ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. This chapter presents comprehensible ideas about Muslims' faith-based initiatives concerning contemporary issues. Today, Muslim non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are expanding their field of activities to various areas, including education, medical services, environment, aging societies, gender issues, and inter-religious dialogue. The chapter examines how characteristics of NGOs are endowed with Islamic values and institutions. These include: private or non-governmental, non-profit-making, voluntary, formal, altruistic, and philanthropic. The first four characteristics are taken from Salamon and Anheier. As their literature review demonstrated that existing concepts of NGOs were based on research from the advanced countries, Shigetomi added altruistic and philanthropic in order to adjust the definition for NGOs emerging and operating in developing countries. Traditionally speaking, Islamic NGOs base their social and charitable efforts on the strong conviction that they are carrying them out fi sabil li-llah, for the sake of God.
