This paper explores the politics of charity by examining how Shi’a Ismaili Muslims in post-Soviet Tajikistan make sense of charitable donations they receive via a transnational development organization, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). The AKDN is an organization founded by the 49th Ismaili Imam, the religious and spiritual leader of the transnational Ismaili community, and has been active in Tajikistan since the fall of the Soviet Union. This paper discusses how Tajik Ismailis use their existing socio-economic and religious frameworks to make sense of the substantial donations made by Ismailis in other parts of the world, including Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Drawing on one year of ethnographic fieldwork in the Ishkashim district of Tajikistan, the paper brings theories of development and moral economies into conversation with an analysis of the legacies of Soviet socialism to examine specifically Shia Ismaili Muslim ways of engaging across these fields. I illustrate that Tajik recipients of charity use religious and socialist principles to emphasize their equality with the givers of charity, thereby mitigating the uncomfortable power dynamics that are an unintended consequence of the development paradigm. Tajik Ishkashimis understand both the former Soviet state and the AKDN as ostensibly socialist, redistributing wealth from one place to another, via a centralized institution. There is a key difference, however, between these two processes of redistribution: even though Tajik Ishkashimis experienced the Soviet state as an allocative center from which they greatly benefitted, the Soviet state obscured the distinction between givers and receivers. It is my contention that, since the head of the AKDN is a beloved religious leader of both the donors and the recipients, the Imam also obfuscates such power dynamics. Unlike other religiously affiliated development institutions, like World Vision, where donors have direct relationships with the recipients of aid (see Bornstein 2005), Tajik Ishkashimis highlight both the donors' and their own vertical relations to the Imam, downplaying the horizontal inequalities that are, nevertheless, present. ‘Charity’, a term steeped in connotations of inequality, becomes a faith-based gesture of love to a shared father-like figure that creates a transnational brotherhood of believers. More importantly, seeing the Imam as a redistributive centre enables Tajik Ishkashimis to maintain the moral legacy of their Soviet past, which is rather remarkable given that the AKDN has brought certain capitalist, free market, principles into the region.