Abstract
This article examines the different roles religion can play when migrants organize for development. We focus on organizing for development, through transnational Islamic charity, formally and informally, and where religion takes on explicit or implicit roles. By taking Muslim religious practices as starting points, different forms of development engagements are revealed, than if starting with a focus on so-called ‘faith-based organizations’ (FBOs). Whereas religion is often seen instrumentally in development studies, we find that the roles of religion are not only functional, but also substantive and relational. The article draws on qualitative data collected in Norway, Pakistan and the UK.
Introduction
The volume of Islamic charity globally has been estimated to be at least 15 times that of total worldwide humanitarian aid (IRIN, 2012). Yet, these flows are largely not included in official aid statistics. Partly, because these are private donations, commonly given with discretion following Islamic teaching, and thus invisible, but arguably also because Islamic charity organizations are situated at the peripheries of international aid.
When Muslims migrate their Islamic charity it becomes transnational, as exchanges that would have happened locally, cross borders. As such transnational Islamic charity can overlap and intersect with what elsewhere might be called ‘diaspora development engagements’ (Brinkerhoff, 2012). That migrants contribute to development in their country of origin is well established (de Haas, 2010: Faist, 2008: Nyberg-Sørensen et al., 2002: Van Hear, 2010) and that religion can play a role has been acknowledged (Erdal, 2012; Levitt, 2003; Ozkan, 2012; Rosenow-Williams and Sezgin, 2014). However, which roles, if any, religion plays, needs to be further unpacked, taking on board the criticisms of studies of religion and development being ‘instrumental, narrow and normative’ (Jones and Juul Petersen, 2011). In this article, we explore the different roles religion can play when migrants organize for ‘development’.
We focus on ‘transnational Islamic charity’, because the organization thereof combines the migratory and the religious in an inherent, organic way, which we argue enables seeing the different roles which religion might play in the organization of diaspora development efforts. We understand Islamic charity as religiously framed normative ideals and social practices (Erdal and Borchgrevink, 2017). The Islamic charity we explore takes place within transnational social fields constituted by actors in—and flows between—multiple locations. In these social fields, religious ties often overlap with familial, social and political ties. Islamic charity may be organized by development actors including states and large-scale Muslim NGOs, and as smaller scale, formally and informally organized, initiatives among Muslim and diaspora communities. The large-scale end of this spectrum is by now well known, with actors such as Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief (Juul Petersen, 2016). Our focus is on the smaller scale end, which is comprised of private, non-governmental actors, both formal organizations and informal groups.
A range of ‘new development actors’ such as businesses, celebrities, diaspora groups and non-traditional state donors are seen as becoming salient in development circles (Richey and Ponte, 2014). Transnational Islamic charity is part of this landscape. The interest in such ‘new’ actors in development studies is associated with changing perceptions of ‘development’, but the novelty arguably lies in paying attention to a more diverse set of actors, rather than in the newness of these actors themselves.
Diaspora development engagements, and the ways they are organized, need not involve a role for religion at all; this is an empirical question. Furthermore, ‘religion’, much as ‘culture’, is a poor analytical concept, due to its unruly and highly contextual nature. Nevertheless, we argue that as an umbrella category, religion is an important dimension of social reality, which for that reason merits attention (Deneulin and Rakodi, 2011). In this article, we have purposefully selected a case where religion does play a role, so as to analyze how and when religion influences development engagements, impacting substance and ways of organizing.
Charity is part of all religious traditions and figures centrally in the origins of many contemporary aid organizations (Bornstein and Redfield, 2011; Deneulin and Bano, 2009; Haynes, 2007). Within Sunni Islamic traditions, 1 directions for giving charity are described in very concrete terms (Benthall, 1999). Institutions for giving charity are detailed in the Quran: the obligation to give zakat (the religious tax, often counted as 2.5 per cent of one’s annual surplus), voluntary alms (sadqa), religious endowment (waqf) and religious sacrifice (qurbani). Islamic teachings give directions about worthy recipients of charity and encouraged activities (such as helping widows and orphans, or supporting education). Simultaneously, there is a religious obligation to support those closest to you first—starting with your family, then your neighbour, the global Muslim community of believers (the umma) and humanity—creating what can be visualized as concentric circles of responsibility. Migrants continue to give annual zakat and other voluntary alms and therefore ‘transnational Islamic charity’ overlaps with what in other contexts might be described as ‘development aid’: at the level of ideals, for example, social justice through re-distribution and humanitarianism, but also at the level of practical efforts, for example, supporting education or improving livelihood opportunities.
In the next section, we outline our conceptual approach to the organization of transnational Islamic charity. This is followed by analysis of the ways Islamic charity is organized in the transnational social field spanning Oslo, London and Pakistani Punjab, with a focus on five distinct arenas: mosques, women’s Quran study groups, transnational religious organizations, Muslim non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and diaspora development organizations.
Transnational Islamic charity and development
In addressing the question of how transnational Islamic charity is organized, and what roles religion play, we combine insights from two sets of literature: a strand of development research that focuses on religion in development and the literature on organized diaspora development engagements within migration studies. In development studies, there has been a renewed interest in the role of religion—including faith-based organizations (FBOs)—over the last decade (Haar, 2011; Jennings and Clarke, 2008). This literature has been criticized for an overly narrow understanding of development: ‘based on normative assumptions about how both religion and development are conceptualised: religion is understood to be apart from “mainstream development”, while development is defined as that thing that development agencies do’ (Jones and Juul Petersen, 2011). Simultaneously, migrants’ development engagements have been increasingly discussed in migrant-receiving countries, and internationally the interest in facilitating diaspora development initiatives has grown, but with a similar assumption, that what migrants do ought to contribute to ‘development’ narrowly defined (Sinatti and Horst, 2014). While development can be used as a broad concept to denote improvement of the current condition—or positive societal change—it is commonly used in a much more narrow sense to refer to planned activities of professional development actors (Sinatti and Horst, 2014). Arguably, the contemporary call for diaspora engagement is rooted in a rather limited definition of development where migrants are cast as ‘development actors’ within a predefined development script (Raghuram, 2009; Sinatti and Horst, 2014), defined by ‘the ideas and world of development aid as a distinct area of practice, conducted by development organizations staffed by development professionals, and often informed by academics engaged in development studies’ (Bakewell, 2008: 1342–43). Drawing on these critical perspectives, we include in our understanding of development not only those practices that are explicitly framed in the language of mainstream development, but a range of activities that in different ways are aimed at reducing poverty and aiding people in need, including those that are conventionally categorized as humanitarian.
Studies of religion in development have commonly focused on FBOs, and until recently almost exclusively on Christian FBOs from the Global North, aiding people in the Global South (Clarke, 2008). In this literature, FBOs are commonly understood as faith-based development organizations or NGOs. This reflects a more general tendency to view religion instrumentally, as being either an obstacle or a catalyst for development. Although a number of typologies of FBOs (Bradley, 2009; Clarke, 2008), some in contrast to NGOs (Clarke and Ware, 2015), have been developed, studies have ‘lumped together a wide variety of organizations—large and small, volunteer and professional, local and international—under the heading of “faith-based organization”’, often hiding more than it reveals about the role of religion in development (Jones and Juul Petersen, 2011: 1298). In our study, we seek to discern the different roles religion may play not only in formal FBOs, but in a range of organizational forms in which Islamic charity and diasporic development engagements intersect.
There are few studies examining the role of religion in engagement for relief and development in informal organizations, or the role of religion within organizations that are not explicitly ‘faith-based’. This is reflective of a broader trend in development studies, where first NGOs, and now FBOs, tend to be studied as closed entities, disconnected from their contexts. NGOs, for example, are frequently analyzed without taking into account the ‘institutional and social structures of which they [NGOs] are part and which are frequently transnational in nature’ (Bebbington, 2004: 729). Arguably, there is a need for seeing development actors—informal networks or formal organizations—in their particular social, political and historical contexts (Bebbington, 2004; Hilhorst, 2003; Mosse, 2013; Juul Petersen, 2016), and to focus on ‘actually existing civil society’ (Mamdani, 1996; Mohan, 2002).
Migrants have always organized in order to contribute to their regions of origin, beyond the family sphere, connecting diaspora and origin communities across transnational social fields (Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004). Collective diaspora contributions to development, whether through formal organizations or loose networks, are often discussed as ‘diaspora development engagements’ (Brinkerhoff, 2012; Sinatti and Horst, 2014), or as ‘collective remittances’ (Goldring, 2004). The uniting principle can be kinship or religion, shared place of origin or a combination of these. Despite ethnographers’ knowledge about the importance of religion as institutions, communities, belief and practice, few studies of migrants’ development engagement explicitly foreground the roles of religion. Thus, there are shared limitations to literatures in development and migration studies, in adopting a narrow and instrumental view of both ‘religion’ and ‘development’. Building on emergent work within development studies, shifting the focus to how faith influences development and how people conceive of and practice development (Freeman, 2012; Juul Petersen, 2016), we analyze the different roles religion can play when migrants organize for development.
Inspired by Clarke’s analysis of relations between donors and FBOs, where he distinguishes between ‘deployment of faith’ as ‘active’ or ‘passive’ (Clarke, 2008: 32), we find it useful to think in terms of explicit versus implicit roles of religion. In Clarke’s typology, an ‘active deployment of faith’ places faith before humanitarian objectives, while a ‘passive deployment of faith’ designates faith as subsidiary to broader humanitarian objectives (2008: 32). For the purpose of analysis of transnational Islamic charity and diaspora development engagements, we use explicit roles of religion to refer to cases where engagement is expressed and given meaning primarily in religious terms, using religious language, symbols and authority (Lister, 2003). Implicit roles refer to cases where engagement is primarily expressed in development terms, but where faith plays a role in motivating, mobilizing and giving direction to what is done and when it takes place. Whether the role of religion is implicit or explicit may be conscious or unconscious, and depends on context. An organization may use a ‘development frame’—using the language, symbols and authority from development—when seeking support from a mainstream development donor, and a ‘religious frame’ when raising funds in a mosque, or a church.
Focusing on how transnational Islamic charity is organized, the potential relevance of transnational ties is a given. The transnational dimension, manifests itself as flows of money, people and ideas, and structurally, in how Islamic charity is organized. In order to approach the question empirically, we adopt a transnational optic (Levitt and Jaworsky, 2007), which allows us to see the circulation of ideas and practices as constantly ‘on the move’ (Levitt, 2013). Islamic charity involves intricate networks of resource flows, but also networks of power and of personal and contractual relationships (Bebbington, 2004), in which the local and transnational intersect.
Our analysis of organizing transnational Islamic charity focuses on the relative roles of organizing modes (formal–informal) and the role of religion (explicit–implicit) as illustrated by Figure 1, through which we also explore the nature and role of the ‘transnational’ for organizing transnational Islamic charity. In Figure 1, we illustrate our way of thinking about dimensions of transnational organized Islamic charity in a four-fold typology. As with all typologies, this typology only captures parts of the picture. Focusing on the implicit–explicit role of religion and the formal–informal modes of organizing, it does not attempt to assess whether development the migrants do are good or not (which would involve a normative position on what constitutes improvement), nor how recipients view the assistance provided, and the role of religion in this.
In order to study transnational Islamic charity, we selected two mosques as entry points into the ‘Islamic charity sector’ among the Pakistani diaspora in Oslo: the Islamic Cultural Centre (ICC) and the Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran. These are two large and well-established congregations with transnational ties to Pakistan. We also included a multi-ethnic, Muslim NGO, Rahma Islamic Relief, and the Pakistan Development Network, an umbrella for a range of organizations and looser networks engaged in development in migrants’ regions of origin. We recruited research participants through people associated with these mosques and organizations in Oslo, and transnational connections were traced to Pakistani Punjab, where interviews, field site visits and organization visits were conducted. Then, tracing transnational connections to London, two key informant interviews there complement the data collected in Norway and Pakistan. We thus adopted a step-wise, multi-sited approach (Falzon, 2009; Horst, 2009), tracing interpersonal and institutional, formal and informal charity and development practices and networks back and forth between sites in Oslo, Punjab and London. The data for this article include 76 semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, field visits to offices and project sites and organizational documents (2012–15). Overall, we conducted 36 interviews with women and 40 with men, reflective of the formal organized side of transnational Islamic charity, where men are more prominent, especially in formal positions. Therefore, women’s groups and organizations were also purposefully included, in order to contribute to a more gender-balanced sample, allowing us to explore women’s involvement in transnational Islamic charity explicitly. The data this article builds on was collected as part of a larger project examining the relationship between Islamic charity and development (see also Borchgrevink and Erdal, 2017; Erdal and Borchgrevink, 2017).
In our study, ‘Islamic charity’ is defined by how our informants themselves ascribe religious significance to their social practices. We draw on people’s own narratives and reflections about their practices, as individuals and as actors making up organizations.
Arenas of transnational Islamic charity
The Pakistani diaspora in Oslo is part of a long-standing transnational social field spanning Punjab, Oslo, London and multiple other locations, particularly in the Gulf and Middle East (Bolognani and Lyon, 2011; Erdal, 2013; Kalra, 2009). Starting with labour migration in the late 1960s, Punjab has been the primary region of emigration of Pakistanis to Norway. As time has passed diverse transnational familial, social, economic and political ties, have developed including religious ties to people, organizations and places in Pakistan. The majority of Pakistani migrants and their descendants in Oslo are Sunni, and are members of mosques linked to different schools of thought in Pakistan (Vogt, 2008). The Pakistani diaspora in Oslo’s transnational ties with Pakistan includes remittance-sending to family-members, relatives and others in communities of origin (Erdal, 2012), as well as more organized diaspora-development efforts (Erdal, 2015), thus spanning social and familial, economic and political, as well as religious fields of interaction. In the Pakistani diaspora in Norway, Islamic charity is organized informally in networks around mosques, Quran study groups and formal religious organizations, but also in networks rooted in common place of origin. Islamic charity is also organized by formal transnational religious organizations, some with headquarters in Pakistan, or in European countries, or through locally based Muslim NGOs in Oslo, with partner organizations in diaspora-origin countries. Many small organizations focus on development in migrants’ places of origin, based on informal networks of friendship or social, political and religious ties. As such migrants’ national origins, and engagements in former home-places within a particular nation-state, Pakistan in this case, are connected with religious dimension, as Islamic charity intersects with migrants’ familial obligations, and their desire to contribute to development in Pakistan. By and large, these are dimensions which intersect, and which are hard to disentangle in individual’s accounts. Nevertheless, it is simultaneously clear that a sense of obligation towards Pakistan, need not entail trust in the Pakistani state; furthermore, an obligation to contribute in Pakistan, need not entail contributing less to the Norwegian society. We discuss five arenas, providing analysis of the ways in which transnational Islamic charity is organized, and the roles which religion plays.
Mosques
Mosques play an important role in organizing Islamic charity: as physical venues, meeting places and centres of religious teaching and practice. The ICC is the oldest (established 1974) and one of the largest mosques in Oslo (some 4,000 members). The mosque was, and still remains, predominantly Pakistani. It is independent, but has since its inception had sympathizers of the Jamaat-e-Islami among its members, recruiting imams sympathetic to the thoughts of Mawlana Maududi, the main ideologue and founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s largest religio-political party (Nasr, 1994).
The ICC does not have a charity organization, but facilitates the organization of Islamic charity
Religious obligations, such as zakat-ul-fitr are organized through transnational networks, such as when the ICC sends money donated through the Al Khidmat Foundation in Pakistan, where they can advance the money and distribute it to the poor at the appropriate time, without waiting for it to be transferred through the bank.
The ICC mosque hosts fundraising for Pakistan-based organizations in the network of Jamaat-e-Islami that conduct annual tours of Europe to raise funds for projects in Pakistan. Other organizations and ad-hoc initiatives use the mosque to mobilize resources for initiatives in Pakistan, in Syria or Gaza, or in Oslo; reflecting diasporic ties, but also Muslim solidarities and broader humanitarian ideals. Notably, among post-migrant generation Muslims, the charitable ties to the diasporic homeland remain, but a broader humanitarian attention to other contexts is stronger (Erdal and Borchgrevink, 2017).
The Islamic calendar creates a natural rhythm for activities, as prescribed alms and ritual offerings adhere to specific performance, at specific times, and for specified recipient groups. Here mosques act as intermediaries of Islamic charity, and simultaneously for migrants’ contributions to relief and development initiatives in places of origin and beyond.
The organization of both formal and informal Islamic charity takes advantage of the mosque’s existing organizational structure. As a place of worship and as a community centre, the mosque is a gender-segregated arena. While formal positions in the mosque (management and board), as well as the formal organizational duties for Islamic charity are male dominated, the mosque serves as a venue for organizing Islamic charity for both women and men.
The role of religion in mosques is given, and thus explicit. The politico-religious dimensions in the case of the ICC, are more implicit, and come to the fore only through the choices of charitable organizations that are supported or allowed to raise funds in the mosque. Mosques organization of charitable efforts are transnational in the way these are organized by people located both here and there. Furthermore, recipients of charity are largely located in other locations within the transnational social field, most notably in Pakistan.
Women’s Quran study groups
Among the Pakistani diaspora in Oslo there are several informal women’s groups based around religious teaching and spiritual practice. These women’s Quran study groups are an example of how Islamic charity is organized through informal networks, groups who organize collection of alms for development purposes on a regular basis.
In the suburbs of Oslo, one such group of women meets every month for a spiritual gathering. Some 15–20 women meet to pray together, to socialize and to collect money for charity. Giving charity is seen as an obligation and explained as an integral part of their religious practice. As Merium 2 told us: ‘If God has given you something, God expects you to share that with those that don’t have. If you have good health, time at your hand […] part of that belongs to the poor.’
The women send a basket around to collect donations at each meeting. Once a year they arrange a ‘meena bazar’ for charity, inviting female family and friends for a day of fun, food and fundraising. Homemade food and used clothes, jewellery and toys are put up for sale. The money they collect during the year is donated to an orphanage run by the Minhaj Welfare Foundation in Pakistan. Rather than donating through Minhaj Welfare Norway, the leader of the group hand-carries the money, and donates it in person to the manager of the orphanage when she visits family in Pakistan. The leader of the group is a member of Minhaj-ul-Quran, but other members attend different mosques. The women want to work independently, Mahmoona told us: ‘We do it for the poor […] we are not directed by an organization’.
In these informal networks, there are women who have migrated to Norway as adults and who sustain close relationships with friends and family in Pakistan; women who were born in Norway and usually have less frequent contact with Pakistan; and women who have returned to Pakistan and keep in touch with those in Norway. Talking about the charity work of his wife, Aqeel who had recently moved to Pakistan with his family from Norway told us: ‘there was a school in [place in Pakistan]… for girls of families who don’t have money to send their girls to school […] and they needed two rooms […] they told my wife: “help us so we can get started” […] she picked up the phone and talked to friends in Norway, and asked them to help’.
We interviewed a diverse group of women. Some worked or studied, others were housewives or retired. However, all contributed substantial amounts of their monthly income to people in need, primarily women and children in Pakistan. One of the groups we talked to has switched from regularly sending smaller amounts to individuals in need to bigger investments, such as investing 200,000 NOK 3 to buy a school building with a long-term commitment to pay the school’s running expenses.
Women’s Quran study groups are examples of informally organized Islamic charity, where faith has an explicit role. These groups are not formally associated with particular religious organizations or mosques, but are often informally linked with religious networks, both in Norway and transnationally. The organizing of Islamic charity happens through personal and informal channels, not through the structures of existing transnational Muslim NGOs, although there are intersections. The role of religion is explicit: it motivates and structures what they support, including in relation to the Islamic charity. The charity practices of these women are distinctly gendered, both in how they are organized (gender-segregated) and the purposes for which funds are collected (to support widows, education for girls). The fact that money is not channelled through the formal organizations operating in Norway, but rather hand-carried to Pakistan, could be ascribed to particular power hierarchies and interpersonal relationships vis-à-vis which these women actively position themselves.
Transnational religious organizations
Minhaj-ul-Quran Norway is a branch of the Minhaj-ul-Quran International (MQI), a transnational religious organization founded by Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri in Pakistan in 1980, established in Norway in 1989. It has become one of the major mosques in Oslo (with some 3,000 members), and one of few that are formally part of a transnational religious organization. Within MQI, a separate organization, the Minhaj Welfare Foundation (MWF), deals specifically with welfare, relief and development. As in other diaspora countries, MWF has a branch in Norway, the Minhaj Welfare Norway. The MWF has a number of large projects (in education, provision of clean water, orphan support) funded primarily by its members and sympathizers in Pakistan and the Pakistani diaspora, and a media set-up through which it mobilizes members and raises funds for relief and development.
Minhaj Welfare Norway organizes its Islamic charity activities under the umbrella of its mother organization, with flows of information about activities moving from both Lahore and London to Oslo. Across the MQI, both women and men are actively engaged in charity and development work, through gender-segregated organizations (Borchgrevink and Erdal, 2015). As such, the MWF is an all-male organization. The Minhaj Women League, the MQI women’s wing, collaborates with MWF both in Pakistan and the diaspora. The women’s organization is considered crucial in mobilizing resources, often organizing charity bazars and other collections in conjunction with religious gatherings.
The welfare work of MQI started with distribution of charity and community welfare in Pakistan. Over the past decade, MWF has transformed from a community welfare scheme to present itself as a ‘worldwide humanitarian development organization’, which in the UK context compares itself to organizations such as Islamic Relief and Muslim Aid. In Oslo, the organization functions mainly as a funding branch. Activities are focused around the movement’s mosques, and as such are similar to many of the other mosque-based Islamic charity activities, with a key difference lying in the association with a transnational religious organization, where Islamic charity is integral to the movement’s core mission.
The MWF is an example of a formal organization where the role of religion is explicit. It can be seen as the raison d’etre of the organization, and guides its organizational focus and operation. As part of a religious organization, one of MWF’s primary tasks is to collect and distribute charity on behalf of its members, such as qurbani, zakat and sadqa. The organization is fundamentally transnational in its structure, with frequent flows of human, economic and intellectual resources between different sites in the network.
Muslim NGOs
In contrast to MWF, Rahma Islamic Relief presents itself as a relief and development NGO. Rahma draws on teaching about Islamic charity for membership and fundraising. One of the founders explained how the decision to name Rahma (‘mercy’ in Arabic) explicitly as an Islamic organization had not been a simple one:
We had very longs discussion about what to call the organization. To call it Rahma Islamic Relief was a […] strategic decision. It gives us an identity different to other organizations. It was a natural name, as our channels were the mosques. […] The mosques were our entry-point. We send letters to mosques and ask if they can collect money for us for certain campaigns. Some say yes, some say no. We don’t belong to a specific mosque. We wanted to attract as many Muslims as possible, so it was natural. But we support people irrespective of religion. We supported Japan after the catastrophe, and also Ethiopia.
While established by Muslims, the volunteers emphasize the inspiration from both Islamic teaching and broader humanitarian values. Rahma adopted a conscious strategy to mobilize people from diverse backgrounds, particularly youth. It also has members and supporters who are non-Muslims. Many youths who are active in the ICC, or in the Minhaj-ul-Quran, also support Rahma. Being the only well-established Muslim NGO explicitly not aligning with particular ethnic or national migrant groups, Rahma holds a unique position in the Norwegian context. Rahma includes both men and women in the organization’s board and project management. Young women constitute a significant part of Rahma’s supporters, and female volunteers have initiated fundraising events for women only.
Rahma is an example of a formal organization where religion has an explicit role, shaping not only the focus of project activities, but also organizational structures. In contrast to the MWF, Rahma presents itself first and foremost as a humanitarian aid and development organization, but one operating within an Islamic framework. It is funded by individual’s Islamic charity (zakat and sadqa), but also receives institutional donor funding from Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). Religion is central when Rahma volunteers talk about their activities, whether linked explicitly to the distribution of Ramadan meals for the poor, or more generally in adopting aid efforts which are compatible with the criteria for the use of zakat and sadqa, including volunteering for the organization itself seen as a form of sadqa. The organization is run by volunteers, and operates on a ‘zero-cost principle’, where all the religious donations the organization receives (e.g., zakat, sadqa) goes directly to the activities they are intended for (e.g., food-aid, education or water wells). Administrative costs are borne by the members themselves or by institutional funders like the Norad.
Beginning with smaller projects in the home countries of its founders, Rahma has developed into a formal NGO with projectbased partnership with sister-organizations in a number of countries. The example of Rahma illustrates the ways in which migrants’ Islamic charity may evolve over time, as descendants are born, and transnational ties to home places change, and where Muslim identities across national or ethnic divides may flourish.
Diaspora development organizations
Al Falah Norway is one of many organizations run by individuals in the Pakistani diaspora in Oslo that are working with development in Pakistan. It is part of the Pakistan Development Network (PDN), an umbrella organization founded following a pilot project on co-development initiated by the Norwegian government in 2009 (Erdal, 2015). Al Falah Norway was established in the 2000s, as a sister-organization to Al Falah Scholarship Scheme in Pakistan, an organization that provides scholarships to poor students. Al Falah Scholarship Scheme was established when the founder returned to Pakistan after decades working in the USA, as his way of contributing to development in his home place. The founder of Al Falah is a member of the board of Al Khidmat Foundation (the aid organization associated with Jamaat-e-Islami), and Al Falah is a partner of Al Khidmat Foundation. Mobilizing resources, Al Falah Scholarship Scheme utilizes an extensive network in the Pakistani diaspora around Europe, the USA and in the Gulf States.
Al Falah Norway has no formal links to any mosque or religious organization, and presents itself as a development organization. Being part of the pilot project on co-development, Al Falah also received funding from Norad, and participated in capacity-building courses and workshops on topics considered central to mainstream development management (e.g., on ‘basic understanding of development’ and ‘project management’) (Erdal, 2015).
Al Falah and other organizations in the PDN relate both to traditions of Islamic charity and to the international development sector. Several of the diaspora development organizations have a particular focus on women in their projects, and emphasize the importance of girls’ education and women’s health. Such organizations frame their focus on women with reference to internationally established norms on gender equality, which are central to official Norwegian development strategies and a requirement for development partnership (Selbervik and Østebø, 2013).
The importance of helping women and children, particularly widows and orphans, is also highlighted in Islamic tradition, and is a common focus of Islamic charity (Juul Petersen, 2012). Many of those we talked to in the PDN emphasized how there is no conflict between sustainable development goals and Islamic charity. The formal diaspora development organizations are male dominated arenas. There are only women on some boards, but women play a key role in fundraising.
While many diaspora development organizations are formal, such as the member organizations of the PDN, the example of Al Falah reveals that formal organizations can be part of networks that are religio-ideological, but also based on home place and kinship, and that these can intersect. This exposes the need to look past the formal organizational structures in order to better understand how transnational Islamic charity is organized and the role of religion in this.
Diaspora development organizations—established with the purpose of contributing to development in the country of origin— commonly involve transnational transactions, but in different ways. Some manage activities from Oslo, with sister-organizations implementing projects in Pakistan, while others function like Norwegian fundraising branches of Pakistani organizations. Transnational interactions are frequent, and while some organizations are one-man shops, drawing on social networks, most formal diaspora development organizations operate with formal contractual relationships.
These organizations commonly present themselves in the language of international development. Yet, similar to the other arenas discussed above, religion appears significant, where the time and place of fundraising initiatives tied to the Islamic calendar. The implicit role of religion can be seen both as a motivational factor for the individuals involved and as a structuring factor for what kinds of resources are mobilized, for how they are mobilized, and for the types of activities funded. As such, the line between what is and is not ‘faith-based’ becomes blurred.
Typologizing the organization of Islamic charity
Different Islamic charity networks and organizations can be placed differently in relation to the two axes of Figure 1 (page 6). Below we discuss these four-way relationships in greater detail.
Formal organization—explicit religion
The transnational religious organization MWF and the Muslim NGO Rahma are both formally registered organizations for which faith has an explicit role. However, the two examples are contrasting, one key difference being that MWF is a transnational religious movement founded in Pakistan, whose main aims are religious, whereas Rahma is a humanitarian and development NGO founded by migrants and descendants of multiple origins in Norway, whose main purpose is humanitarian. While different in roots and purpose, the two organizations are similar in how they organize Islamic charity in the diaspora, where campaigns and volunteering are significant, and the Islamic calendar is important. The contrast between Rahma and MWF highlights different forms transnationalism can take in the context of Islamic charity in the diaspora, with flows of decisions, people and money occurring in both organizations, but with the main organizational authority located in different sites in the transnational social field. These contrasting cases underline the differing role faith plays in such organizations: as raison d’etre for MWF; as uniting principle with Rahma.
Informal organization—explicit religion
Many diaspora activities take place outside of formal organizations. The women in the Quran study groups are an example of informal organizing in which religion has an explicit role. The women in these groups seek inspiration in religious teachings and view their charity as an integral part of their religious practice. Religious ideals are considered more important than humanitarian principles, or these are seen as overlapping. Helping people in need is often conceived as a religious obligation, and framed in religious terms with reference to religious doctrine and authority. Transnational interactions can be regular or ad hoc, responding to needs of particular individuals or to concrete humanitarian situations, but are commonly informal, based on personal rather than contractual relationships.
Formal organization—implicit religion
The diaspora development organizations, such as Al Falah Norway, are examples of formal organizations where religion has an implicit role. In these organizations, we found that faith is a motivational factor at the personal level among the individuals involved, but that religion also has a structuring role. The role of religion is implicit, and in the way the organizations present themselves, for example to development donors (such as Norad), often secondary to broader humanitarian principles and ‘secular’ development ideals. Being a transnational organization, however, the role of religion is more explicit in the Pakistani part of the organization, indicating the relevance of context. Our focus on transnational Islamic charity brings attention to diaspora development engagements that in one way or another relate to religion, and is thus not reflective of all diaspora development engagements, such as those where religion plays no role. However, we found that even when enquiring into the role of religion among the diaspora development organizations that do not present themselves as ‘faith-based’, religion emerges as significant: as motivation for individuals’ engagement (volunteering), for funding (religious alms being a significant funding source) and for when and where organizations fundraise (in relation to the Islamic calendar, in mosques). Analyzing the role of religion in formal organizations that are not explicitly ‘faith-based’ reveals how religion can play both implicit and explicit roles, and how making clear cut divides points to the limitations of the term ‘FBOs’.
Informal organization—implicit religion
The informal organizing of Islamic charity, where religion has an implicit role, is for obvious reasons less publicly visible than that of formal organizations. In our interviews, however, we found that informal organizing of Islamic charity is relatively common, for instance in response to a person in need, where money is collected among friends without any explicit reference to religion, but where faith still is a motivational factor. Among our research participants we had examples of initiatives, informally organized by one or more individuals, where the implicit role of religion as a motivation for giving—sadqa, or around Eid for instance, as a period of giving—was shared. Such initiatives were often one-off projects, with no expectations of sustainability over time. Informal initiatives where religion has an implicit role, shed light on migrant’s engagement for development, that can be invisible from the outside, yet of great significance to the individuals involved, and where the roles of religion may also be substantial (Erdal and Borchgrevink, 2017).
Conclusion
In this article, we have examined the organizing of transnational Islamic charity to unpack the roles of religion in a migration and development context. We operationalized this by distinguishing modes of organizing (formal–informal) and the role of religion (explicit–implicit) in the organization of transnational Islamic charity. We find that this has opened for a more nuanced, contextual analysis, which extends beyond an instrumental vision of religion as contributing or detracting to ‘development’; which engages with religion in a broad sense, and which does not take on a normative stance in relation to the roles of religion (cf. Jones and Juul Petersen, 2011).
Returning to the overarching question of the different roles which religion might take on in organizing migrant development efforts, beyond the question of formal/informal organizing principles and the explicit/implicit roles of religion, we find that religion may be instrumental, structuring and motivating, roles, but also substantive and relational ones. In our analysis we find that religion structures migrants’ development engagements in terms of funding sources (e.g., the zakat, sadqa, qurbani) and arenas (e.g., mosques, religious gatherings and Eid celebrations). Our analysis has brought out how religion can function as organizations’ raison d’etre in religious movements, or as a uniting principle among individuals with otherwise different background, and as motivations for engagement both at individual and organizational levels.
We have also found that religion take on substantive role influencing migrant’s development engagements in terms of approaches, activities and recipients of assistance. Approaches include both charity-oriented, short-term efforts (e.g., distribution of food) to welfare and development-oriented approaches (e.g., provision of education and income earning opportunities). Evident in the cases above, most actors are engaged both in activities that aim at short-term relief and activities that aim at longer-term sustainable impacts.
A transnational perspective reveals the relational aspects of religion. We have found that Islamic charity and diaspora development engagements overlap in the transnational social field spanning Oslo, Punjab and elsewhere, and how transnational religious ties between, for example, mosques or transnational religious organizations often intersect with other transnational ties related to kin, and to social and political networks. Exploring transnational dimensions also brings out issues of power and authority.
Acknowledging the social reality of transnationalism encourages attentiveness to the multiple actors involved, in different geographic locations, in differing power-relations with each other, entailing different directionalities of flows and exchanges (Borchgrevink and Erdal, 2017). The locations of an organizing arena vis-à-vis different sources of authority—such as that related to professional development authority, on one hand, and the authority of religious actors and institutions, on the other, appear as significant for the role of religion in the organizing of transnational Islamic charity, and merits further research. By contrast, perhaps, we find that the roles of states as actors are relatively invisible in our data, in both the Norwegian and Pakistani contexts, besides the backdrop of regulatory frameworks.
Using Muslims’ charitable practices as an entry point allows the inclusion of actors often not conceived as development actors, such as women’s Quran study groups. When the focus is limited to formal organizations such as NGOs or FBOs, particularly women, who commonly organize transnational Islamic charity in informal networks, are not counted, and we miss significant gender dimensions in the organization of Islamic charity. As substantial proportions of transnational Islamic charity activities are organized informally, which an entry point starting from religious practices allows seeing. We argue that it is necessary to include informal ways of organizing for development in the analysis to get insight into the diverse ways Islamic charity and development intersects, as well as about how these are gendered (see also Borchgrevink and Erdal, 2015).
Our informants, and the organizations they were a part of, on one hand, were to a limited extent ‘development actors’ in any traditional sense, on the other hand they expressed, quite literally, ‘faith in development’. An approach which expands conceptions of diaspora development engagement, acknowledging initiatives that are different from what ‘development organizations do’, is necessary in order to capture the diversity of initiatives that migrants engage in—such as the activities associated with transnational Islamic charity. In this article, we have argued that transnational Islamic charity overlaps with what elsewhere could be termed diaspora development engagement. If what is counted as ‘development engagements’ remains confined to a narrow understanding of ‘development’, substantial segments of migrant’s development engagement, such as those related to transnational Islamic charity, remain largely invisible and unaccounted for. We find that a perspective which foregrounds religion, in its diverse articulations, adds valuable insights to the ways in which we understand diaspora contributions to development.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article is based on research within the project ‘Private Islamic charity and approaches to poverty reduction’, funded by the Research Council of Norway (2011–2015). We are very grateful for the insightful and constructive comments on previous versions of this article provided by Kristian Berg Harpviken, Ingrid Nyborg, Lynn Nygaard, Cindy Horst, participants at the RGS-IBG 2014 session ‘Religion in the migration–development nexus?’, and the two anonymous reviewers.