Muslim Relief Groups Struggle to Help
By Daniel Hummel, IOL Correspondent
YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia — Muslims, especially relief groups, usually draw fierce international criticism for not rushing to help when natural disasters, including in their own backyard, strike.
But the seemingly duck-slow response is not always an indication of lack of interest to give a hand of assistance, many believe.
Life for Relief and Development, an international Muslim charity, has just arrived in Indonesia over three weeks after the disaster.
"If we want to transfer money we have to go through several different parties to have it legitimate," Fateh Turkmen, one of the relief group's representatives who just arrived in Indonesia, told IslamOnline.net.
The organization came with $30,000 USD in emergency supplies such as food and provisions.
The 6.3-magnitude temblor killed 5,800 people, injured up to 40,000 people and destroyed or damaged almost 600,000 houses in the heavily-populated Yogyakarta and Central Java provinces on Java island.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Saturday, 24 June, that money was running out for essential food, water and education projects to reach the people worst hit by the disaster.
Without funding extensions for food aid, the most vulnerable – mostly women and children – could go hungry as early as the end of July.
Not even half of the one million people made homeless by the earthquake will have received emergency shelter by that time.
Muslims Only
Life is working with two very well-recognized and high-rated charities out of the United States, Brothers Brother and Americares.
Even with this partnership and passing US government audits and investigations on a continual basis, the Indonesian government still puts stops on aid because of fear of support for terrorism.
Fateh asserted that his organization had similar problems while trying to help Kashmiris hit b y a recent quake.
"When we were doing work in Kashmir after the earthquake it took us nearly six months to deliver aid because of the Pakistani government," he recalled.
"Non-Muslim organizations do not have this problem," insists the Muslim activist.
Life for Relief and Development (formally International relief Organization) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1993.
It is dedicated to alleviate human suffering around the world regardless of race, color or cultural background.
The group strives to offer humanitarian, health, educational, social and economic services to victims of natural disasters, wars and hunger.
War on Terror
Washington's so-called war on terror is seen by many as preventing Muslim charities from doing work in some countries.
If there is access granted, it’s limited and any legal technicality is cumbersome and tedious.
This has placed unbelievable stress upon local and international Muslim aid groups to respond and respond as fast as possible.
In 2005, US Muslims formed the National Council of American Muslims Non-Profits in an effort to develop a comprehensive oversight mechanism ensuring transparency and protection for the Muslim institutions in the country.
The council, a response to the shutdown and restrictions on the Islamic charities and non-profit groups in the US, was spearheaded by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
Since the 9-11 attacks, the US has been putting pressures on Muslim countries to clamp down on Islamic charities under the pretext that they were channeling funds to terrorists and extremists, a charge vehemently dismissed by many charities.
In August, 2003, thousands of Palestinian orphans and destitute families took to the streets of Palestinian cities to protest freezing the bank accounts of 18 charities suspected of having links with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.
Saudi Arabia has also begun to close all charities and relief organizations outside the kingdom and place their funds and properties under the control of a newly established governmental body.
Worth It
Despite the headache, Fateh knows this work is worth it.
He visited some sites upon arriving and noticed that wherever he went people were very accepting of the fate dealt to them by Allah with patience.
He said that he never saw this in his career and gave the example of Ethiopia on a recent visit to help relieve the drought crisis there.
"The people were crying and cursing and were out of control, but here in Yogyakarta, the people accepted their situation and were willing to work with it."
Thousands of Muslims flocked into mosques across Indonesia on Friday, June 2, for the first Friday prayers after the powerful quake that rattled the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Before the imams delivered his sermons, a special prayer leaflet was distributed entitled "Disaster and How to Face It."
Indonesia, the world most populous country, is in a zone known as the Pacific "ring of fire", which is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity.
In December 2004, a huge earthquake off Indonesia's coast killed hundreds of thousands of people across the Indian Ocean by triggering a tsunami.
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