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Criticism Spurs Boost in Aid From Arab Nations

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Times Staff Writer

Amid a swelling debate in oil-rich Arab countries over their amount of aid to tsunami victims, several Persian Gulf governments have hurriedly fattened their cash pledges.

The increase in aid from countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates came only after a debate over whether governments were damaging their image by failing to dig deeper into their pockets.

A more esoteric discussion on Islamic websites and chat rooms focused on whether the aid effort qualified as an Islamic cause, even though the majority of those who died were Muslims.

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Of an estimated 150,000 dead, about 94,000 are from Indonesia, a nation far from the Islamic heartland in the Middle East but nevertheless the world’s most-populous Muslim country. Most of the others killed were in Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, which have Muslim minorities.

Even after the pledges were increased, many Arabs and Muslims continued to fret that their offerings were not commensurate with the region’s growing oil wealth and fed anti-Arab stereotypes. The hand-wringing mirrored American worries that the U.S. damaged its image by responding too slowly.

Analysts in the Persian Gulf said that state-run media responded sluggishly to the disaster, and that some potential contributors were concerned they might unwittingly choose charities that have been accused of funding terrorism.

The Saudi government tripled its offering to $30 million Tuesday. The United Arab Emirates increased its aid tenfold to $20 million and began airlifts of relief supplies. And Kuwait, after being blasted for stinginess on the front page of one of its prominent Sunday newspapers, upped its pledge from $2 million to $10 million.

Newspapers in Kuwait and Lebanon have been among the most outspoken critics of the Arab response.

“Caricatures of white-robed sheiks sailing their luxury yachts on seas of oil and using $100 bills to light their Havana cigars will only be reinforced in the face of collective miserliness in this hour of human need,” warned an editorial in Lebanon’s Daily Star. “Especially if the petroleum-rich Gulf states do not dig a bit deeper into pockets that have become quite deep indeed over the last few years of high oil prices.”

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The rumblings came to a head in Kuwait, where Al Qabas, a leading newspaper, published an editorial criticizing the government’s offering and reminding Kuwaitis of the close ties that bind the desert nation to southern Asia.

The well-off in Kuwait and other Persian Gulf countries hire people from southern Asia for menial tasks they are loath to tackle themselves.

“We stepped into the modern world with them, and through them,” the editorial said. “Its sons are helping today in building our country and raising our children.”

After a debate in parliament, Kuwait boosted its offering, but some Kuwaitis remain mortified.

“If the tragedy was presented as a ‘Muslim tragedy’ you could have found a stronger response,” said Waleed Nusif, editor of the paper. “Some would even go as far as saying what happened was God’s wrath on people who deserved it. Unbelievable.”

Fahad Kheraiji, a professor of mass communications at King Saud University in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, said he wanted the government to organize a national campaign to collect private donations.

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“Everybody wants to participate,” he said, “but we don’t know how.”

“I think the money is not enough,” Kheraiji said. “Saudi Arabia has a responsibility as a Muslim country and as the largest oil-producing country.”

But the government has been leery of cash contributions, he said, since Saudi charities were shut down after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to stem the flow of money to terrorists. “They’re very careful when it comes to cash moving out of the country,” he said.

Heba Raouf Ezzat, a political science professor at Cairo University, said these nations had no history of offering aid to non-Muslim countries.

“They are focused on religious solidarity rather than global society,” she said, adding that the debate over how much to contribute was an indication that their societies were changing.

On Islamic websites and in chat rooms, the questions included: Would Muslims who died in the tsunami be considered martyrs? Is it all right to donate to tsunami victims, even though some of the goods and money could end up in the hands of nonbelievers?

“Is it permissible for us, as Muslims, to [appeal to God] for those human beings afflicted there even if those people include Muslims and non-Muslims?” asked one person who logged on to Live Fatwa, an online forum in which an Islamic scholar answered religious questions.

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“There is no harm or prohibition to pray for those people who lost their lives in that natural disaster,” replied Sano Koutoub Moustapha, a professor from the International Islamic University in Malaysia.

“However, your beloved Muslim brothers and sisters deserve more and more” of your prayers and appeals to God. They deserve your moral and financial assistance, he wrote.

Moustapha told the readers that money given to non-Muslims was not considered zakat, the religious tax a Muslim is obliged by the Koran to give to the needy.

“The Muslims among them fall under the category of needy people,” he wrote. “As for non-Muslims, they might deserve donation or any other form of assistance,” but not zakat.

It was time, he wrote, to think of Muslims.

It’s a time of “Muslim solidarity, Muslim unity and compassion among Muslims,” he wrote.

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