Economy of Tribulation: Translating Humanitarianism for an Islamic Counterpublic

Abstract

AbstractThis paper addresses the theoretical problem of how to approach Islamic charity in a humanitarian world, without simultaneously reproducing a secularization narrative in the terms of analysis. First, I outline the economic theology of an Islamic reformist organization serving Syrian refugees in Jordan. I argue that it should be disarticulated from the interpretative frame of “neoliberal piety” to which the academic literature often refers modern Islamic charity. Second, I outline how the organization's director locates Islamic charity and international humanitarianism together within the same moral economy. I argue that his account, which relates but does not assimilate distinctive regimes of care, problematizes the acts of secular translation which generally mediate humanitarianism and religion. Taken together, these two arguments methodologically return us to the anthropological reclamation of historical difference.