Introduction: Muslim Humanitarianism
Muslims around the world partake in comparable practices of aid, welfare and care that have received a wide range of different labels depending on…
Read MoreMuslim Humanitarianism
Curated by Till Mostowlansky, this thematic thread facilitates conversation between anthropologists and historians working on a range of Muslim settings who explore the very possibility of Muslim humanitarianism, from theoretical and methodological perspectives. Photo credit: Am*Bush (flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
A note on humanitarian terminology
This article reviews the lexical field associated with “charity,” “philanthropy,” “humanitarianism” and similar terms in English, and concludes with a brief account of comparable…
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Theorizing Humanitarianism for an Islamic Counterpublic #MUHUM
Closely attending to Muslim theorizations provides an opportunity for social scientists to stop asking such questions as ‘what is so Islamic about Islamic humanitarianism?’…
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Reflections on a Theory of Zakat
This inquiry into the role of “obligatory almsgiving” (zakat) within Muslim humanitarianism presents a theorization of two modes of Islamic charity: the purity ethos…
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Saudi Arabia, Humanitarian Aid and Knowledge Production: What do we really know?
Saudi Arabia has one of the largest humanitarian aid budgets in the world. It counts as an ‘emerging’ donor of substantial influence in one…
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The Egyptian Red Crescent in the Twentieth Century
The Egyptian Red Crescent was founded in 1912 by Sheikh Ali Yussuf with a clear Panislamic and anticolonial agenda. In the following decades, however,…
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A Postcolonial Civic? Shi‘i Philanthropy and the Making and Marking of Urban Space in Mumbai
Scholarly discussions of charity, philanthropy and humanitarianism in varied contexts tend to uphold the moral ideal of giving for the sake of humanity at…
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At Odds with the Impulse: Muslim Humanitarianism and its Exclusions in Northern Pakistan
Drawing on fieldwork undertaken between 2004 and 2013 in Gilgit Town, the multi-sectarian capital of the Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan, this brief explores…
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Islam, Humanitarianism and everyday religion
In this intervention I argue that charitable or humanitarian practices among contemporary Muslims— and everyday religiosity more generally—are constituted and experienced not only through…
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Muslim Humanitarianism: An Afterword
What kind of practices, forms of moral reasoning and ethical orientation does Muslim humanitarianism entail? In what contexts and in response to what social…
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