In the shadow of a decimated welfare state, millions of Egyptians have turned away from the state and towards NGOs, particularly Islamic charitable associations, as primary providers of social services. With growing numbers of the poor seeking social assistance, organizational leaders have come to see the poor as seekers of infinite and unconditional aid. Compounded by pressure from the state to become development organizations, the spaces of the associations have become crucial sites for the entrenchment of neoliberalism in Cairo. This paper discusses the evolution of Cairo's charitable associations. In particular, I explore how the increased participation of the private sector has transformed associations and led to the formation of numerous philanthropic foundations. Based on over one year of ethnographic research in Cairo, including interviews with over 25 organizational leaders, I present data on how organizations have changed their relationship to donors and recipients as well as on-the-ground projects aimed at poverty alleviation. I argue that transforming charitable practices into development is part of an attempt to depict Islamic practices of giving as modern. At the same time, as a result of the globalization of corporate social responsibility, the private sector has emerged as a critical player in the development project, with concrete effects on the sector. As a result, associations in Egypt are becoming hybrid formations embodying neoliberal values while stretching Islamic practices of giving. Working through an assemblage of technologies of the self and of the social body, practices of giving are one way the regulation of the personal has become linked to the regulation of political or civil conduct. Recognizing the importance of NGOs, and yet threatened by much of their activities, the state has had to renegotiate its stance on Islamic associations, differentiating developmental organizations from political ones.

This paper examines public discourses in England about representation of the Muslim community and struggles for power among several “civil society” organizations in light of the events of 9/11 and 7/7 and the resulting increase in community surveillance. I pay particular attention to London’s Shi‘i minority, often ignored in the literature on Islam in Europe. I argue that Islamic institutions are able to use Western democracies to further their work in religious proselytizing and education through also addressing Western concerns and anti-terrorism policies. The Al-Khoei Foundation was established in London in 1989 by Ayatollah Sayyid Abul Qasim Al-Khoei, an influential scholar of Najaf, Iraq. He envisioned a center to serve Shi‘i migrants in the West, in particular the second generation born in the United Kingdom who lacked the religious knowledge of their parents. The center aims to combine secular and religious education, build mosques and schools, and translate key Islamic texts into English. In addition, the foundation has become active in human rights work in Iraq since the 1991 Intifada. The Al-Khoei Foundation uses its headquarters in London to bridge the gap between North and South. Clerics and officers work to educate the British and American governments, the United Nations, and the general public on Shi‘i Islam and the war in Iraq while providing religious counseling to the Shi‘i diaspora on how to live Muslim lives in the West. Recently the foundation has also begun to cater to Western policies on “the War on Terror.” Organizing conferences on radicalism and engaging in interfaith programming demonstrates to the West the moderate stances of such Muslim organizations. These new policies allow new roles for Muslim organizations, such as inclusion into the British Home Office’s planning meetings for improving community relations. When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, the Muslim Council of Britain was established as an umbrella organization to represent the Muslim voice to the government. However, reacting to the bombing of London’s transport system on July 7, 2005, several groups of British Muslims criticized the government for talking only to spokesmen with “extremist” Sunni Muslim perspectives. Alternative “grassroots” organizations launched in 2006 claiming to represent the Sufi “silent majority.” The Al-Khoei Foundation similarly became the governmental representative of Britain’s Shi‘i minority. The politics of transnational governmentality thereby call into question the non-governmental status of Muslim NGOs in Britain.

In May 2007, the UN Security Council passed a resolution establishing the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) to prosecute those accused in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. The resolution was passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows the Security Council to take military and nonmilitary action in response to crimes that threaten international peace and security. The UN has only previously taken such measures to prosecute international crimes related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide. This will be the first international tribunal mandated to prosecute a terrorist crime. In the view of the Security Council, and many in Lebanon, the STL is being convened as a means to ending impunity and establishing the rule of law in the country. However, the formation of the STL has also been accompanied by the formation of a loose coalition of international and local NGOs who challenge this claim and argue that the cycle of violence and impunity in Lebanon can only come to an end through a proper transitional justice process. Instead of focusing on political assassinations and terrorist networks, these civil society actors are calling for the examination of all human rights violations going back to the beginning of the civil war in 1975. Using ethnographic and archival data collected through field research in Lebanon, I argue that the discourses, practices, and institutions of transitional justice underpinning these initiatives should be seen as a hegemonic mode of governmentality aimed at the regulation of societies. Transitional justice works through the identification of post-conflict societies and it urges these societies to heal themselves according to the liberal democratic model. This reconstruction process is accomplished through a range of legal, moral, and scientific technologies that include legal prosecutions, truth commissions, victim reparations, the documentation and archiving of human rights violations, and reconciliation practices. In this paper, I examine how local civil society actors in Lebanon are engaging with these technologies, the concepts they are employing in their work, and the social and political identities they are attempting to construct. In my analysis, I pay special attention to the relationships and tensions this work is producing in and between civil society, national politics, and international legal and political institutions, and how this connects to larger processes of global governance in the post 9/11 era.