Journal of Muslim Philanthropy & Civil Society

Acknowledgements

Ken Chitwood — 2023-12-30

Together in the Struggle: Puerto Rican Muslims and their Philanthropic Activism from El Barrio to La Perla

Ken Chitwood — 2023-12-30

From early on, philanthropic activism has played a critical role in the formation of Puerto Rican Muslim sociality. From the grassroots struggle for empowerment by Alianza Islámica—the first Latinx Muslim community, founded by four Puerto Ricans in El Barrio in 1987—to the multistakeholder work of the Three Puerto Rican Imams in the wake of Hurricane María, they have paired the Islamic emphasis on promoting the welfare of others with advocacy around issues of minoritization, in American society and the ummah. I discuss how Puerto Rican Muslims transform the vulnerabilities of marginalization into resilience and resistance through intersectional, philanthropic activism.

Social Welfare Services and Dawah in “Autochthonous” Islamic Centers in Colombia

Baptiste Brodard — 2023-12-30

In various cities throughout Colombia, Islamic centers provide welfare services to both Muslims and non-Muslims. Some organize food distributions in the streets of deprived neighborhoods, while others receive recipients directly on their premises. In each case, the aim is to help people in the name of Islam, including non- Muslims. What are the objectives of the welfare activities developed by Islamic organizations? What are Muslim actors’ motivations and expectations for their charity work investments? What is the relationship between philanthropy and dawah? This article takes up these questions through empirical case studies in Colombia in order to discuss how several Islamic centers in the country, whose aim is to attract “autochthonous” Muslims—those not descended from migrants or colonists—concretely organize charitable practices and examine the actors’ motivations as well as the theological and ideological rationales that underlie them.

Muslim Beneficence at a Hemispheric Crossroads of Authoritarian and Counterterrorist Rule

John Karam — 2023-12-30

This article traces the making of Muslim Middle Eastern-led beneficence at a specific geographical and historical crossroads. Geographically, the setting is the trinational border between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, called the tríplice fronteira in Portuguese, triple frontera in Spanish, and tri-border in English. Mostly Muslim Lebanese and some Muslim Palestinians and Syrians settled in the city of Foz do Iguaçu, on the Brazilian side, and in Ciudad del Este, on the Paraguayan side, while hardly any remained permanently on the Argentine side, in Puerto Iguazú, of this tristate border. Historically, these overwhelmingly self-identified Muslim Arabs established beneficent institutions in relation to shifting regimes of exceptional rule. Roughly between the 1950s and 1980s, they founded charity and community associations under authoritarian governments in Brazil and Paraguay. Subsequently, from the 1990s to today, their beneficence encountered not full democratic enfranchisement but rather increasing counterterrorist surveillance by the US and Mercosur member states (originally founded by Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay). So the larger goal of this article is to explore Muslim Arab beneficence under state surveillance in authoritarian times, roughly from the 1950s to the 1980s, as well as in counterterrorist times, from the 1990s to the 2010s. The point is that contemporary Muslim beneficence became enveloped by state exceptions that twisted and truncated its much longer history across the hemisphere.

Exploring Muslim Philanthropy in the Latinx Americas

Ken Chitwood — 2023-12-30

“We Carry All These Different Hijabs”: An Interview with Hazel Gómez

Ken Chitwood — 2023-12-30

Hazel Gómez is a board member for Rabata, a network of female Muslim scholars dedicated to educating Muslim women around the world. Gómez, who is also a community organizer, has been involved with Rabata for many years, studying with various scholars through the organization’s academic institute. In this interview, Gómez highlights how her faith plays a central role in the philanthropic and civic work she does, especially as it pertains to integrating Islamic
principles and teachings into her community organizing. Gómez specifically cites a saying of the Prophet Muhammad that highlights
the importance of ensuring people have basic rights such as a home, clothing, food, and water as well as a Quranic injunction that different
people, from different places should “get to know one another.” This interview was conducted by Ken Chitwood via Zoom on December 2,
2022. It has been edited for clarity and length.

Muslim Philanthropy in Brazil: Interviews with Philanthropists in São Paulo

Malika Kettani — 2023-12-30

The main purpose of these interviews is to explore the development of Muslim philanthropy in Brazil as well as the role of dawah and its relation to philanthropy. The interviews deal with specific terms such as zakat, fitra, sadaqah, and waqf to explore how they are interpreted and applied in Latin American contexts. The interviews were conducted with the person in charge of Centro de Divulgação do Islam para América Latina (CDIAL, Center for the Promotion of
Islam in Latin America) and the director of affairs at Al-Madina School in São Bernardo, São Paulo, Brazil. This paper also provides some perspective on how the Brazilian government provides facilities for Islamic institutions, the way Muslim nonprofit organizations spend their zakat, and how they manage to help others in Brazilian civil society. Both through interviews and the author’s personal involvement, this paper offers multiple first-person accounts of
Muslim philanthropy in Brazil.

Humanitarian Hindu, Exceptional Citizen

Mona Bhan — 2023-12-30

Islam and the Orientalist Vision in Padmaavat

Anustup Basu — 2023-12-30

This essay argues that Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2018 Bollywood historical film Padmaavat is part of a wider media-informational atmospherics of contemporary Hindu pride and Islamophobia, drawing on advertised energies of disaffection and ethnological stereotyping around the figure of the Muslim. In the process, it constructs a “double shift” Orientalist prism of race perception to view a splendid “Aryan” Hindu past as well as a dark interval of Islamic rule in India marked by a Semitic, Turko-Arabic pathology. The film is part of an overall Hindu nationalist project of constructing a moral memory (contra history) in the era of the digital image that can not only reinvent the past, but also re-texture and re-canvas it, making purported pictures of a glorious Hindu bygone appearing as
not just nove, but also tactile and sensuous.

Islamic Ethics and Female Volunteering: Committing to Society, Committing to God

Ashwaq Masoodi — 2023-12-30

Charity in Saudi Arabia: Civil Society under Authoritarianism

Altea Pericoli — 2023-12-30