ICP: Islamic Charities Project

Project Description

The aim of this project is to reflect how unjustified obstacles in the way of bona fide Islamic charitable institutions can be collectively removed. Many experts hold that the best way to give aid in critical situations is often, rather than through top-down initiatives, to strengthen local people’s ability to help themselves through community-based organizations that make for autonomy. A medical analogy would be the provision of immune system boosters. Among Muslims and no less than among Christian or Jewish communities – where faith-based organizations are much in favour – religion is the basis of vast civil society networks that can be used as conduits for intelligent aid.

Certainly a cloud hangs over the whole sector of Islamic charities. It is widely suspected that some of them are vehicles for terrorist finance. But it ought to be possible to satisfy legitimate security concerns while also finding ways to enable bona fide Islamic charities to achieve their potential. Failure to do this can only aggravate resentment among Muslims that an integral part of their religious and cultural heritage is being unfairly criminalized.

Over the past five years the Swiss Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Political Division IV has been funding the Islamic Charities Project (ICP, formerly known as the Montreux Initiative) because it considers charitable institutions working at grass roots levels to have an important humanitarian value in providing aid to people in need if their work is based on the principles of impartiality, efficiency and financial transparency.
The Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies has conducted research on faith-based organisations in different settings, in particular in Muslim-majority countries. It has also supported the work of internationally-acclaimed anthropologist Jonathan Benthall who has studied the work of zakat organizations and other Islamic charities in countries such as Mali, Indonesia and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The main purposes of ICP are:

[a] To generate research-based knowledge on the  ‘receiving end’ (zakat committees, mechanisms for the distribution of depoliticized aid through local Islamic charities, etc) and to make results available to a wider public by publishing them in Arabic and English;

[b] To come forth with policy recommendations on how to make the work of Islamic charities more effective and more open to international scrutiny and accountability;
[c] To facilitate dialogue among the various constituencies – Muslim and non-Muslim, governmental and civil society, in the USA, Europe and in the Middle East where communication and understanding around Islamic charities seem at present to be blocked.
[d] From a methodological perspective, the projects also aims at coming up with a more refined understanding of how confidence-building measures and joint action can contribute to the resolution of ongoing and complex conflicts around Islamic charities in various local and trans-national contexts.

Read more in the ICP Project Brief

Publications

One of the areas of focus of the project is the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), where research is being undertaken on the local zakat committees (social welfare committees charged with the collection and distribution of Islamic legal alms). An occasional paper was published in 2008: The Palestinian Zakat Committees (1993-2007) and Their Contested Interpretations (available in English and in Arabic), written by Jonathan Benthall.

Building on this, a working paper was published in 2009: Role and Governance of Islamic Charitable Organizations: The West Bank Zakat Committees (1977-2009) in the Local Context (available in English and in Arabic), written by Emanuel Schaeublin. These papers were conceived as a first step towards an extensive and objective study of the Palestinian zakat committees.
These papers argue for a nuanced interpretation of the zakat committees’ role in order to enhance public knowledge about the issue and its complex political context.
Based on the results of research, it is hoped that a dialogue with local stakeholders and academics in the OPT will be launched to assess how the governance of the zakat committees in the OPT can be implemented in a way that protects them from being over-politicized.
 

Complementing the West Bank working paper, a new working paper was published in February 2012, analyzing institutionalized zakat practices in the Gaza Strip from 1973 to 2011 (available in English and Arabic).

The Working Paper, written by Emanuel Schaeublin, argues that prior to 2007 the zakat sector in the Gaza Strip was successful in effectively serving local communities thanks to a decentralized system of governance that allowed for a certain degree of local autonomy. However, research shows that the system was compromised by the intervention of political networks, the Palestinian security apparatuses, and the Israeli occupation. As a consequence, the effectiveness of zakat-based relief activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been severely diminished since 2007. In 2011, the political situation continued to be detrimental to an efficient and transparent zakat sector able to enhance local communities.

Finally, in relation to the two working papers, the CCDP released a media study purported to analyze how local journalists of different political leanings covered the issue of zakat committees and the contentious reform of 2007.

This study, entitled "Reforming or Instrumentalizing Zakat? A Study of Palestinian Media Coverage", reviews the media coverage of the struggle over the zakat committees in the Palestinian media after the 2007 internal split. Indeed, the reforms introduced by the Ministry of Awqaf in the West Bank in December 2007 provoked a controversial discussion in the Ramallah and Gaza-based news outlets. The study shows that most of the media discussion was distorted by political points of view: editors did not manage to use an independent and critical tone to discuss the events.

Relevant links and articles

"Charité bien ordonnée", in Egypt Today, June 2010

"Islamic Charity Organizations are a Powerful Force for Integration", interview with Jonathan Benthall in Qantare.de, 2010