02 ISSUE VII
SEPTEMBER 2025
SEPTEMBER 2025
Doing Good
What are the racial politics of humanitarianism when the saviors are not themselves white? South African Muslim humanitarianism in the wake of Apartheid is instructive.
By Rhea Rahman
When I interviewed Abdullah in Johannesburg in 2013, he told me that he was hired by Islamic Relief-South Africa in 2010 as an HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence officer. He conducted trainings for incarcerated Muslims, local imams, and Muslim and non-Muslim religious leaders. He explained that when one enters a community to change others, one must realize that it is they, who will change you. “They bring reality to you. Situations bring reality to you… You get to understand that whatever we are talking about here [in the office], it is different from what is happening [in the community].” For Abdullah, “doing good” meant being open to being changed and formed by the realities faced by his community while giving back what he could. His Islamic humanitarianism involved organizing and responding to the needs of his community, rather than merely offering charity.
Image by Sipho Ndebele, via Unsplash.
Humanitarianism entails an ethical commitment to alleviate human suffering, regardless of race, gender, religion, nationality, or political affiliation. Yet, despite humanitarianism’s claim of impartiality and neutrality, racialization distinguishes some humans as more human and deserving of protection than others. Though humanitarianism is rightfully critiqued as white saviorism, what are the racial politics of humanitarianism when the saviors are not themselves white?
Founded in 1984 by Muslim immigrants in Birmingham, England, Islamic Relief is the largest Western-based Islamic organization in the world. In my forthcoming book, RACIALIZING THE UMMA: MUSLIM HUMANITARIANS BEYOND BLACK, BROWN, AND WHITE (University of Minnesota Press), I look at how white supremacy, fear of Islam, and anti-Black racism—rooted in the realities of racial and class inequality—shape what Islamic Relief is able to do.
Though much of the book explores transnational encounters within Islamic Relief between the US, Europe, and Africa, I also explore the racial geography of humanitarian aid relations within South Africa itself. As recounted above, in my ethnographic research with staff members of Islamic Relief-South Africa, I found, not surprisingly, vastly different perspectives on what Islamic humanitarianism should entail. Whereas for some it meant partnering with UN agencies and conducting international training for trainers, for others it meant grassroots mobilization and working towards economic self-sufficiency and Black self-determination. I found that these different approaches to Islamic humanitarianism are grounded in racial capitalist geographies.
Racial capitalism creates the material conditions to which and within which the international aid industry responds. It establishes the uneven geography that produces racially uneven access to health, wealth, and well-being. That racial capitalism creates uneven racial geographies is not unique to South Africa; however, the term was first used by South African Marxists to theorize the country’s particular political economy under Apartheid. They included Neville Alexander and Bernard Magubane. People were forcibly moved, segregated, isolated, and subject to distinct legal, economic, political, spatial and carceral regimes. These thinkers recognized that challenging racism required understanding the work racism does in terms of not only the economic, but also the ways it configures relations in the political, cultural, and ideological levels. Legacies of these apartheid categories remain powerful today and occasion racially distinct histories, geographies, and visions of Islamic humanitarianism amongst South African Muslims.
After a change in management at Islamic Relief, Abdullah was told to stop networking because “it brought no fruits. So, I asked, ‘what type of fruits are we talking about? Is it that you want money and then we can say it does benefit? Does it mean that Islamic Relief’s purpose is to bring money?’” He said that he believed that as Muslims, we are to be proactive, “Because I believe the prophet was proactive. Most of the work that he did, he never spoke much, but he did much. And that is what attracted people to Islam.”
As Abdullah explained, his ethical stance of listening, radical openness, and responding to the needs of his community was related to his moral and political orientations as a Black Muslim. “From 2006 there was a movement that was formed [in Soweto], whose vision was to liberate Black Muslims – the objective was to invest in education and transformation of the mind, but the focus was based on spiritual being, physical being, a holistic approach.”
When I returned to Johannesburg in July 2019, I met Da’wud, a Programs Coordinator for Islamic Relief, also from Soweto. Like Abdullah, Da’wud also spoke about self-determination and self-sufficiency. He and others in the organization highlighted the problematic racial optics and structural domination of wealthy Indian South African Muslims who build mosques and madrasas, or who come to deliver food hampers and school supplies, in predominantly Black townships. In South Africa’s racial hierarchy, inherited from apartheid, the South African caste system consists of whites at the top, followed by Indians (which also includes large working class sections) and coloureds and Africans at the bottom, mostly unemployed and living informally. Apartheid was very effective in driving wedges between Black and brown communities. Da’wud was astute to the legacies of apartheid that influence social divisions over solidarity and cohesion. “On the one hand, calling Indian Muslims racists . . . it’s an easy target, it’s obvious. But we also have to understand the structures behind these behaviors.” Through his efforts at Islamic Relief, he showed that he was less concerned with interpersonal rifts and more invested in justice. His work sought to shift the organization’s programming from charity to economic self-sufficiency.
The early theorists of racial capitalism and the Black Consciousness (BC) movement in South Africa, like Magubane, Alexander and Steve Biko, who started BC, posited liberatory aspirations that challenged racism and capitalism as inextricable projects. The narratives and practices of Abdullah and Da’wud demonstrate grassroots initiatives that highlight the importance of self-determination, solidarity, and community (not individual) empowerment in addressing the material and existential needs of their communities. Operating within an international aid organization and therefore limited by the global economic system that undergirds the international aid industry, they fall short of radical transformation to dismantle the structures that perpetuate inequality. However, Abdullah and Da’wud worked towards a counter-hegemonic racial project that I describe as part of an Islamic Black Radical tradition. Like the early theorists of racial capitalism and Black Consciousness in South Africa, their Islamic humanitarian efforts appreciate that the fight against racism must include a fight against capitalism.
Rhea Rahman is an assistant professor of anthropology at Brooklyn College in New York City.