Aesthetics and Ethics of Islamic Giving: Religious Moral Economy

Abstract

The paper explores the aesthetics and ethics of Islamic giving. The ethnography focuses on the Mustadafin Foundation’s preparation, cooking, and distribution of akhni (local meat and rice dish) to poor families in various neighborhoods in the broader Cape Town area. Mustadafin Foundation is an Islamic philanthropic organization that provides a range of social services for Muslim and non-Muslim people in Cape Town. The discussion unpacks how the ethics of Mustadafin giving is an embodied piety toward God, driven by its caring about the other, a sense of active citizenship, and social commitment. The paper argues that the various ethical dispositions toward God, others, and the social are mutually constitutive of Mustadafin’s ethics of giving. Unfolding the ethics involved in the act of Islamic giving offers insight into a synthesis of ethics. However, paying attention to aesthetic experience alludes to a total sensory experience of ethical formations. By foregrounding the question of the ethics of Islamic giving, the paper considers the Mustadafin Foundation as constitutive of a religious moral economy.