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Contemporary Islam

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15-02-2021

Non-compassionate care: a view from an Islamic charity organization

Author: Amira Mittermaier

Published in: Contemporary Islam | Issue 2/2021

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Abstract

Drawing on fieldwork at a large charity organization in Cairo, this article describes a bureaucratized Islamic ethics of care. Founded in 1975, the Mustafa Mahmoud Association today offers free and discounted medical services, funds micro-projects, and provides financial support to about 10,000 families each year. The bulk of that financial support comes from donors’ private donations in the form of obligatory and voluntary alms (zakāt and sadaqa). By taking a close look at three offices—the donation, intake, and disbursement office—I untangle the regime of care that shapes the daily transactions at this Islamic charity organization. In particular I highlight a significant gap between “caring for” and “caring about.” Donors view caring for those in need as a duty and frequently frame their donations in calculative terms, as a way of “trading with God.” Less central is a language of empathy or compassion. While this seemingly careless care-less? Careless means not careful, sloppy. form of caremight seem cold and heartless, I suggest that it offers a powerful alternative to the liberal illusion of “compassion.”

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The turn to self-cultivation and embodied practice undoes the dichotomy of conscious/unconscious. As Saba Mahmood (2005) argues in her landmark study on women’s mosque study groups in Cairo, embodied practice and explicit pedagogy can go hand in hand.

https://probe.org/charity-and-compassion-christianity-is-good-for-culture/; emphasis in original. Nietzsche, too, famously called Christianity the “religion of pity.”

Compassion figures in many ways in the Islamic tradition. As Muslims recall during every single prayer, God is al-rahmān al-rahīm, the All-Compassionate, the All-Merciful. Many of my interlocutors in Egypt (especially Sufis) say that, in order to draw close to God, one needs to continuously try to emulate and embody God’s attributes. Many Muslims care about and feel with those in need. At the same time, many of my pious interlocutors are suspicious of an overemphasis on “compassion” and even the concept of “doing good” (‘amal al-khayr), which is used widely in Egypt as a catch-all phrase of “charity.”

I started visiting the Mustafa Mahmoud Association in 2003 during my earlier research on dreams and spent much time there in 2011, during my fieldwork on Islamic charity. I returned during follow-up visits in 2012 and 2013. Within my larger project, the Mustafa Mahmoud Association became an example of a bureaucratized site of care. NGOs are key players in Egypt’s charitable landscape. In addition to fieldwork at NGOs, my research included practices of giving directly to the poor, food distribution (it‘ām) (Mittermaier 2019, Naguib 2015), and Islamic voluntarism (Deeb 2006, Hafez 2011, Mittermaier 2014, Sparre 2013, 2018).

Medical care is central to the organization. Medical caravans were gradually combined with self-help programs, aiming to mobilize the poor to help themselves. Today, in line with a broader turn to development and sustainability across Egypt’s NGOs (see Atia 2013), Mustafa Mahmoud offers loans for small entrepreneurial projects and channels alms donations into projects with long-term benefits, such as giving cows to poor families in Upper Egypt, planting palm trees, and digging wells. These projects are mostly funded through sadaqa gāriyya, donations given with an eye to long-term benefits. Zakat donations for the most part still get channeled into monthly monetary aid for select families, in line with the principle that one cannot tie expectations to zakat donations.

In Ramadan, additional donations make up for missed days of fasting (for oneself or for elderly or sick relatives). The required payment is called kafāra, and each missed day of fasting needs to be made up by paying for food for a fasting person for the day, including the meal to break fast in the evening (iftār) and an early morning meal before sunrise (suhūr). In 2011, it was calculated that 15 EGP were needed for the former and 5 EGP for the latter; feeding a person throughout the month thus amounted to paying 600 EGP. Some also give money for the Ramadan table (mā’idat al-rahmān)that is organized by the mosque. Additional funds come from fees paid by patients (those who can afford to pay) at the organization’s medical clinics.

On the Mustafa Mahmoud Association, see also Atia (2013), Clark (2004), Salvatore (2001), and Sullivan (1994).

At the time of my fieldwork, 234 employees worked at the mosque-complex (the number increases to 1200 if one includes the medical branches of the Association with hospitals in other locations in Cairo). The salaries are on the low side, for most employees around 350 EGP/month (a few more longstanding employees made closer to 1200 EGP/month).

Though used interchangeably in the Quran, zakāt is today taken to refer to obligatory alms donations (one of the five pillars of Islam). Sadaqa is taken to refer to additional voluntary donations.

Mustafa Mahmoud was born in the Nile Delta in 1921. He was a medical doctor and practiced medicine from 1952 to 1966. Subsequently, he worked as a journalist and author and became a public intellectual. He is best known for his TV series al-‘ilm wa al-imān(Science and Belief) which presented scientific insights as signs of God’s workings in the world. Mahmoud advocated an “Islamically inspired modernity” that emphasizes creativity and adaptation as a method (Salvatore 2000:12). Armando Salvatore describes him as “a normative entrepreneur able to invest the moral view of individual responsibility, social obligations, and imperatives of progress” (ibid.).

Author’s interview with Amal Mahmoud, Mustafa Mahmoud’s daughter, 11 November 2011.

This is not to deny that giving out of compassion can also be a form of care of the self, such as when one takes pleasure in one’s self-image of “compassionate giver.” What I want to highlight, however, is the ideal of selflessness and other-oriented care that seem to often be associated with “compassion.”

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Title: Non-compassionate care: a view from an Islamic charity organization
Author: Amira Mittermaier
Publication date: 15-02-2021
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Contemporary Islam / Issue 2/2021
Print ISSN: 1872-0218
Electronic ISSN: 1872-0226
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-020-00457-9

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