Social Policy in the Islamic World

This chapter aims to elaborate various aspects of Islamic social teachings with regard to social policy and welfare in two main areas of values and principles as well as instruments and practices. Adopting a ‘social theology’ approach, the authors provide the reader with a conceptual framework to understand the status of Islamic teachings in the social policy atmosphere of various Muslim societies. After explaining the main sources of deriving Islamic rules, the chapter illustrates a set of values and principles (like takaful, tawazun and avoidance of tadawul) which underpin and guide the practice of social welfare in Islamic teachings. Based on the above mentioned principles, this chapter briefly examines a series of strategies and solutions for providing social welfare according to Islamic teachings, including Zakat, Khums and Waqf. These practices are mostly of a redistributive nature and include both obligatory and non-obligatory actions by the Islamic state and individual Muslims.

This chapter offers a comparative perspective on the conceptual and practical linkages between social policy as a field of public practice and the subject focus of this volume which is the Muslim world. The primary focus on Islamic social welfare here is related to the importance given to social responsibility in the major world religions and the historic influence of religion on issues of social welfare action and care for the vulnerable. The chapter provides two case study illustrations: one about Muslim social welfare activism in the UK and one about Islamic social movements in Jerusalem. These serve to support the overarching argument which is that Islamic social welfare practices are not homogenous and it may be more apt to refer to ‘Muslim worlds’ to recognise the diverse range of actors and organisations in different parts of the world but also who have differing interpretations of the Muslim faith.

Since the 1990s, in the context of states’ reconfiguration, beneficence has become a powerful ethic and repertoire of action that spans all social spaces. A growing number of actors resort to this notion while claiming to act for “the good” of “the poor”, “the weak” or “the dependent”. In this chapter, we argue that the study of beneficence, understood as a socio-historically constructed realm of encounters and conflicts, offers a stimulating point of entry into understanding contemporary social policies in the Islamic world. We first highlight the complex and ever changing relations between the “doing good” actors and practices and the State and then explore the multiple logics that their everyday interactions may generate.

In recent years the Middle East and North Africa region has seen a number of social protection reforms, which have often included the removal of universal subsidies and the introduction of targeted cash transfer programs. An ever-growing body of research has documented the positive effects of cash transfers on children, not only on reducing monetary poverty but also on improving key determinants of multidimensional poverty. Despite increased efforts, many of the region’s cash transfer programs remain small in scale and their design could be improved to better respond to children’s needs by making, amongst others, more explicit linkages to nutrition and health services. In addition, only few programs are embedded in a legal framework, an important attribute to guarantee children’s right to social protection.

This chapter attempts to provide a brief but holistic overview of social policy in the Post-Revolutionary Iran. It studies six distinct phases in the history of welfare state development in Iran in the past four decades. It then provides the reader with a ‘social policy map’ and describes some of major social policies in such policy domains as income maintenance, housing, health, and education, identifying various challenges in their implementation. Finally, the chapter focuses on the social policy outcomes in the post-Revolution era and concludes that various theoretical and practical challenges have impeded the establishment of the desired welfare system outlined in the Constitution, namely: lack of a coherent theoretical framework for an Islamic welfare system, mismatch between economic and social policies, unsustainable financing mechanism, politicization of social policy, poor welfare governance, and various national and international crises.

This chapter analyses the roles of four main institutions—namely the family, the state, the market, and non-governmental actors—in social welfare distribution shaped by the intersections of age, ethnicity, class, and gender relations in Turkey. Based on a nation-wide dataset, this chapter examines the effects of different welfare actors on welfare distribution and citizens’ levels of satisfaction with social policies. This study shows, first, that four main institutions determine the distribution of welfare, and second, that there are more generous social policies for the elderly, children, and men, than there are for young people, women, and the Romany. Even though important reforms aimed at achieving an advanced social policy strategy in the 2000s, social, economic, and demographic risks necessitate a more sustainable social welfare strategy in Turkey.

After the seminal work of Titmuss (1974) who discusses the ways to do social protection, many researchers have analyzed and compared welfare state systems around the world. One of the most influential contributions in this field is the book of Gosta Esping Andersen (1990) who assumes that there exist three worlds of welfare stats: the universal, the liberal-residual and the corporatist one. The Esping Andersen book has become a classic reference in the debate about social protection. This article contributes to the debate by providing an economic evaluation of the Algerian social protection system relying Esping Andersen typology. We will discuss how the Algerian government attempts to use a social protection system to provide a better life for the citizens and ultimately to avoid Arab-spring-inspired events.

This chapter attempts to analyse the impact of contributory and non-contributory social protection programmes in Tunisia on workers’ choices between formal and informal employment. Official statistical data sources were used to constitute a series that tracked the evolution of informal employment over the period 2005 to 2015. Microdata from a survey evaluating the performance of the two flagship social assistance programmes in Tunisia (cash transfer and subsidized health insurance programmes) were used to identify the major determinants driving informal behaviour among workers who benefit directly from these programmes as well as their household members. The results achieved provide evidence that social assistance programmes would create perverse incentives by diverting a proportion of workers endowed with contributory capacities from joining one of the social insurance schemes. Similarly, the analysis of workers’ intertemporal preferences and risk attitudes revealed that barriers might lie in the price to be paid to purchase social insurance.

In this study, socio-economic processes in Azerbaijan, development trends, the scale of existing social policies and the level of adaptation of international experiences have been studied. There have been times when initiatives were undertaken to develop certain elements of Islamic banking in the Azerbaijani economy, but there are no mechanisms derived from Islam in social policy. In current social policies it is possible to observe elements of the Islamic-social model, such as poverty alleviation, fair distribution of income, overall welfare, and care for vulnerable people. However, Azerbaijan’s social protection system is not considered as an Islamic model. Social-democratic and liberal elements are common in Azerbaijan’s current social policy. The social protection policy implemented in the country is reflecting dynamics of improvement and expansion-driven development.

This chapter argues that social policy in Egypt appears to be based upon Islamic discourse but in the practical sense, the actions of both the state and Muslim non-state actors deviate from the actual purpose of Islamic social policy. This is apparent when examining the following: the historical roots of social policy in Egypt and Islamic discourse regarding the alleviation of poverty from different ideological perspectives; from socialism with an Islamic spirit under Nasser, semi-liberalism during the time of Sadat, to a vague sort of neo-liberalism under Mubarak. They have politicized Islamic discourse in order to legitimize biased and ineffective social policies that do not consider the interest of the poor and do not advocate for sustainable social solidarity, cohesion or the well-being of laypeople.

Social policy development is becoming increasingly important to manage a growing complex community in Malaysia which is known as the National Social Policy. Throughout the years, Malaysia has to integrate its social policy with the economic policy to create political unity, social stability, and social equality. Thus, Malaysia has taken the approach of concentrating its roles in the country’s development and economic growth. First, there is social relief that is designed to cater for those who do not have a job to look after their needs, and second, there is social welfare which is organised under the principle of economies of scale. Directly or indirectly, it shows that social policy has contributed to economic growth for the nation.

The main objective of this chapter is to explore the relationship between zakat and reduction of social inequality in Bangladesh via historical development of Bangladesh social policy, social welfare regime and social welfare practices from 1201 to the present. It compares the neoliberal strategy of microfinance and Islamic strategy of zakat through Shokkhom Project data of a zakat-based Third Sector, Obhizatrik. It collects profiles of 82 beneficiaries, 49 males and 33 females, who received zakat between 2016 and 2017. Out of total 33 zakat recipients of Dhaka District, 13 case studies, 9 males and 4 females, were conducted for expediency. The chapter finds that Islamic welfare practice of zakat is more effective in the alleviation of poverty and ensuring social welfare than the neoliberal strategy of interest-based microfinance.