This paper focuses on the emergence and modus operandi of Muslim faith-based aid organisations from the West, particularly those from the United Kingdom. Through case studies of Islamic Relief Worldwide and Muslim Hands, it examines the actual and potential added value generated by these humanitarian players in Muslim-majority contexts at times when aid actors from or associated with the West are being perceived by some as instrumental to the political agendas of Western powers, or are being confronted with the consequences thereof. The study analyses Muslim faith-based aid organisations' transnational networks, their implementing partnerships with local faith-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and their security position within and their access to insecure contexts, drawing on field examples and opinion from Central Asia, Iraq and Pakistan. It thereby argues that there is ground for an expansion of the role of Muslim aid actors, because of the existence of social and political realities in the field that cannot be always effectively tackled by the dominant international development approaches.

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The relationship between religion and development remains a contentious issue, especially when it comes to the position of women in the Muslim world. Western and international gender approaches encounter the limits of their effectiveness and legitimacy for reasons that have as much to do with global political factors as well as contextual issues. Adequate gender approaches often require engagement with social actors and with the culture 'as they are', including religious actors, even if the values they espouse are often considered incompatible with international standards, or they do not correspond to the kinds of partners that many Western actors and local secular elites desire. Is there an Islamic alternative in this regard? Through three case studies set in majority Muslim contexts characterised by a high degree of social mobility, this article looks into the question of how and to what extent Islamic faith-based aid organisations anticipate or tackle such challenges.Le lien entre religion et de´veloppement reste une question controverse´e, particulie`rement lorsqu'il s'agit de la situation des femmes dans le monde musulman. La le´gitimite´et l'efficacite´des approches occidentales et internationales quant aux questions de genres sont limite´es en raison aussi bien de facteurs politiques mondiaux que de facteurs contextuels. Il est souvent ne´cessaire d'aborder la question des diffe´rences de genre en collaborant avec les acteurs sociaux 'tels qu'ils sont' -et ceci comprend les acteurs religieux -et en prenant compte et du context culturel, meˆme si les valeurs associe´es a`celui-ci sont souvent conside´re´es comme incompatibles avec les normes internationales, et meˆme s'ils ne correspondent pas aux types de partenaires avec lesquels les acteurs occidentaux et e´lites laı¨ques locales souhaitent s'associer. Existe-t-il une alternative islamique a`cet e´gard? Cet article se base sur trois e´tudes de cas re´alise´es dans des contextes majoritairement musulmans caracte´rise´s par un fort degre´de mobilite´sociale afin d'examiner comment et dans quelle mesure les organisations musulmanes d'aide au de´veloppement anticipent et abordent de tels de´fis.

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Thirty years after its independence by-fait-accompli, Kazakhstan, both as a polity and as a society, is still trying to manage the formation of its national and civic identity. Kazakhstan and the Central Asian region in general have somehow always been subject to clichés involving a 'hotbed of ethnic tensions.' During the period between 1985-1995, it was often assumed that the ethnic hyper-diversity that characterized the Kazakh Soviet republic and the deep societal crises caused by the decline and demise of the Soviet Union would inevitably result in open ethnic conflict, if not in the breakup of the country. Despite a series of local incidents, such a scenario did not materialize. This suggests the existence of a viable level of both state legitimacy and societal cohesion. The tragic events in Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Tajikistan in the 1990s might also have dissuaded Kazakhstan from large-scale unrest.To this day, however, the definition and practice of an identity-offered by the state and state-affiliated civil society-which all citizens, regardless of their ethnicity, are able to identify with is crucial, not only for the country's aspired international reputation, but also for internal cohesion and stability. The official statements about the success thus far of the multi-ethnic civic model of Kazakhstan, developed under its first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, are open for interpretation. However, the contributions in this article cluster suggest that the majority of the population somehow assesses this development as positive, or at least agrees that things could have been worse.There is no doubt that society and the state have become ethnically 'more Kazakh' in the years since independence. This is demonstrated by the composition of its population and the share of the titular Kazakh population, going from 40% in 1989 (a minority in their own titular republic) to 68.5% in 2020. This shift is also noticeable at the local level. Kazakhs now form majorities in cities and provinces that had clear non-Kazakh majorities or ethnically diverse populations dating back to 1989, the year of the last Soviet census. For example, if ethnic Kazakhs formed less than one-quarter of Almaty's population in 1989 (when it was still Alma-Ata, the capital of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic), their share is now likely closer to two-thirds. In Atyrau on