It's simulated, not strategic

Somebody asked me the other day ‘what are the best charities to donate to this Ramadan’?

Honestly, no idea.

Not that they don’t do great work. They do. They are responsible for distributing millions in aid to the poorest and most needy in society, all over the world. Much needed and may Allah reward every single person not only working tirelessly within charities, but every single donor, sincerely giving away part of their wealth.

But they all blur into much of a muchness.

Everyone’s doing the same thing — so how do you make a decision?

This is where I feel Muslims lack strategic thinking and understanding the bigger picture. We are the ultimate short-term thinkers, sadly. But our counterparts think long, long term. Which is why we’re so far behind.

In our minds — charity = needy.

“If I give, it should be to those less fortunate.”

Why does that have to be true? Why do we all need to do the same thing?

All of these multi-billion dollar foundations that exist, Rockefeller, John Templeton, Bill Gates etc fund research, media, education — all to “advance society”.

The reason why Muslim charities don’t tend to focus on this is actually not their fault. It’s the collective malaise and mindset of the Ummah. We are still reactive, still hyper emotional as a community. So we respond to things that push those buttons.

When the stimulus is a crying baby in Syria — we respond in kind, with floods of donations. But where the stimulus is a strategic initiative and a big vision of what Muslims could have and could be — the response is often crickets.

This media or arts or education or science stuff isn’t sexy, it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t solicit urgency in our response. It’s not good for the books or the bottom line. So of course charities are going to focus on ‘what sells’. This is basic business and marketing 101. Good for them.

But we’re backward in our approach. Is it that we want to feel-good as part of the transaction? Knowing that you’ve helped the needy certainly goes a long way towards doing that. But what if we actually donated to other causes such as funding great arts or media or education? What could the impact be? In the past, these areas would be covered by waqfs. But in the absence of accessible Waqf’s today, where are the alternatives? It’s no wonder talented artists and writers and scientists end up doing regular jobs that simply pay the bills, rather than any contribute meaningful original work to the world. This way, we continue to lose generation after generation of creatives and original thinkers.

There’s so much work needed to elevate the consciousness and standards of the Ummah. We are stimulated, not strategic.

To give you an example, Spike Lee famously ran out of money whilst filming Malcolm X. There was a lot of objections around the films release and under pressure, Warner Brothers said we’re not going to fund it any more. (It had already gone over budget from $28m to $33m). He needed at least $40m to finish it, in the way HE envisaged. Warner Bros insisted he would have to make significant changes if he wanted to get it released — and also to cut it down to 2 hours 15 mins. (The final version is over 3 hours). What did he do? Did he conform and accept the constraints he had? No! He went to the likes of Oprah, Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, Prince, Magic Johnson and Janet Jackson to fund the rest of it. Not as investors, but as DONORS. They duly obliged and he was able to keep creative control and produce the masterpiece that the final version ended up being, and introduced Malcolm X’s brilliant work to a whole new generation.

Would well-to-do Muslim entrepreneurs today have the same mindset? I’m not so sure.

Imagine now, that the super successful Dirilis Erturgrul WASN’T state sponsored? It would be extremely expensive to produce, and getting external funding may have all sorts of conditions attached to the production preventing them from showing certain Islamic scenes etc. Yet them being able to stay true to the Islamic spirit and not having funding issues led to it being the worldwide mainstream hit it has been.

In the past, we always admire and regard Cordoba and Baghdad as shining lights of what is possible to achieve in a Muslim-led society. But those cities were amongst the biggest advocates of funding scholarship, entrepreneurship and the arts. Caliph Al-Hakam II of Cordoba, famously encouraged writing and authorship, and would often send writers generous gifts for their books. A famous story recalls he once sent 1,000 Dinars of pure gold to an author in Isfahan, simply for a copy of his new book. By way of comparison, a year’s salary at that time was 240 dinars.

The Islamic Empire in Baghdad led by Al-Mamun, heavily patronized scholars. He was the first ruler to fund and monitor the progress of major research projects involving a team of scholars and scientists. The money spent on the Translation Movement in the House of Wisdom for some translations was estimated to be equivalent to about twice the annual research budget of the United Kingdom’s Medical Research Council! It was said that if a scholar translated any book from its original language into Arabic, he would be given that book’s weight in gold. The best scholars and notable translators, such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq, had salaries that are estimated to be the equivalent of the top professional athletes today. Could they have achieved what they achieved, without the finance to do so?

National statistics show Muslims are by far the most generous of any socio-economic group — bar none. But I’d be interested to see how much of that charity actually goes to something other than the usual suspects of water wells, emergency aid, nutrition etc in third world countries. (The one exception I see is the building of mosques — which also seem to get a lot of funding. That is more down to supporting local community, the religious significance and also because it’s a familiar cause — you can see the tangible end result.)

Look, I get it. There are usually two driving forces to human emotions. Pain and pleasure. Psychologically, people will do WAY more to avoid pain, than to proactively seek pleasure. So we see that with the charities — humanitarian causes trump progressive causes as the latter are deemed a luxury, a nice-to-have. Maybe it’s even a lack of belief. “Let’s fix everyone’s hunger and thirst first, and THEN we can look towards the pipe dream stuff like self-actualisation.”

Why are they mutually exclusive though?

This type of thinking is a fallacy and it will never materialise. There’s always new mouths to feed and always more emergency situations happening. So we have to begin to think differently. We have to look outside our usual frame of reference and seek out the more strategic projects. Take time to read about the vision and missions perhaps, instead of automating your donation in tick box fashion.

When you’re donating your charity this Ramadan, maybe look towards projects and causes that have more strategic, long term aims and that can really elevate the state of the Ummah beyond the immediate, insha’allah.

What can you do or give that will REALLY go towards creating a long-lasting legacy?

Whatever you choose to do, may Allah accept our intentions and our charity this Ramadan and beyond, ameen!