IT'S one of the coldest days of the year and Glasgow's George Square is in full-on Christmas mode. Every inch of the city's famous public space is covered in fairground rides and glittering Christmas lights.


• I has travelled to disaster zones all over the world, including the Bangladesh cyclone in 2007. Picture: Shaista Chisti

Christmas music blares from speakers and children zip around a central ice rink. I am observing all this from the warmth of the Millennium Hotel, where I have a perfect view of the festivities. Nursing a cappuccino opposite me is Habib Malik, a jolly Santa Claus-esque figure who is looking out over the square with a little bemusement.

"To me," he says, gesturing towards the funfair and shaking his head, "what I see outside looks artificial because I've travelled to so many countries where I've seen the reality of what this world is going through."

Since 2003, Habib Malik has worked as the Scotland Manager of the Disasters Emergency Committee within Islamic Relief, an international charity that aims to alleviate the suffering of the world's poorest people. Today, he was nominated for the annual Robert Burns Humanitarian Award for his work throughout the developing world. The winner will be announced in a ceremony on 22 January.

"Not only have so many people been directly touched by Habib's humanity," say the award's organisers, "he has himself raised millions of pounds in donations from ordinary Scots for these areas of the world. His authenticity, sincerity and passion has come across at countless fund-raising events, often organised and spearheaded by himself."

Also nominated for the prestigious award are English couple Mark and Caroline Cook – both OBE – who started Hope and Homes for Children in 1994 to provide homes for orphans of war or disaster. And finally there is Zachary Bonner, 12, who began doing community service in 2004 after Hurricane Charlie hit Florida, when he collected 27 truckloads of water and supplies for the victims. In 2005 he formed the Little Red Wagon Foundation to help underprivileged children.

These days, when disaster strikes, whether natural or man-made, Malik, 42, a father of six from Aberdeen, hops on the first plane to the epicentre of the troubles. A born "people person", his aim is to listen to people's stories and develop a close understanding of their troubles and needs, so that he can report on their plight back home in Scotland in order to raise funds to help.

It wasn't always so, however. Born in Pakistan, he travelled to the UK when he was 18, unable to speak English. He quickly fell in love with Glasgow, developing both a broad Scottish accent and a passion for Celtic FC. After gaining a masters degree in chemistry, he took over the family business in the motor trade before opening up a scrapyard, by which point he had become what he now describes as a "very materialistic person," with a passion for sports cars.

He moved with his family to Aberdeen in 2002, but his life was to change completely the following year, when friends encouraged him to apply for a position within Islamic Relief. He was curious and welcomed the new challenge, but initially viewed it as a nine-to-five job.

Three months into his new post, however, his employers asked him to travel to Sudan to visit a number of afflicted areas across the country. He covered some 6,000 miles on that trip, including travelling to places that were unreachable by car. Malik was unprepared for what he found there.

"I didn't think that in this day, in this century, I would witness so much poverty," he says. "Before that first visit to Sudan, I had a different understanding of what poverty was. But I quickly found out when I met people with no clothes, people who can only afford one tiny meal of leaves each day, people who are drinking water from puddles."

Malik was often reduced to tears, but the trip also taught him the first of many important lessons. "The thing that first struck me going into these refugee camps was that the smell of the people was unbearable because they hadn't washed for weeks. I was with the founder of Islamic Relief, Dr Hany El Banna, and he asked me what was wrong. When I told him, he put his hand on my shoulder and asked me, 'Habib, who pays your wages?' Right away I said, 'Islamic Relief,' but he said, 'No – these people are your employers.' After that I couldn't smell a thing. From that moment, my lifestyle changed. I knew my mission in life was to serve people."

Since that trip in 2004, Malik's outlook has changed dramatically. He now travels more than 800 miles across Scotland each week, working six days a week, at the expense of precious family time. He has travelled the world to reach out to victims of the 2004 tsunami in south east Asia, earthquakes in Kashmir and Iran, the 2007 cyclone in Bangladesh and bombings in Gaza and Lebanon.

Images of the horrors he has witnessed are seared on his mind – from seeing bodies being cleared by JCBs in Indonesia following the Boxing Day tsunami, to watching people pray on scorching-hot sand in 45C temperatures in refugee camps in the middle of deserts. Asked to identify the individual story that touched him most, he finds it difficult to narrow it down to just one, but settles on a memory from that first trip to Sudan, where he visited a children's hospital in Juba with no electricity, very little water, and no doctors.

"I remember approaching an eight-year old-girl who was sitting on a bed. She looked to be in severe pain, but she was silent. I asked her mother if I could speak to her daughter and she told me that the little girl was so hungry and in so much pain that she had no energy left to speak or even to cry. And when she said that I broke down. I could see the image of my own daughter in her face. Then I asked the girl's mother why she was just sitting there and she told me she was waiting for her daughter to die."

Despite its name, Islamic Relief does not discriminate in their aid-giving – volunteers, fundraisers, donors and recipients are both Muslim and non-Muslim. Malik explains: "People often ask me if I'm here to help Muslims because the charity is called Islamic Relief, but I always tell them that when you're in the field, when you are watching children drinking from the same puddles as animals, religion is the last thing that would come to your mind. In Islam, it says that if you go to bed on a full stomach and your neighbour is hungry, you're not a proper Muslim. When the Prophet Mohammed said, 'Make sure your neighbours are not hungry' he didn't say, 'First check whether your neighbours are Muslim or not.'"

Since the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001 in the United States and 7 July, 2005 in London, Malik has noticed there is more hostility towards his organisation, but he insists it's very much a minority of people who have such a reaction. Although the charity's Glasgow shop was badly vandalised recently, Malik doesn't believe it was a racially-motivated attack, and worries that the community thinks differently. Some of his 200 Scottish volunteers (the majority of whom, unusually, are between 18-30, and drawn to volunteering mostly because of their religious beliefs) have also complained about occasionally being on the receiving end of hostility when they're collecting money on the streets. Nevertheless, Malik believes the few problems Islamic Relief does experience are no different to those of any other faith-based charity.

A proud Scot, he takes a Saltire with him whenever he travels abroad, and he will be packing it this weekend when he heads to Pakistan. He's returning to the country of his childhood for a rare holiday, but will take time out to visit Swat and Kashmir while he's there as part of his field work for Islamic Relief. This is not unusual. What began as, he supposed, a nine-to-five job has become a way of life – to the point of taking precedence over his leisure time: he was on holiday in Paris when the 2004 Asian tsunami struck, and immediately boarded a plane to the affected area. "I've witnessed how fragile this world is, he says. "And now I know that my job has no starting time or finishing time. Disasters can happen any time."

• To find out more about Islamic Relief or to make a donation to the charity, log on to www.islamic-relief.org.uk. To find out more about the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award, visit www.robertburnsaward.com