Newspapers have been abuzz with Salman Khurshid’s emphasis on the need for the Muslim community to become self-dependent, “We need to learn a lot from the way the Blacks and the Jews improved themselves in the US.” However, the clichéd complaint continues to reverberate in our ears day in and day out that muslims are suffering because of their insensitivity towards issues, as if they would wait until eternity for a messiah to act on their behalf. When called for lending a hand to a noble cause, by an NGO, or to participate in an act of charity, or to escalate an issue to a government agency, to help our neighbors, to keep the bylanes in front of our own houses or masajid clean, we hear that no one has any time or will. Well, we are told that, in parties or in tea-shops, they do get time to talk incessantly on issues as if they know them inside out; however their talks remain mere tools to win arguments or to prove their intellectual superiority over other participants. Their debates, emotional or rational, hardly ever translate into actions that could help the community rise in stature. Are they really so insensitive, or is something missing in the call of the NGOs? To get an answer, let us try to explore why people volunteer where they do, why they readily contribute their valuable time and hard-earned money to Missionaries of Charity, for example, or to Wikipedia and Linux.

Are people still using the encyclopedia that famously decorated the shelves of educated homes, some of them as a symbol of status while most others for genuine necessity? Why Wikipedia left its competitors way behind in competition needs to be dealt with separately. Who developed Wikipedia? Who continues to add content to it or improve the existing content? Which company? Which individual(s)?

This is how Wikipedia describes itself:
●    Wikipedia is written, edited, maintained, and almost completely operated by volunteers from around the world.
●    Wikipedia is free and without advertisements. It is operated by a private non-profit foundation, supported by hundreds of thousands of individual donors.

Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous Internet volunteers who write without pay. Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles (except in certain cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism). Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or with their real identity, if they choose.



There are more than 85,000 active contributors working on more than 21 million articles in more than 280 languages. As of today, there are 3.94 million articles in English. Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to augment the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia.                                                         
One may wonder why more than 85,000 intellectuals from all walks of life actively contribute their time for free to Wikipedia, whereas Muslim NGOs looking for volunteers lament the attitude of people in today’s society that “they are not ready to spare their time for any social or charity work”. How come the will of Muslim community does not converge to the will of Allah Who exhorts them throughout Quran to indulge in good deeds as if in a race!
Is something wrong with the community members or are the Muslim NGOs to blame?
In The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Steven Raymond cites from the autobiography of the 19th-century Russian anarchist Pyotr Alexeyvich Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist:
Having been brought up in a serf-owner’s family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing and the like. But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and to deal with [free] men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline and acting on the principle of common understanding.
The former works admirably in a military parade, but it is worth nothing where real life is concerned, and the aim can be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills. [as]
Raymond says that the “severe effort of many converging wills” is precisely what a project like Linux requires – and the “principle of command” is effectively impossible to apply among volunteers in the anarchist’s paradise we call the Internet.  
For Muslims, Quran is the basis for the all-important principle of common understanding, the Prophet’s life history a far better example of volunteerism than Wkipedia or Linux. Still, why do Muslim NGOs fail to get volunteers? A closer look at the factors that may keep people away from a serious NGO initiative brings us to the realization that “principle of command” may be the biggest impediment. It is easy to pass the buck and blame the people for lack of volunteerism, but should we not consider that as seeking refuge in excuses? Coming to excuses, we do find thousands of excuses even when asked to do a simple useful thing. Why is it that our will does not converge with our wisdom (knowing well, this is useful and must be done)? Instead of taking shelter under those excuses, if we leave our ego behind, relinquish control and command over the willing volunteers, we might easily pool talents that help bring about a paradigm shift in the culture of NGOs engaged in socio-economic, educational, or charity work. Talents bloom in an environment which is conducive to experimentation, transforming what comes to mind into concrete plans before the ideas get crushed under tall command structures, chained by the inflexible complicated clauses of statutes and constitutions, or simply fizzle out. If we tie the hands of talented volunteers so as to exercise unnecessary checks, even the best of ideas might not get transformed into feasible projects, and even the best of projects may remain stuck onto the drawing boards, or in red-tapes. As long as NGOs continue to suck talents into their own tar-pits of ego, false pride, selfish lust and greed, can they attract the culture of volunteerism to prosper? And, without bringing about a revolution in Muslim volunteerism, can we expect a succour for the community? We would need to bring about a paradigm shift from the prevalent organizational mindset to the paradigm of open-source wherein “free” is the most important guiding value.