Friday, January 22, 2010

Charities in Islamic Societies

Amy Singer

Islamic societies – based on 2 assumptions – Quran and hadith provide the common core for reference, which repeatedly praise charity – and that the interpretation of the Quran and hadith are diverse by different muslim societies of different eras.

Zakat and sadaqa not distinguished from each other but certain verses imply two kinds of donation ie obligatory and voluntary giving
Everyone , even those with little worldly possessions, could invoke God’s blessings by voluntary giving eg many common daily actions are considered as sadaqa
Charity generally in the form of individual charitable efforts. But with the development of government agencies and new non-governmental forms of association – a “mixed economy of charity” has emerged.

The Ottoman empire was not a welfare state – rather they were welfare society – the welfare ethos was rooted in society at large and it was the entire society, including the sultan, which participated in providing social services and not the state alone or primarily.
Relying on Halil Inalcik (An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire) – unlike the modern welfare states which give development aid ie developing people’s ability to sustain themselves, the Ottoman Empire provided relief services. Provision of social services was largely through waqf endowed with individual wealth obtained primarily through war booty, military salaries and agrarian tax revenues. They were not regular expenditure from the state coffers before the second half of the 19th century.

Charity supported not only the poor but other including scholars, students, mosque employees, travelers and sufis.

The poor
• P 159 – 2 main factors by which someone is judged to be poor - the existence of need (haja) and the absence of surplus (fadl)
• But there are ambivalent or even negative attitudes to begging in the Quran or hadith (p 168) – although it notes begging as a response to need and includes beggars as a category worth of charity (v 2:177) but it praises the poor that do not beg importunately (v 2: 273)
In the late 19th century shifting definitions of need and entitlement came about - questions of the deserving and the undeserving poor. Also, status of religious scholars and sufies became less important.
Police tool increasingly aggressive role toward vagrants - defined as people without work, and were seen as undesirable and unsightly, and even criminal. Vagrancy laws came about- by 1890, Ottoman law regarded those with no specific residence or job as "vagrants" while the 1909 "law on Vagrants and Suspected Persons" criminalized vagrancy



Waqfs (pg 91)
• Began to appear in greater numbers from roughly 9th century
• Roots in Roman, Byzantine and Sassanian laws and practices, but developed within the context of Muslim legal and cultural demands together with political, social and economic realities.
• Endowments are the most public form of charity in Islamic societies
• Colonial rulers scrutinized waqfs because it seemed to interfere with modern private property regimes and the reform of landholding for purposes of agricultural modernization and development
• Eg of waqf – public kitchen of Hurrem Sultan in Jerusalem (1552) – to feed 400 “the poor and pious, the weak and needy” – the kitchen relied on the revenues from more than 20 villages in the surrounding countryside as well as income from a double hammam
• Other types of waqf – Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dhahab (1772-75) gov of Ottoman Egypt – waqf of mosque, college, fountain and zawiya in Cairo with properties to support the waqf
• Wide range of people made waqr
• Cash waqfs relied on yields generated from investments
• Motives that can be deduced – urban and rural development, imperial legitimation, desire for personal prominence, avoiding restrictions on the division of inheritance, protection of wealth from imperial confiscation, promotion of community or sectarian interests, preservation of social hierarchies and cultural norms (p 104)
• They were also important agent of settlement in newly conquered regions eg in Cairo, endowments of large mosques in Damascus by Selim I and Suleyman I
• P 109 – “Like many philanthropic endeavors, the founding of waqfs was a means to preserve social hierarchies and cultural norms. For the most part, endowments funded activities that reinforced the dominant values of a society: the place of religion and ritual; the accepted curriculum of study and the goal of education; the physical shape of cities; the conventional practice of medicine; the preservation of family wealth; and the status of the poor as poor and dependent. Much of the poor relief distributed through waqfs was aimed at supplying subsistence or relief rather than what is today called development aid. Much good work was accomplished, but it did not have radical aims such as the redistribution of wealth, the promotion of general literacy, or the eradication of need.”

Waqf reforms
•By 19th century, many reforms to the waqf were placed in the Ottoman empire as well as well as other colonized Muslim areas.
• By this time, large amounts of property all over the Muslim world belonged to waqfs. Eg 75% of arable lands in area of today’s Turkey, 1/5th of Egypt, 1/7th of Irran, ½ of Algeria, 1/3rd of Tunisia and 1/3rd of Greece. Amount of urban property in waqf was considerable. There were 20000 waqfs in Ottoman empire, and had a total annual income of equal ot 1/3rd of annual govt revenues (p 186) –
o All of this excapted taztion entirely
o Perception was that waqfs were detrimental to fiscal capacity of the government esp to fund military and bureaucratic reforms
o In colonized areas, they were seen as stumbling block to agricultural modernization because they hindered land transactions and devleopemnt and prevented access to capital thru sale and mortgage
• Legitimacy of family waqfs as beneficient endeavours bcos they supported public purposes only after the disappearance of original line of family beneficiearies]
• In the Ottoman empire, waqf management was decentralized. Even imperial waqfs had a local manager that reported to the chief black eunuch of the Topkapi palace (darusseadet agast). Total revenues not available to government.
• the waqf management could not be easily challenged. Some of th surplus revenues were abused by the imperial waqf managers who kept them for personal use instead of to maintain or improve the institutions they managed.

So began the reforms to waqf in Turkey.
• Establishement of ministry of Imperial Waqfs (Evkaf-I umayun Nesareti) by Sultan Abdulhamid I (1774 – 89) – at first just to oversee the sultan’s own endowments and to check on the control of the chief black eunuch.
• The destruction of the Janissary corp and the consolidation of all janissary waqf holdings under the ministry (1826), which also extended the minsistry’s power to all aqaf under the control of the chief eunuch, the grand viszier, the shaykh al Islam and the Istanbul qadis, and later (in 1838) the incoporation of the Haramyan waqf administration into the ministry
• Tanzimat reform era (1839 – 1876) that strengthened the sultan’s power and dispersed authority was recentralized to Istanbul and the sultan himself – note the Land Code of 1858 and later the Mejelle 1879

With the reforms, all waqf revenues were forwarded to the ministry, which will then reallocate an annual sum to each waqf as the budget for its expense. Individual waqf managers in the provinces were relieved of their financial authority , which undermined their administrative power. This also diminished the awqaf’s ability to fulfil their original purposes.

• The ministry of Waqfs in Turkey was replace by a General Directorate of Waqf s in 1924. All waqfs in the administration of an official authority at the time of founding of the Republic was nationalized.
• 1954, the Turkish Vakiflar Bankasi was established using the capital from the nationalized waqfs
• 1967 – new waqf law drawing on American foundation law as well as on traditions of Muslim law – provided an impetus for a renewed interest in establishing foundations.