Other Visions of the Economy: NGOs and Transformations of Islamic Charity in North India

Abstract

This article explores how new Islamic charity NGOs in India are transforming age-old practices of obligatory Islamic almsgiving (zakat). This transformation reconfigured the ritual of zakat from its historical emphasis on local giving among kin and neighbors to an NGO-based developmentalist process. Businessmen founding Islamic charity organizations aimed to make zakat more efficient and systematic through new modalities of management. Yet, this seemingly closer alignment of Islamic values and market rationalities went beyond what anthropologists elsewhere have termed “neoliberal Islam.” In revisiting anthropology's critique of NGOs extending neoliberal economic development, this article queries the role of NGOs that are not dependent on foreign donors or states. Volunteers who donated and distributed funds believed in a “zakat economy” that contained an incisive critique of debt-based approaches to economic development and questioned key aspects of the dominant donor–recipient model of aid. The popularity of these beliefs grew alongside notable amounts of new crowdfunding, fueling a shift that reshaped the Muslim associational landscape in India.