Research project

Entangled Universals of Transnational Islamic Charity

This project studies how Islamic charitable networks in seeking to address global needs position themselves as universalist projects, entangled with Western humanitarianism and neoliberal welfare regimes. It seeks to understand how and to what extent contemporary transnational Islamic charitable networks have a universal scope, carving out a critical role that complements secular humanitarianism in the massive and essential system of global aid and welfare in a time of intersecting crises.

Duration: 2024 - 2029
Contact: Radhika Gupta
Funding: European Research Council Consolidator Grant (Grant number 101124597)

Humanity as constituency

Transnational Islamic charity today claims humanity as its constituency. As a universalist category, humanity is no longer the monopoly of Western humanitarianism. A rich vein of scholarship has examined the ethico-moral complexities and paradoxes that riddle secular humanitarianism. However, we know little about how transnational Islamic charity claims humanity as its constituency and reconstitutes ideas of human worth in its efforts to mitigate global suffering. The project will contribute to decolonizing the production of knowledge on fundamental categories of social analysis – ‘humanity’ and the ‘human’ – by recuperating other genealogies that have been overshadowed and side-lined by canonized Enlightenment thought undergirding dominant Euro-centric conceptualizations of these categories.

Blurred boundaries

International Islamic networks have proliferated in the late twentieth century. Today they occupy a significant space in the humanitarian industry and within neoliberal welfare regimes, addressing the needs of diverse constituencies. Islamic charitable networks have increasingly invested in public works for all humans: state-of-the-art hospitals, multistorey housing complexes, schools for modern education to meet the social needs of both Muslims and others. Islamic giving and investment are increasingly recognized by multilateral institutions and states as important and complementary sources of social welfare. The lines between charity, philanthropy, humanitarianism and development have become blurred, and the practice, process and politics of providing aid and welfare morphs continually. The project will study varied initiatives of Islamic charities, how these are scaled up and their institutional partnerships.

Transnational scope

The project cuts across sites and scales to research the field of transnational Islamic charity as an entangled universal. As with all schemes that have universalist aspirations and claims, it operates through global connections. While the global north-south axis has structured the flow and analyses of western aid, this project will traverse both the north-south and south-south axes. To understand the truly global impact of transnational Islamic charity, this project will also step outside the ‘traditional heartland’ of the Islamic world and center two non-Muslim majority countries in the global south: India and Tanzania, for ethnographic research.

Project team

The team comprises the principal investigator, two PhD candidates who will each work in India or Tanzania, and a postdoctoral fellow.