Review of Marie Juul Petersen, For Humanity or For the Umma? Aid and Islam in Transnational Muslim NGOs

Excerpt

In beginning her book with anecdotes from project visits to orphan centers in Jordan and Bangladesh, Petersen attempts to break the stereotypes of transnational Muslim NGOs. She critiques the literature for focusing only on the relationship between Islam and politics, and not between Islam and aid. Her main research questions, thus, ask: “How do contemporary transnational Muslim NGOs and the people working in these organisations understand ‘aid’ and ‘Islam’? What are the factors and conditions that have shaped their understanding of these concepts? And where does this place transnational Muslim NGOs in the broader context of aid provision?” (3). Muslim NGOs, she argues, are part of both the Western “development system” as well as the “Islamic resurgence” (4), and move between these two dialectics. As such, scholars should start asking about organizational identity and aid ideology, instead of boxing these NGOs into rigid categories created by the West. For Petersen, it is more important to understand how Islamic organizations self-identify and present themselves, where being a “good Muslim” is about “engaging in social activism such as the provision of aid, based on Islamic values and ethos” (14). …