Connecting to the Umma through Islamic Relief: transnational Islamic NGOs in Chad

Abstract

This paper argues that if the activities of Islamic NGOs from the Arab world in Africa are evaluated merely in terms of their local economic development impact, there is a risk of missing an important point. While it is true that the scope of these interventions and the amount of money involved are generally much less than the western aid industry channels to Africa, they can also generally be considered rather 'traditional' from a western point of view, focused as they usually are more on offering concrete relief and material facilities than on 'capacity building'. These Islamic NGOs, however, offer not only material relief but also new ways of connecting to the wider umma, the global community of the faithful – with consequences both on the local and the global level. This will be illustrated by an analysis of the work of transnational Islamic NGOs in Chad and the ways in which this new connectivity works out in the Chadian case. It is argued that an 'outward looking' translocal perspective on development offers more fruitful ways than an 'inward looking' localised perspective, to capture processes of development and social change in a globalising world