For centuries Muslims have asked whether the Qurʾan should be recited and memorized first and foremost, or whether one must prioritize understanding the meaning of its complex language. What is the best way to encounter God's Word? To explore this question, a women's Qurʾan lesson in a slum of Old Cairo illustrates modern Muslim anxieties over the place of discursive meaning in encounters with the Qurʾan. This article elaborates the concept of affirmation as an analytic to grasp how the women relate to the truth of revelation. Affirmation is a performative and discursive hermeneutic practice that deploys Qurʾanic citation, situates Qurʾanic concepts in daily life, and sutures the efficacy of Qurʾan education with correct language and with right action. Their lessons are indicative of reformist trends in Qurʾan education that open onto questions of meaning and understanding in relation to human interactions with divine speech.

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How might our understanding of humanitarianism and development be enriched if we centered Muslims, not only as the largest recipients of care but also as significant actors and donors? Despite critical histories and analyses of humanitarianism and development that demystify them as universal projects for "good," logics of the global north persist in dominating the norms of a perceived "global order." 1 Centering Muslims in humanitarianism and development offers the opportunity to rethink universal and normative projects of improvement, rescue, and care. Centering Muslims calls our attention to the many ways that Muslims think, lead, engage, and practice aid and relief. In such an effort to center, neither Muslims nor the Islamic tradition should be taken exclusively as foils, or limited to the position of "speaking back" to secular or Christian powers. To be sure, Muslim practices may indeed decenter hegemonic norms and, at times, do so intentionally. Critical research on religion and international aid demonstrates how religious actors upend dominant logics. 2 Yet, as contributors to this special issue demonstrate, Muslim undertakings may just as often present translations or adaptations of what they understand to be global or international norms. This special issue explores Muslim projects of aid, charity, and relief, not as idiosyncratic examples of a global project led by the global north but rather as telling illustrations of the variegated ways that people today address human need and suffering. Twenty-first century

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