This article examines Islamic NGOs in South Africa as actors in development and in shaping new forms of religious identity. What distinguishes these NGOs in the post-apartheid context is that they are reinforcing the process of secularization within the Muslim community. The ways in which they participate in public life thus assume the forms of a spiritual humanism, which can be defined as the prolongation of a religious ethic of responsibility that becomes universal in the public space under democracy. Since the 1990s, South African Islamic NGOs, such as the Gift of the Givers Foundation, have also played an active role in international humanitarian aid. South African Muslim emergency aid is at the core of a long South African Muslim tradition of transnationalism that is today in close cooperation with the South African state.