God's Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State

by Nada Moumtaz

Overview

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Up to the twentieth century, Islamic charitable endowments provided the material foundation of the Muslim world. In Lebanon, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the imposition of French colonial rule, many of these endowments reverted to private property circulating in the marketplace. In contemporary Beirut, however, charitable endowments have resurfaced as mosques, Islamic centers, and nonprofit organizations. A historical anthropology in dialogue with Islamic law, God's Property demonstrates how these endowments have been drawn into secular logics—no longer the property of God but of the Muslim community—and shaped by the modern state and modern understandings of charity and property. Although these transformations have produced new kinds of loyalties and new ways of being in society, Moumtaz’s ethnography reveals the furtive persistence of endowment practices that perpetuate older ways of thinking of one’s self and one’s responsibilities toward family and state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520345874
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/10/2021
Series:	Islamic Humanities , #3
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Nada Moumtaz is Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and in the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto.
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Datation xiii

Introduction 1

Part I Architecture

1 Waqf, a Non-Definition 31

2 State, Law, and the "Muslim Community" 68

Part II Grammars

3 The Intent of Charity 113

4 Charity and the Family 153

5 The "Waqf's Benefit" and Public Benefit 193

Conclusion 223

Appendix A Main Ottoman Mutun, Commentaries, and Glosses of the Beirut Court 235

Appendix B 'Umari Mosque Expenditures and Appointments 237

Glossary 239

Bibliography 243

Index 269

Editorial Reviews

"God’s Property sheds an instructive light on the transformations that accompanied the emergence of these very regimes of accumulation that are pushing millions of Lebanese into poverty today."

The Middle East Journal

"Highly readable yet complex. . . . This book is an important contribution to our understanding of Islam, philanthropy, law, and public policy through the lens of waqfs."

Journal of Church and State