ABSTRACT
Contradicting the predominant image of Karachi as a hub of international terrorism and ‘fundamentalist’ Islam or as a failed city of urban squalor (e.g., Davis 2006), the city is also home to one of the world’s biggest charitable organisations, the Edhi Foundation. Named after its founder and charismatic leader Abdul Sattar Edhi, the Foundation began in the early 1950s and has since become a household name in Karachi. Based on a tradition of non-violence, the Foundation runs the largest ambulance service in Pakistan as well as public kitchens and shelter homes with schools and medical facilities. It also assists in relief efforts for people affected by war or natural disasters around the world, such as the civil war in Lebanon (1983), the famine in Ethiopia (1986) the Gulf War (1991), Bosnian refugees in Pakistan and Croatia (1993–94), the earthquake in Bam (2003), victims of the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Indonesia (2003) and of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (2005).
