Washington Report, November 2005, pages 26-27

Special Report

Muslims and Arabs Around the World Organize to Aid Hurricane Katrina Victims

By Delinda C. Hanley

	Florida Muslims load a truck with supplies bound for Louisiana hurricane victims in Baton Rouge (Photos courtesy Amana).

WHEN HURRICANE Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, devastating New Orleans along with other parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the world responded with an outpouring of sympathy and aid. In Washington, Congress approved a $10.5 billion emergency hurricane-relief bill, and President George W. Bush asked for an additional $40 billion. The administration highlighted (but the mainstream press ignored) offers of aid from Islamic governments, as well as from American Arab and Muslim groups.

According to U.S. officials, more than 90 countries and organizations have offered nearly $1 billion in assistance to Katrina victims. In a Sept. 6 State Department briefing, spokesman Sean McCormack focused on Arab offers of assistance to the United States. He omitted any mention of Israeli participation, however.

Muslim countries proved once again that they care about the American people, even if they disagree with U.S. foreign policy. Qatar donated $100 million, along with a statement that read, “Please accept our solidarity as well as our heartfelt condolences for the tragic loss of so many precious lives.” Kuwait donated $500 million worth of oil products and other humanitarian aid. The United Arab Emirates ruler, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, contributed another $100 million in donations, including medicine, medical equipment, food, tents, clothing and other relief supplies. Donations poured in from Saudi Arabia, Oman, Turkey, Afghanistan, Egypt, and India. Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand—still recovering from their own tsunami disaster—also sent generous contributions. Tunisia sent two planeloads of blankets, tents and supplies as a gesture of “friendship between the people of Tunisia and America.” The government of Pakistan donated $1 million in cash, and relief goods worth half-a-million dollars, for hurricane victims. Islamabad also offered to send a team of doctors and paramedics to the region to support American relief agencies.

Moved by the plight of hurricane victims, African nations, including those in disaster-prone sub-Sahara, also contributed much-needed cash. Ironically, in July British Prime Minister Tony Blair had asked President George W. Bush to increase aid for Africa. Americans might be surprised to know that the United States lags behind other wealthy nations in the amount of aid it gives to the world’s poorest nations. Bush, however, refused to help until 2010—at which time, he promised, U.S. aid would double (and he will be out of office).

African states showed much more compassion. In Uganda, which contributed $200,000, government official Omara Atubo said, “International solidarity in times like this one is more than necessary...In the African custom, however rich your brother is, during times of sorrow, you reach out to him in however small way you can afford.”

Tiny Gabon gave $500,000, Djibouti $50,000, Kenya $100,000, and the southern Africa state of Namibia pledged to send $100,000 worth of canned fish.

There was even a fund-raising drive in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which remembers the American help it received during the 1992-’95 Bosnian war. OPEC offered extra crude oil. Among the international businesses that stepped up to the plate was Saudi Refining, a Houston-based subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, which donated $5 million to the American Red Cross.

Donations from Israel, which currently is asking for an additional $2.2 billion in post-disengagement aid from the United States, were downplayed. So were remarks by Israel’s Shas spiritual leader and former Chief Sephardic Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who said Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for Bush’s support for the Gaza disengagement. In his weekly sermon, the rabbi claimed that because New Orleans’ black residents failed to study the Torah, God had said, “Let’s bring a tsunami and drown them.”

Israel did send one El Al flight carrying 90 tons of goods for evacuees, and another plane loaded with Foreign and Defense Ministry delegations, both of which arrived on Sept. 8. The U.S. State Department turned down Israel’s offer to provide Israeli military and civilian teams. According to a report in the online newspaper worldtribune.com: “At one point, the administration signaled that it would accept Israeli help, but preferred that it be as part of a mission organized by the American Jewish community. There appeared to a problem with having the Israeli flag in a foreign rescue mission in the United States.”

Jewish American organizations reported raising almost $10 million in response to Hurricane Katrina. They then began to bicker over whether to give aid to nonsectarian relief centers or to concentrate on the Jewish community, according to a Sept. 16 Forward article. Angry donors felt there was ample reason to release funds to non-Jewish recipients, given the relative affluence of the Jewish community in the affected areas, and the likelihood that they lived on higher ground and had insurance.

Another controversy surrounded B’nai Israel, a Baton Rouge synagogue, which opened its doors to shelter 100 victims of the hurricane. After receiving a barrage of donations, its board demanded the shelter be closed and asked its popular rabbi, Barry Weinstein, to take a paid leave of absence.

Muslim Americans opened the doors to their homes and places of worship, and their hearts, to hurricane victims. Imams in mosques across the country urged their congregants to show charity, a central tenet of the Islamic faith, and opened their buildings as supply drop-off centers.

Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims have faced prejudice, profiling, discrimination and worse in the United States, a country founded on religious freedom. On the fourth anniversary of 9/11, more than 2,000 Muslim volunteers were helping feed victims of Hurricane Katrina atthe downtown Houston, TX convention center. Muslim leaders from around the country who were in Houston for this massive volunteer effort said the anniversary was coincidental, but that they welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate their faith’s true meaning.

“Today not only happens to be a day where we are feeding people and helping people and doing our Islamic duties,” said Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), “but if at the same time it also presents an opportunity to dispel myths about Islam and terrorism, then so be it.”

“We’re not trying to prove anything, other than what our faith requires us to do,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Washington, DC-based Muslim American Society (MAS). “What goes with our faith is to help others, to respond and show compassion when people need it, and I’m glad we can do it.”

The Muslim Hurricane Relief Task Force (MHRTF) has pledged $10 million in humanitarian relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. MHRTF members include (in alphabetical order) CAIR, Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic Relief, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Kind Hearts, Life for Relief and Development, Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), MAS, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and Muslim Ummah of North American (MUNA). (See box for contact information.)

As this issue went to press, the groups had raised between $3 million and $4 million. LIFE for Relief and Development provided more than $1 million in vouchers to retail stores, and housing and food to hurricane victims. Partnering with  ICNA, the organizations have provided money for rent, utilities, and food for displaced families. KindHearts has provided $50,000 in relief funds, medical care, counselors and help to file FEMA applications. The Ohio-based organization is renting one-bedroom apartments for displaced storm victims and sponsoring refugee families at the Islamic Center of Alexandria, LA.

For more information, or to make a donation, see the Muslim Hurricane Relief Task Force’s new umbrella Web site, <http://www.mhrtf.net>, which provides links with the above-mentioned Muslim organizations.

The Washington Report spoke to AMANA director Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout in Miami Beach as he prepared for Hurricane Rita. “We’re all in the same boat, in America,” he stated. Zakkout, who originally is from Gaza, grew up in Kuwait and moved to the U.S. in 1977. When we telephoned him on Sept. 19, he already had driven two trucks full of food, water, blankets, and paper goods donated by Muslims in Florida to affected areas. He described talking to a man who hadn’t had a shower in two weeks,who asked only for clean socks.

“This is the Islamic way,” Zakkout explained. “Our prophet didn’t say ‘help your Muslim neighbor.’ Disaster doesn’t have a nationality, it doesn’t have a color; it is the enemy of all human beings.

“Our community is mad at terrorists who give Islam a bad name,” he added. “We reject terrorism. We should only fight poverty. We promote peace and justice. We Muslims need to be part of the solution in America.”

Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

SIDEBAR

The Muslim Hurricane Relief Task Force Charities

Islamic Relief USA
P.O. Box 6098, Burbank, CA 91510
Tel: (818) 238-9520; Fax: (818) 238-9521
E-mail: < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >; Web site: <www.irw.org>
Tax ID: 95-4453134

ICNA Relief-Helping Hand, (a division of the Islamic Circle of North America)
166-26, 89th. Ave., Jamaica, NY 11432
Tel: (718) 658-7028; Fax: (718) 658-3434
E-mail: < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Web site: <www.icnarelief.org>, <http://www.icna.org/>
Tax ID: USA: 11-2925751; Canada: 0593061-39-09
ICNA Relief’s Baton Rouge Emergency Camp: (225) 344-4847.
ICNA Relief’s Houston Head of Operations Ayub Badat: (832) 276-9850.
ICNA Relief’s central office: (718) 658-7028; ICNA’s National Coordinator   for Katrina Relief Work: (732)593-7017.

Kind Hearts Katrina Emergency Relief Fund
PO Box 23310, Toledo, OH 43623
Tel: (866) 546-3478; Fax: (419) 329-2928
E-mail: < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Web site: <www.kind-hearts.org>
Tax ID: 02-0534702

Life for Relief and Development 
P.O. Box 236, Southfield, MI 48037
Tel: (248) 424-7493; Fax: (248) 424-8325
E-mail: < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Web site: <www.lifeusa.org>
Tax ID: 95-4402149

Other Relief Organizations

American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA)
183 NE 166th St., Miami, FL 33162
Tel: (305) 945-0414; Fax: (305) 945-0399
E-mail: < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Web site: <www.al-amana.org>
Tax ID: 65-1017494