866 Strengthening Humanity or Serving Congregation? Islamic Charities and Dakwah Movements in a Muslim Minority Island Hilman Latief, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This paper discusses the roles of Islamic charitable organisations in running dakwah activities on Nias Island. By Showing how Islamic charitable organizations have attempted to create welfare programmes under the dakwah scheme, it investigates whether inclusive attitudes towards beneficiaries with different religious backgrounds have characterised Islamic social activism in ‘non-Islamic’ regions. As a Muslim minority area, post-disaster Nias Island has increasingly become a place where Islamic charitable associations and dakwah movements from outside Nias have attempted to deliver aid as well as to assist the communities, notably the Muslim minority population. As the outer islands and isolated regions have become an arena of contestation for religious missionaries, Muslim preachers to a certain extent should compete with Christian missionaries and indigenous religious groups. By way of a case study, this paper also examines the way in which Islamic charitable associations, such as Al-Azhar Peduli (AAP), Dewan Dakwah Islam Indonesia (DDII), and Asian Muslim Charity Fund (AMCF), negotiate between serving the Muslim community through dakwah, and serving humanity at large through social welfare activities. Introduction Like other small outer islands, which are far from the heartland of Indonesian economic and political power, Nias Island is considered an unattractive place by Indonesians and the central government. The Nias archipelago—including the Hinako archipelago—comprises 132 islands, 95 of which are uninhabited. Nias Island, or Tanö Niha, is the largest island of the Nias archipelago, with Gunung Sitoli as its district capital. Based on the 2000 population census, the Nias ethnic group Ono Niha counts for only 0.36% (731,620 people) of the whole of Indonesia’s population, but is the third largest ethnic group in North Sumatra (6.36%) after the Batak (41.95% or 4,827,264 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by IAIN Sunan Ampel Repository