The Limitations of a Western Epistemology in Examining Muslim Community Volunteering

Abstract

We don’t exactly know the historic origins of volunteering and, depending on what definition we apply, it may go back to the beginning of mankind. What
we do know is that most world religions, including Islam and Christianity, have for many centuries emphasized—in their scripts and practice—the importance of caring for and helping others, in particular those in need (Hustinx et al., 2015). Faithbased perspectives on volunteering have been the subject of scholarly inquiry in specialized academic niches, but they have received little attention in volunteering research more broadly, where volunteering has been examined mainly through a secular lens of citizenship and civic participation. This is not to say there is not also excellent scholarship on volunteering in religious contexts and on the role of faith and organizational religiosity in volunteering (Cnaan et al., 1993; Becker & Dhingra, 2001; Grönlund et al., 2021). Most of this work, however, has applied an analytical approach rooted in a secular, social-science epistemology and mostly looked at Christian faith groups.