, particularly in the United States, fear Islamic NGOs are spreading militant forms of Islam using humanitarian assistance as a pretext. The U.S. Treasury Department froze the U.S. assets of the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA) last October, an organisation which three years earlier had been granted U.S. funding for relief work in northern Mali. The Treasury Department said IARA had raised funds with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 2001 attacks, to provide assistance to Taliban fighters. Islamic clerics and analysts warn against tarring all Islamic charities with the same brush. Independent think-tank Crisis Group said in a report earlier this year that orphanages run by Islamic NGOs in Mauritania, Mali and Chad had been shut down at the request of the United States and warned such closures could stoke anti-American sentiment in the region. "Organisations that you call terrorist movements, we call Muslim organisations to defend Islamic interests," Mamour Fall, a Senegalese imam deported from Italy in 2003 after being branded a national security threat, told Reuters. World Islamic Call Society's Al Hareir said that while teaching the Koran was a key part of humanitarian work for many Muslims, conversion was not a prerequisite for receiving aid. "It is our duty only to teach about Islam, never to put pressure on people. You cannot link the needs of the people to converting them," he said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 Everyone needs a "Wa-Hobby." |
| Posted by: Bardo 2005-10-15 17:54 |
| #1 the World Islamic Call Society (WICS) Islamic Call == Da'Waa? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-10-15 17:44 |