“Comparative perspective on the growth and legal transformations of Arab (Islamic) charities”

In the last decade, much attention has been given (like in the previous workshops organized by this research network bringing us in Hong Kong, or generally in the social science literature) to the growing significance of Islamic charities in the Arab world (Clark 2004). Three general interpretations have often been offered, two connected to political economy arguments and a third one envisioning the evolution of Islamic charities in culturalist terms. First, many connected the rise of the sector of charitable organizations (and more largely of “political Islam”), with the oil bonanza allowing the expansion of the Islamic charitable sector from the 1970s onwards (e.g., Ayubi 1991). Second, and more recently, it has often been noted that the expansion of Islamic charities, like that of various nongovernmental associations, could be connected to the downsizing of the states under neoliberal skies (e.g., Pioppi 2011). Third, a last component of the literature stressed internal elements or values favored by Islamic associations, leading either to refined Weberian accounts of a distinct Muslim tradition in which a low threshold of institutionalization can be witnessed around Islamic charitable institutions (Salvatore 2011: 823), all the way to culturalist (and hence problematic) explanations that patriarchal authority has been directly subsumed in the organizational form of Islamic charities.