Over the last two decades, faith-based charitable community groups have gone through a significant transformation in the Muslim world. Previously informal Islamist communities have been reestablishing themselves as formal NGOs at unprecedented rates while forming transnational networks and coalitions. On the one hand, the charitable practices and ideational frames of these reestablished Islamist humanitarian and social aid NGOs remain the same: The project descriptions and mission statements are derived from Islamic teachings, they only work in Muslim majority areas, and they state their overarching goal as “helping Islam’s revival, well-being, and future” by consolidating global religious solidarity among Muslim populations. On the other hand, they drastically diverge from previous religious by positioning themselves as “civil society initiatives” rather than religious solidarity projects. They adopt the organizational models of World Bank/UN/USAID endorsed non-governmental organizations and frame the organizational identities and messages within the contours of the neoliberal civil society discourse. In this project, I examine this seeming contradiction and ask: Why are the previously informal Islamist networks transforming into formal NGOs and framing themselves as transnational civil society initiatives? What kinds of benefits does the neoliberal civil society frame provide to such religious solidarity alliances? I take one of the largest Muslim NGO coalitions to date – the Union of the NGOs of the Islamic World (UNIW). With its 206 member NGOs from 46 countries, UNIW aims to consolidate faith-based Muslim NGOs and to coordinate member activities for the welfare of all Muslim communities around the world. The data for the study comes from my fieldwork in Turkey, Germany, US, Malaysia, and Cambodia. Between June 2008 and May 2011, I conducted a total of 52 interviews with respondents including the UNIW’s secretary general, executive council members, and representatives of member NGOs from 22 different countries. The empirical findings point to non-liberal networks’ instrumental use of liberal norms. While UNIW is a religious network that promotes conservative norms, it draws from the ideational resources of the civil society toolbox and employs liberal norms in order to obtain resonance with the claims of more powerful and secular transnational non-state actors. In that sense, framing religious solidarity projects as transnational civil society networks provides Islamist groups additional channels of power. Previously informal communities find opportunities to claim legitimacy as global political actors, engage in mutually profitable relationships with states, and increase their social and organizational capital by collaborating with more established transnational advocacy networks.

Over the last two decades, Turkish Islamism has witnessed a transformation away from a “social-justice oriented” movement to a “market-oriented” one (Tugal 2009). Although many scholars have focused on what the emergence of ‘market Islam’ in Turkey entails for the organization of political economy, for state-society relations and for Islamism itself, the ways in which such a transformation impacts articulations of religious charity has been overlooked. In this paper, I engage with this critical transformation by focusing on how donors, volunteers and managers of religious charitable organizations have come to reinterpret the role of social generosity vis-à-vis poverty and inequality. Islamic teachings have traditionally glorified poverty, and held that the poor possess a higher spiritual place in the eyes of God. Due to their inferior position, the wealthy were expected to engage in practices of generosity in an egalitarian manner. However, recent transformations of Islamism have generated new interpretations that seek to reconcile Islamic teachings with capitalist ethics. What do these new perspectives say about the proper function religious generosity should play in a market society? How are new practices about generosity justified with reference to traditional beliefs in neoliberal Turkey? What does these new articulations of generosity entail for emergent notions of poverty, inequality and piety? I answer these questions by specifically focusing on three Islamic NGO’s. Each one of these NGOs is connected to another part of Islamic political society and each has become key players in the Turkish philanthropic third sector. Thus, an analysis of the intellectual discourses and on-the ground practices which shapes the charitable practices, ideas and ethics of these three organizations provides a key window onto the phenomenon of “market Islam.” The research is based on a 14-month fieldwork in Turkey that took place between August 2009 and June 2010, and which has since been followed up with shorter trips to Turkey. My initial findings suggest that although these intellectual discourses rearticulate notions of equality, poverty and benevolence in accordance with market-oriented norms, still, at times, social-justice oriented interpretations of Islamic generosity continue to undermine such pro-market articulations. Thus, Islamic beliefs about generosity operate both as a site for producing and resisting processes of marketization, individualization and privatization. What emerges then is a more complex picture of ‘market Islam’ in Turkey which includes both pro-poor and pro-market tendencies.

This paper aims to rethink the politics and pragmatics of charitable giving in the Middle Eastern context with a specific focus on contemporary Turkey. If we conceptualize Islamism as a “fusion of religion and responsibility,” whereas thinking post-Islamism as foregrounding “religiosity and rights,” how do we rethink and analyze contemporary forms of giving within the context of post-Islamist emphasis on plurality, rights and historicity? Historical accounts of charitable giving situate contemporary manifestations of charity with reference to traditional Islamic practices such as zakat, sadaqa and waqf while contemporary charity is at times seen as a corollary to or a tool of political Islam. Yet these perspectives do not fully account for the richness and diversity of charitable giving in contemporary context. Through ethnographic and archival research conducted in Istanbul and Izmir, this article focuses on contemporary charitable giving in its novel complexity through examining the dynamics and regulation of charitable giving. The article is based on interviews I conducted with the volunteers, employees, and aid recipients of three civil society organizations that rely on charitable giving to fund their projects. I document how religious ideals of anonymous charitable giving for the sake of giving, without expectation of return, are closely intertwined with anxiety over finding a worthy charitable association and recipient. In doing so, I focus on vakıf as both a concept and a practice that gives meaning to charitable giving in Turkey through the goal and ideal of empowerment for both donors and recipients. The increasing desire to document, define, and categorize the deserving poor as a way to justify the intent to give and to receive goes against the anonymity and immediacy of giving, thus riddling intent with ethical contradictions. I argue that attention needs to be paid to the political economy of intent, practice, and various forms of giving, and not just to the effects and outcomes of charity.

During the past decades, there has been an emerging interest among scholars as to whether an “Islamic economy” or an “Islamic economic development” in contrast to western economic and development models exists. On the one hand, a number of practical experiences indicate that there are certain similarities between what is called “Islamic economy” and Western economic systems. On the other hand, one may find unique economic institutions throughout Muslim history, which may indicate the possibility of a different economic system. In this paper, I aim to shed some lights on some of these similarities and distinctions. In particular, one must note that generalizing the conceptual framework of Western economic discourses to alternative economic systems may cause an unwarranted analytical jump. Accordingly, I intend to offer a more complicated picture of Muslim economy. In this paper, I shall briefly review the literature on Muslim economy and specifically, the ontological differences that arguably exist between Muslim and Western systems of economy. As mentioned before, however, the focus of this paper will be on Shi’ah Islam. To discuss the differences and similarities between the two economic systems, I will first explore the Islamic understanding of ownership. Moreover, I will analyze the practice of Waqf (or endowment) to discuss the similar aspects of Western economies and Muslim economy. One of my key assertions throughout this paper is that Muslim thinking about economy is different from western thinking in terms of ontology and worldview. The starting point of the inquiry, however, is what Muslim economy is and how it defines the notion of “ownership”. Based on the concept of “ownership”, investigating the practice of waqf (or religious endowment) is a useful analytical practice to study similarities and differences of Muslim and non-Muslim economic systems. Muslim waqf shows that how Muslim economy accepts some of the important aspects of liberal economy and, at the same time, rejects it as a pure solution. Furthermore, there are some similar institutions in western systems of economy that bear similarities with waqf in Islam. Some scholars, for instance, have argued that the institution of “trust” in the West has been influenced by Islam.

As Turkey’s economy has liberalized over the last 25 years, the Turkish middle class has expanded to include new populations, such as religiously devout entrepreneurs, who were once largely excluded from Turkey’s economy. This new religious bourgeoisie has generally accepted the neoliberal narrative that links economic success to individual effort, yet they have also maintained the belief that prosperity is ultimately the result of God’s blessings (ihsan), which must be repaid through charitable deeds. The Hizmet (“service”) movement, founded by followers of the Turkish theologian, Fethullah Gülen, is a rapidly expanding philanthropic organization that provides pious affluent Turks with a well-organized outlet for their pent-up charitable impulses. Based on ethnographic research among Hizmet members in Turkey and the U.S., this paper will discuss how Gülen’s teachings on economic activity and social responsibility have encouraged the giving of charity beyond the minimum required by Islamic law (zakat). His teachings have also promoted the idea among his followers that individual financial success may serve as forms of worship by which one may gain God’s reward in this life and the next. In order to “purify” wealth and transform it into religious merit, the believer must maintain proper intension (niyet) in which all activities, including economic activities, are conducted with devotion to God. An affluent individual must also repay God’s beneficence with beneficence to society. While the movement provides traditional opportunities for charitable giving, Gülen’s teachings also urge followers to turn wealth production itself into a philanthropic activity. In order to accomplish this, movement members have formed international trade and business networks, as well as centers of Islamic banking and investment, in which profits are expected to be turned to socially beneficial ends. For example, devout businessmen may bypass more lucrative financial opportunities in order to invest in businesses in poor countries both to help develop the local economy and eventually to make a profit. Such activities—which are ideally sanctified by the devotion and benevolence of the economic actors—blur the line between non-profit and for-profit business and between charitable and commercial pursuits.