WORKSHOP “MUSLIM HUMANITARIANISM”
Date 15 – 16 May 2019
Place The Graduate Institute, Geneva (Room S7)
Convenor Dr TILL MOSTOWLANSKY Department of Anthropology and Sociology The Graduate Institute Geneva
Studies on the emergence of humanitarian thought tend to put emphasis on the global, and often violent, spread of Western- centric ideas and practices. This perspective has provided important insights into the Christian genealogy of humanitarianism, the secular translations of its ethical foundation, and processes of contemporary neo-colonial diffusion. Many of these studies on global humanitarian government and its links to the politics of emotion have focussed on large-scale institutions conventionally seen as linked to Western societies.
However, more recently research highlighting the complex entanglements of actors situated in different humanitarian genealogies has gained traction. In practice, these actors have long interacted with each other and continue to re-translate concepts of humanitarianism, development, philanthropy and charity in the course of everyday encounters. At a historical point in time at which Muslim societies are frequently seen as sites where Western ideas and practices are violently contested, this workshop seeks to explore humanitarian encounters beyond pre-conceived binaries. Bringing together scholars with different empirical and disciplinary backgrounds, it attempts to challenge such clear-cut distinctions.
Against this backdrop, the workshop employs an ever-provisional notion of Muslim humanitarianism – an array of different actors and practices relating to Islam and humanity – as a way of de-centring humanitarianism and a means to think together what is often deemed to be apart. It thereby aims to address the following sets of questions:
• How can we think about and conceptualize Muslim humanitarianism? Who are relevant actors and organizations? When and where have they emerged? • How do Muslim institutions negotiate and navigate humanitarianism in relation to concepts of development, philanthropy and charity? In what ways do they change, accommodate or adapt them? • What political and ideological regimes of power exert influence on Muslim humanitarians? What kind of social, spatial and material transformations are thereby fostered? • What are the methodological implications of studying Muslim humanitarianism across time and space?
Summaries of the workshop contributions will be made available in the series MUHUM – Muslim Humanitarianism at Allegra Lab.
Speakers and Discussants
Benthall, Jonathan (Anthropology, University College London) Speaker Billaud, Julie (Anthropology, University of Sussex) Discussant Derbal, Nora (Department of Sociology, Egyptology & Anthropology, The American University in Cairo) Speaker Gupta, Radhika (LIAS, Leiden University) Speaker Iqbal, Basit (Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley) Speaker Möller, Esther (Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz) Speaker Monsutti, Alessandro (Anthropology & Sociology, The Graduate Institute Geneva) Discussant Mostowlansky, Till (Anthropology & Sociology, The Graduate Institute Geneva) Convenor & Discussant Osella, Filippo (Anthropology, University of Sussex) Speaker Rodogno, Davide (International History, The Graduate Institute Geneva) Taylor, Christopher B. (Sociology & Anthropology, George Mason University, USA) Speaker Varley, Emma (Anthropology, Brandon University, Canada) Speaker
Schedule
WEDNESDAY, 15th MAY 2019
9.00 Welcome and introduction
PART I – SOCIAL FORMATIONS AND SPACE
9.30 – 10.30 FILIPPO OSELLA (University of Sussex) “Islam, Religious Charity and Humanitarianism: Becoming and Being Muslim in Kerala”
10.30 – 10.45 Coffee break
10.45 – 11.45 EMMA VARLEY (Brandon University) “At Odds with the 'Impulse': Muslim Humanitarianism and its Exclusions in Northern Pakistan”
11.45 – 12.45 RADHIKA GUPTA (Leiden University) “A Postcolonial ‘Civic’? Shi‘i Philanthropy and the Making and Marking of Urban Space in Bombay/Mumbai”
12.45 – 14.30 Lunch (speakers and invited discussants)
PART II – HUMANITARIAN GOVERNMENT AND CONTESTED ALLIANCES
14.30 – 15.30 ESTHER MÖLLER (Leibniz Institute of European History) “Muslim and Secular, National(ist) and International(ist): The Egyptian Red Crescent in the 20th Century“
15.30 – 16.30 JONATHAN BENTHALL (University College London) “The Choking of Islamic Aid Flows since the 1980s Soviet–Afghan War”
16.30 – 16.45 Coffee break
16.45 – 17.45 NORA DERBAL (The American University in Cairo) “Saudi Arabia, Humanitarian Aid and Knowledge Production: What Do We Really Know?”
19.00 Dinner (speakers and invited discussants)
THURSDAY, 16th MAY 2019
PART III – ETHICS AND MORAL ECONOMY
9.30-10.30 CHRISTOPHER B. TAYLOR (George Mason University) “Reflections on a Theory of Zakat”
10.30-10.45 Coffee break
10.45-11.45 BASIT IQBAL (University of California, Berkeley) “The Moral Economy of Tribulation”
11.45-12.30 Final discussion and conclusions
12.30-14.30 Lunch (speakers and invited discussants)
14.30-15.30 Publication planning (speakers) Abstracts
JONATHAN BENTHALL “The Choking of Islamic Aid Flows since the 1980s Soviet–Afghan War” The Reagan Doctrine insisted that communist regimes all over the world should be rolled back. The Soviet–Afghan war of the 1980s has long been identified as a major turning point in the ending of the Cold War, but considered on a longer time-scale it clearly had repercussions for the rise of global Islamist extremism and the “war on terror”. Anti-Soviet military and financial support for the mujahideen is well documented; but there were concomitant interventions by ostensibly charitable entities that were actually facades for the US government. Unforeseen complications for the “humanitarian system” ensued. The blocked evolution of Islamic charities (on account of affinities, real and alleged, with anti-Western militancy) is of practical concern today, but is also treated here as a case study illustrating the fragility of neutrality and non-discrimination as humanitarian principles, which emerged historically in the midst of conflicts, and are always liable to erosion through a kind of social entropy.
NORA DERBAL “Saudi Arabia, Humanitarian Aid and Knowledge Production: What Do We Really Know?” This paper critically investigates knowledge production on humanitarianism in the Saudi Arabian context. For decades, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has presented itself as a generous donor of international aid in support of the poor and needy, especially in the context of crisis and extraordinary emergency, thereby fostering South-South cooperation and solidarity among the international Muslim community. The tremendous oil wealth of the rentier state allowed for outstanding aid statistics and financial statements with crass amounts of cash transfer. Yet, beyond the mis-en-scène of the royal regime, there is little transparency or concrete information as to where the Saudi money goes. On the ground, who and what has been sponsored with petrodollars? What results did Saudi emergency aid produce? Who implements Saudi humanitarian aid in the field, how and with what success? These questions have been hardly addressed by the many commentators, who regularly write about ‘humanitarianism Saudi style’ and criticize it for political instrumentalization and religious indoctrination. This paper critically discusses the literature on Saudi humanitarian aid from three angles. First, it investigates the common trajectories established in the literature, which shape our understanding of Saudi humanitarianism. Second, it questions the sources of knowledge production that form the ground for these conclusions. And third, it challenges some of the assumptions by reflecting on my own experience of researching domestic aid in Saudi Arabia for the last ten years.
RADHIKA GUPTA “A Postcolonial ‘Civic’? Shi‘i Philanthropy and the Making and Marking of Urban Space in Bombay/Mumbai” This paper will explore Shi‘i Muslim philanthropy in Bombay/Mumbai focusing in particular on the mechanism of the private charitable trust. Through tracing the gradual, historical shift from landed endowments (waqf) to the charitable trust and the diversification of the charitable portfolio in the city, the paper will discuss how “Muslim” philanthropy urges a critical interrogation of conceptions of the “civic” and the “common good” in the postcolonial urban context of India. Shi‘i philanthropy has played an important role from the colonial era onwards in the material and social making of the city. However, in an increasingly fractured, communal post-colonial context, it is also being directed at marking a place for “community” in the city. These varied ends and the legal mechanisms through which charity is routed in contemporary Mumbai grate against the moral pedestal upon which western, secular humanitarianism (encoding ideas of the larger common good) rests. It forces us to ask: Can humanitarianism ultimately only be thought of and work through a communitarian idiom for it to be ethical?
BASIT IQBAL “The Moral Economy of Tribulation” The ongoing devastation in Syria has displaced millions to neighbouring countries and beyond. Among the Jordanian organizations that have mobilized in response, the Association of the Book and the Sunna (est. 1993) has massively expanded its support capacity to emerge as one of the largest charitable organizations in the country. It retains its mandate of Islamic reform, which it now expresses through humanitarian work. This paper is based on observation of one of its Amman-based remedial education programs for Syrian children and on a close reading of a presentation made to non-governmental organ- izations by the Association’s director. In weaving between international and Islamic legal regimes and ethical imperatives, his presentation effectively articulates the theological contours of Muslim humanitarian practice as a mode of righteousness and repair. The director later described the dispossession which his programs address as being a divinely-imposed tribulation (ibtila’). This locates his organization within a broader moral economy, one whose exchanges problematize the humanitarian fetish both for spectacular suffering and for the asymmetrical relationship between benefactor and beneficiary. The paper toggles between the children’s program and the director’s presentation in order to explore the equivocation (antagonistic or indifferent) of this moral economy of tribulation within the secular grammar of humanitarianism.
ESTHER MÖLLER “Muslim and Secular, National(ist) and International(ist): The Egyptian Red Crescent in the 20th Century” The Egyptian Red Crescent has been founded in 1912 by Sheikh Ali Yussuf with a clear Panislamic and Anticolonial Agenda. In the following decades however, the organization turned more secular and pro-Western, without giving up its Muslim cultural roots and pro-independence aspirations. It was deeply influenced by local traditions of charity and philanthropy, and yet sought to connect to international humanitarian structures and standards by struggling with its autonomy from the successive Egyptian governments. Why were its founders and members of the Egyptian Red Crescent interested in the international orientation of their organization and which role did religion in general and Islam in particular play in this orientation? Testing different theoretical frameworks on how to understand this organization, this contribution looks at the Egyptian Red Crescent’s history in the 20th history, by taking into account the impact of colonialism, nationalism and decolonization on this particular form of Muslim humanitarianism in its national, regional and international context.
FILIPPO OSELLA “Islam, Religious Charity and Humanitarianism: Becoming and Being Muslim in Kerala” In my paper I address the complex historical entanglements between different religious communities and traditions, and between local, trans-local and global religious networks which have constituted the historical terrain for the making of Kerala Muslims’ modalities of religiosity, and shaped their participation to Kerala (and global) modernity as “Muslims”. I will argue that charitable or humanitarian practices among contemporary Muslims – and everyday religiosity more generally – are constituted and experienced not only through differences and contestations between different Islamic traditions/theologies, but also as the outcome of engagements and encounters with non-Muslim Others, whether religious, ethnic, secular or political, both locally and globally. Drawing inspiration from critical culture theory, and responding to the late Shahab Ahmed’s call for an expansive and open-ended exploration of historical practices of meaning-making within Islam, I propose a novel understanding of lived religion located at the interstices of the routinized practices of the everyday – the embodiment of specific dispositions via habituation and the deployment of technologies of self-crafting – and the inevitably open-ended fluidity of daily life. In turn, such an approach locates Muslim charitable and humanitarian practices within the complex politics constitutive of Kerala secularism as demonstrated, for instance, in the responses to the recent monsoon floods which have devasted the state.
CHRISTOPHER B. TAYLOR “Reflections on a Theory of Zakat” This paper is an inquiry into the role of “obligatory almsgiving” (zakat) within Muslim humanitarianism. I describe a transformation in contemporary zakat in north India, particularly the rise in crowd-sourced financing through zakat and decline of charitable endowments (awqaf). The paper, drawing on fieldwork in a madrasa and five charity organizations, presents a theorization of two modes of zakat. What I term the “purity ethos” and the “developmentalist ethos” are each deeply rooted in Islamic scripture and apparent in everyday Muslim practice. Zakat is a ritual of purification for the donor, but new Islamic charities focus on the effectiveness of philanthropy for the recipient and its potential for transformative and systemic redistribution. These two modes emerge from a seeming paradox in Islamic teachings on philanthropy. Zakat is an obligation, an “alms-tax,” yet ideas about voluntary giving are inherent in Muslims’ practices of zakat. I propose an analysis of zakat as rooted in a “paradox of obligated voluntarism” to better inform scholarly understandings of this ritual pillar of Islam. The specificity of religio-legal guidance on zakat in shari’a invites inquiry into the contradictions of this paradox and how ordinary Muslim practitioners navigate them. Conclusions emphasize the importance of the theorization of zakat in understanding new forms of Muslim public ethics in north India, as the ritual of zakat (historically given in modest secrecy) undergoes a transformation to newly public social institutions and more widespread practice.
EMMA VARLEY “At Odds with the 'Impulse': Muslim Humanitarianism and its Exclusions in Northern Pakistan” Drawing on fieldwork in Gilgit-Baltistan, my paper explores how even while Muslim actors work under the aegis of a “non- denominational” humanitarianism, they can sometimes engage instead in practices that differentiate and exclude prospective beneficiaries on the basis of sect. This paper provides a case study analysis of the Aga Khan Health Services, Pakistan (AKHS,P), a subsidiary of the Ismaili Aga Khan Development Network, to evaluate Shias and Sunnis’ historical exclusions from its medical services and community-based interventions, and track the sectarian-linked health disparities that such estrangements gave rise. In so doing, my paper explores the ways these purposeful neglects are at-odds with the AKHS,P’s humanitarian imperatives and ethical-medical commitments, and have served to alienate and harm, rather than include and heal, the non-Ismaili communities it purports to also serve. The role played by sectarian identity politics in AKHS,P’s services and outreach raises a number of concerns. For when Muslim humanitarianism arises from, or operates according to sectarian-specific mandates, how do the ideals of faith, sociality, and practice that agencies and their actors espouse pose challenges for their success in multi-sectarian settings? What of the ways that faith-based actors harness humanitarian interventions as a means to not simply achieve ‘good’, but also sectarian and political disenfranchisements and damages? How do these unwieldy impulses carry over into the everyday ways and means by which humanitarianism is enacted and interpreted by its actors and beneficiaries alike? And, given the ever-present specter of inter-sectarian ‘tension’ and violence in Gilgit-Baltistan, how might these differential projects of development have contributed to discord and conflict, rather than its mitigation or resolve?