Editors’ Note: Gizem Zencirci introduces her book, The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty (Syracuse, 2024), which recently received the 2025 Outstanding Book Prize from ARNOVA (Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action).

Since coming to power in early 2000s, Turkey’s governing party, the Islamic-conservative AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party) has made poverty relief a central part of its political program. In addition to neoliberal reforms, AKP’s program has involved an emphasis on Islamic charity that is unprecedented in the history of the Turkish Republic. Up until the 2000s, the Turkish political regime had sought to replace Islamic charity with secular (Western) notions of philanthropy. The Turkish state understood philanthropy to be an organized form of giving that primarily contributed to patriotic goals such as economic and cultural modernization and national unity. From this vantage point, religious acts of giving were deemed incapable of providing long-term solutions to poverty and economic backwardness. Even so, Islamic charitable traditions persisted among the ranks of Turkish society, later playing a key role in the rise of political Islam. Despite its cultural significance, Islamic charity was never a prominent aspect of welfare governance before the AKP era. Departing significantly from previous Turkish governments, the AKP not only tolerated but also actively cultivated religiously inspired charitable practices in a manner akin to Ronald Reagan’s ‘compassionate conservatism’ or the ‘Big Society’ idea promoted by David Cameron.

My book, The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty (Syracuse, 2024) examines the causes and consequences of this new phenomenon. Through an in-depth ethnography of social service provision, the book provides a lens onto the everyday life of Islamic neoliberalism, while also mapping the kind of political concerns that animate charitable giving and poverty governance.  I define the concept of the Muslim Social as a welfare regime that reimagined and reconfigured Islamic charitable practices to address the complex needs of a modern market society. The creation of a “hybrid welfare mix” in Turkey involved shifts both in the governance of the public welfare regime and the reorganization of private charity. These changes occurred at the level of institutions, technologies, imaginaries, and subjectivities, thereby culminating in a new way of understanding social bonds and individuals’ responsibility towards one another. In the book, I trace these multiple transformations by adopting an ethnographically informed analysis and a methodological focus on governmentality.

Islam and Neoliberalism

One of the key concerns of The Muslim Social is to examine the impact of neoliberalism upon Islamic traditions of giving. As discussed later in this post, neoliberalism had a variegated impact on private charity and public welfare provision. On the one hand, market-based rationalities proliferated in the third sector. On the other hand, there was an increase in social expressions of solidarity and mutual help. The book, hence, studies the multiple encounters between neoliberal dynamics such as privatization, individualization, and marketization and pro-social values of community, care, and solidarity in a non-Western, Islamic context.

Another key part of the book’s analysis involves the encounter between neoliberalism and Islamism. Instead of seeing Muslims as outsiders or victims of neoliberalization, I highlight the agency of Muslims in adopting—and resisting—neoliberal elements such as privatization, individualization, and marketization. I approach “Islamic neoliberalism as governmental assemblage,” an analytical framework that attends to the constitutive, dynamic, situated, and heterogenous dimensions of Muslims’ engagement with global capitalism. The Muslim Social hence demonstrates the blending of religious values and neoliberal elements in unexpected ways. Although these governmental assemblages of Islamic neoliberalism rely upon new forms of generosity, distinctive notions of poverty, and novel ways of relating to others in society, the book argues that this welfare regime privileges managerial efficiency and emotional well-being at the expense of other objectives such as equality, development, or justice.

Transformations of Islamic Charity

This book provides an analysis of contemporary Islamic charitable traditions, institutions and practices such as waqfs (religious endowments), sadaqa (voluntary almsgiving), zakat (compulsory almsgiving), infaq (volunteer work), among others. While there is much written about Islamic charity in the Middle East, scholarship generally focuses either on identifying fundamental religious principles or seeks to determine how Islamic movements provide services in exchange for political support. As a result, Islamic charity is either seen as an outpouring of deep-seated religious values or is treated merely as a political instrument of vote-buying. My book, by contrast, examines what charitable giving means for actors involved in social service provision in Turkey. The ethnographically informed analysis provides a Geertzian “thick description” of the ways in which various actors—volunteers, managers, bureaucrats, intellectuals—became participants of this governmental apparatus even though they often disagreed about the role of charity.

During my fieldwork, I also found that a sense of nostalgia towards the Ottoman past permeated the charitable landscape in Turkey. The founding ideology of the Turkish Republic, Kemalism, had focused on diminishing the role of Ottoman-Islamic social and economic institutions through political reforms aimed at secularization, modernization, and Westernization. As a result, for most of Turkish history, the Ottoman empire’s philanthropic legacies were either downplayed or forgotten. By contrast, throughout my fieldwork, I had conversations with actors who believed that poverty and inequality are best solved by “reviving” and “rejuvenating” Ottoman-Islamic traditions, practices, and institutions of giving. For example, In July 2009, I met with one of the upper-level administrators of the Waqf General Ministry in Turkey. I explained that I was interested in Turkish civil society and mentioned my recent archival research on the 1967 Turkish Waqf Law. This law had introduced American-style philanthropic foundations in Turkey and was usually seen as a progressive development. In response, he told me that the 1967 Waqf Law had nothing to do with authentic Islamic philanthropy. If I wanted the “correct information,” I had to look elsewhere. Taken aback, I asked him what he meant. He explained:

Waqfs are the first examples of philanthropic initiatives in Turkish history. Let me tell you a story. Once we were invited to a conference about foundations, so we went to Europe. We gave presentations, listened to talks, met with people, that kind of thing. I forgot most of those talks, but I still remember a conversation I had with a German guy. At one of these workshops, he turned to me and asked: ‘Why are you even here? There is nothing for you to learn from us. After all, it was the Ottoman Empire who first came up with these benevolent institutions. We should be coming to your country so that we can learn from you.

Like this manager, many of my interlocutors shared feelings of nostalgia towards the Ottoman past. They reimagined and reconfigured charitable practices in accordance with this sense of longing towards a glorified past. For example, many of them longingly referred to Ottoman sadaqa (almsgiving) stones and saw these ancient practices as a model of Islamic charity that ought to be revived. A “charity stone” refers to small pillar-shaped structures that were built in the courtyards of some Ottoman mosques and waqfs. These pillars, standing above five feet tall with a small opening at the top, allowed community members to assist the poor by leaving a small amount of money. Nostalgia for these kinds of Ottoman charitable practices was so pervasive that some municipal governments even erected new sadaqa stones in public parks and town centers, while social assistance programs began to be justified with reference to sadaqa stones.

I argue that these public narratives of Ottoman-Islamic generosity were produced and disseminated by the AKP government which justified a whole range of welfare reforms through a selective reading of the imperial past. The Muslim Social examines how this sense of nostalgia towards the Ottoman-Islamic past played a key role in the reconfiguration of the Turkish welfare regime.Throughout the book, I trace the emergence of a new governmental apparatus by analyzing the reinterpretation of Islamic charitable traditions, institutions, and practices under the impact of neoliberalism, and analyze the political implications of these novel discourses in domains such as welfare provision, civil society, humanitarian aid, and volunteer work.

For example, one chapter examines how waqfs were redefined as NGOs, tasked with social service provision, and portrayed as Ottoman-Islamic institutions of ‘good governance.’ In this narrative, waqfs were portrayed as civil society organizations that have hitherto worked in collaboration with the state. Neoliberalism transformed Islamic foundations and charitable networks into NGOs: bureaucratized, formalized, professionalized, and institutionalized actors. As public-private partnerships became the norm, the democratizing potential of Islamic civic formations dwindled over time.

Another chapter highlights how the AKP justified its social assistance programs with reference to reimagined ideas about Ottoman- Islamic practices of sadaqa (almsgiving). The government’s political discourse emphasizes that new social programs aim to “serve the Turkish people.” For instance, in 2009, Erdogan said: “Since we came to power, we have sought and found the poor and gave them everything that they need. This is what being a welfare state means.” In the past two decades, the government introduced new ways of distributing aid to worthy recipients (though not all of these efforts were publicly funded). One of the most innovative approaches are the “social markets:” Islamic NGO’s aid distribution centers designed to resemble commercial supermarkets and argued to be a place where the poor can feel empowered and free to choose among different options (instead of receiving hand-outs). In this instance, neoliberal languages of individual autonomy and choice were combined with Islamic goals about protecting the anonymity, freedom, and dignity of aid recipients.

My work also probes Islamic humanitarianism under the AKP regime and argues that the construct of a transnational Islamic community was central to the project of humanitarian responsibility. Islamic humanitarianism not only mobilized religious values for transnational efforts of giving but also repurposed religious notions of the deserving poor to generate a sense of obligation toward Muslims residing in faraway places such as Ethiopia, Niger, Sudan, and Pakistan. Deserving Muslims were either portrayed as “oppressed” or “in need,” and through this articulation, Turkish Muslims were redefined as “saviors” who must act to help others. Islamic neoliberalism, in other words, led to the production of distant, yet intimate emotional attachments between Muslims across national borders.

At a theoretical level, my goal has been to analyze the political economy of religious giving without using a policy-oriented yardstick that might, for instance, focus on the question of whether these technologies of aid are truly “effective” at alleviating poverty, Instead, I have demonstrated the ways in which poverty came to be understood as a social problem that requires technical management and emotional attachment. I believe moving beyond a policy-oriented framework allows scholars of civil society and philanthropy to notice subtle changes in governmentality that we might not otherwise pay attention to.

This book might also be of interest to scholars and practitioners who want to complicate the neoliberalism vs. welfare binary. The case of Turkey demonstrates that instead of a withdrawal from welfare provision, neoliberal reforms are often accompanied by the expansion and transformation of social programs. While some of these new programs are imbued with a market logic, many of them also create new ways of understanding social bonds, obligations, and imaginaries. Put simply, one of the key findings of the book is that neoliberalism governs through—not against—community. The Muslim Social, hence, demonstrates how neoliberalism works by incorporating languages of care and solidarity, and highlights that the “social” cannot be entirely understood through the lens of “marketization.” Examining the productive tension between communitarian ethics and market logics is essential for understanding the contemporary moment. It is only by moving beyond the market vs. community binary that can we identify other shifts—such as the rise of technical managerialism and emotional attachments—that govern the social in a new fashion.

-Gizem Zencirci

Gizem Zencirci is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College where she also directs the Middle East Studies program. Her first book, The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty in Turkey (Syracuse University Press, 2024), was the recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Book Prize from ARNOVA (Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action).