Trading with God: Islam, Calculation, Excess

Mittermaier, Amira

doi:10.1002/9781118605936.ch15

Cited by 29 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Membership of reformist organizations remains low, the Sharia has not been incorporated into municipal byelaws, and most of my informants, like Ayu, expressed reluctance to affiliate themselves with any Islamic organizations, saying they preferred simply ‘to follow anything that's good’. Nevertheless, the growing attention given to Islam in politics, the media, and everyday life has rendered the religion an object of interest and concern for many Riau Islanders, who increasingly understand themselves as individualized Muslim subjects, their fates – in this world and the next – in their own hands (see also Mittermaier ; Peletz ).…”

Section: Riau Islands Islammentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the Islamic authority of the Indonesian state: responsibility, suspicion, and acts of compliance

Long

2017

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article examines how the Indonesian state's efforts to style itself as an Islamic authority have influenced the behaviour of its Muslim citizens. I present cases in which Muslims in Indonesia's Riau Islands comply with Islamic state directives in order to transfer responsibility for their actions to the state, showing how such a mode of practice can support Islamic governmentality, bolster nationalism, and constrain civic activism. Interestingly, compliance may occur even when citizens harbour deep misgivings towards a directive, leading me to query whether suspicion is necessarily inimical to authority. I conclude that a pronouncement's Islamic authority hinges on how Muslims relate to their suspicions regarding it, and that, for Riau Islanders, suspicion's urgency has been tempered by cultural models of personhood, individual subjectivity, and the moral murk of post-Suharto Indonesia.

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Section: Riau Islands Islammentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This was an anxious pursuit. They could not be sure how harshly God would weigh their sinful actions, and knew that some sins could wipe out a lifetime's accumulated merit (see also Mittermaier : 284‐5). Better, they said, to avoid sin whenever possible.…”

Section: Sinning Moral Perception and Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Islamic authority of the Indonesian state: responsibility, suspicion, and acts of compliance

Long

2017

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“… 18 For more extensive discussion of this calculative tendency in zakat -giving in Lucknow, see Taylor (2015b). This application of calculative reason to piety practices is what Mauss (1960: 55) termed an ‘economic theology’, as Amira Mittermaier (2014) also has pointed out for almsgiving in Egypt.…”

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confidence: 93%

“… 7 Academic work on modern transformations in Islamic philanthropy is still scarce, but see studies by Benthall (2002); Deeb (2006: 168–212); Benthall and Bellion-Jourdan (2003); Atia (2013); Mittermaier (2014); and Taylor (2015b). Particularly regarding innovation in zakat practices in the growth of modern Muslim institutions, see Hilman Latief's seminal study on Indonesia (2012: 41–45, 90–93).…”

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confidence: 99%

Receipts and Other Forms of Islamic Charity: Accounting for piety in modern North India

Taylor

2018

Mod. Asian Stud.

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Islamic almsgiving is on the rise among Muslims in India, as charitable donations by individuals come to supplant landed endowments as the lifeblood of many Islamic associations. Techniques of mass fundraising in India by Islamic revivalist movements such as Deoband facilitated their expansion across the subcontinent. Such fundraising depended on documentary practices such as verification letters, lists of donors, and receipts for donations. This article illustrates how charity receipts and other documents that change hands in ritual Islamic almsgiving are also a key part of new Indian Muslim collective identities. Moral ties as well as money circulate in this Islamic charity economy. Financial documents are Islamic philanthropy's answer to ‘print capitalism’, serving as material rituals of symbolic community across vast distances. Moreover, the use of documents in traditional Islamic almsgiving is also inflecting pious Muslims’ spiritualities. Islamic charity receipts in particular are contributing to the individualization of religiosity among Lucknow Muslims. New modes of accounting (originally intended to ensure financial compliance) also allow Muslim almsgivers to ‘account’ for accrued piety in a perceived spiritual merit economy.

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“…On the pervasive idea of working one's way into paradise, found in other contexts in Egypt, see Mittermaier () and Schielke ().…”

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confidence: 99%

Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma

Mittermaier

2014

Cult. Anthropol.

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‘Aīsh, huriyya, ‘adāla igtimā‘iyya (“bread, freedom, social justice”) were key demands of Egyptian protesters in early 2011. Whereas the call for bread evokes immediate need, social justice is often associated with structural transformations and a better tomorrow. In light of this temporal tension, this article calls for a critical rethinking of an orientation toward the future by dwelling on the ethical and political potentials inherent to traditions of giving, sharing, and hospitality that are fundamentally oriented toward the present. Drawing on fieldwork in Cairo during 2010 and 2012, I think about an ethics of immediacy that is embodied in seemingly non-revolutionary everyday practices, but that also emerges from stories about Tahrir as a space of togetherness and solidarity. I argue that such an ethics is obscured in dominant neoliberal concepts of social justice, which foreground individual responsibility, productivity, and economic growth. Concretely, the article places the Tahrir utopia in conversation with a Sufi khidma that provides guests with food, tea, and a place to rest. Both spaces, I suggest, gesture toward modes of being in the world which rupture the state’s monopoly of politics, enable alternative forms of circulation and distribution, and encourage forms of relationality different from capitalism (in both its welfare and neoliberal renditions). By bringing these spaces into conversation, I seek to problematize a pervasive neoliberalization of social justice and to contribute to an anthropology of the otherwise.

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Trading with God: Islam, Calculation, Excess

Cited by 29 publications

References 31 publications

On the Islamic authority of the Indonesian state: responsibility, suspicion, and acts of compliance

On the Islamic authority of the Indonesian state: responsibility, suspicion, and acts of compliance

Receipts and Other Forms of Islamic Charity: Accounting for piety in modern North India

Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma

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