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

Abstract

the latter with the financial support of the French State, programme "Investissements d'avenir, " managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-11-LABX-0027-01 Labex RFIEA+).The institutes, with their facilities and staff, provided ideal environments for writing and for exchanges with colleagues from many countries and disciplines, guarding against parochialism. STIAS enhanced my understanding of other societies' engagement with dark pasts. Many fellows, especially from diverse parts of the African continent, enriched my experience. The IEA served as a basis from which to engage with the rich intellectual life of Paris and to reach out to civil society and political actors. I built on benefits received during the summer of 2016 as a guest of the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.More individuals than I can mention merit special mention. I ask those left out for forgiveness. The names of numerous interviewees in Paris, Massachusetts, and Minnesota have to remain anonymous. To them I am especially grateful.In Paris, Liora Israël and Jacques Commaille laid the foundation for a series of successful research visits, and John Hagan and Philip Smith helped pave the way to the French capital.

Beyond Modernity: The Moral Economy of Ibn Khaldun

“…For the colonial and postcolonial states, waqfs represented goods that could not be valued for exchange in the market. Their ownership in the hands of God commanded a moral economy of exchange that evaded the all-powerful market of colonial, modernizing states (Kogelman 2002;Powers 1989;Nasution 2002;Moumtaz 2021).…”

Gucci and the waqf: Inalienability in Beirut's postwar reconstruction

“…But historians have documented the ways waqfs have often reverted to private property, through forum shopping in courts using more permissive schools of law (Ibrahim 2015, 138–40), might (Crecelius 1991; Hoexter 1998), or simply practice (Sroor 2010). In Lebanese law today, most waqfs can be purged and made into private property (Moumtaz 2021, 184–85). Summarizing the state of the field, Randi Deguilhem (2012) writes, “the primary sources have indisputably shown that, far from being static or in ‘mortmain,’ foundation properties were not, in fact, inalienable and often changed hands.” This conclusion is an important corrective to the Orientalist condemnations of waqf as “immobilized,” an impediment to the free circulation of property and development, that have formed the basis of the attempts of modernizing states, including Lebanon, to eradicate the waqf 4 .…”

Book Review Editorial: Emerging Themes in Legal and Political Anthropology

“…In these works, traditional sources of legal research such as laws, regulations, court cases, legal disputes, and negotiations are approached through an anthropological gaze that examines the meanings and genealogies of particular legal institutions and forms of knowledge grounded in culturally and historically specific traditions. Nada Moumtaz's God's Property (2021) provides a fascinating genealogy of the legal institution of the waqf , a type of Islamic charity trust, as it shifts from a notion of property administered by God and the family to a secularized institution that belongs to the private sphere of religious communities. Moumtaz shows how contemporary waqfs are organized and overseen by the logics and laws of modern colonial and postcolonial state bureaucracy.…”