11 - Religious Provision of Public Goods

Summary

There are … socio-cultural barriers [that] do not allow government to deliver social services. The government therefore encourages NGOs to help them out.

—The Sada Welfare Foundation

We want a rights-based society, not a charity-based society.

—Zahida Hameed Qureshi

We have seen, in the four preceding chapters, the breadth and diversity of the Islamic social welfare sector in Pakistan. Here we take our observations to the questions with which the study began. What are the political consequences—for human security, for government legitimacy, and even for inter-community harmony—of a dearth of public services provided by government and a wealth of public services provided instead by religious associations, including partisan and sectarian associations?

The comments of the Sada Welfare Foundation earlier suggest an explanation for why private religious welfare organizations can deliver welfare services better than government. Government officials themselves often lack the requisite moral sentiments. Zahida Hameed Qureshi's comment earlier suggests a reason that government should not rely on private religious welfare organizations to provide essential public goods. If charity is a gift, dependent upon voluntarism, welfare is not a right. If charity is not a right, private whims, political calculations, and discriminatory sentiments may determine to whom welfare is provided and to whom it is not provided.

What is the good of a government that does not provide essential public goods to its citizens? Religious organizations, including political parties that aim to establish an Islamic welfare state, provide the bulk of essential welfare services, including basic education, basic and emergency healthcare, such as eye and heart care, and natural emergency and disaster relief. Religious charities are often dedicated to a specific religious community. Is that not detrimental to principles of universal access to quality public services? Let us take, for example, the International Association for Relief, Care, and Development, the relief and development agency of the Muslim World League. One of its activities in Pakistan is to build masajid (mosques), to staff them with Ahl-i-Hadith teachers of the Salafi school of Islam, and to hand possession of these mosques over to local government. Mosques in Pakistan are not open to women or children and they (mosques) are rarely involved in social service work.