Charity in Islamic Societies (review)

Singer attempts to offer an all-encompassing view of a mammoth topic. Charity is encouraged throughout Islamic literatures and implemented in myriad social practices; Islamic legal traditions also elaborate an obligatory charity based on a portion of wealth/property. Consequently, charity in Islamic societies includes many genres of Islamic writings and every period and place in Islamic history. Singer recognizes that her text is introductory for both scholars of Islam and scholars specializing in charity (27). In addition to an introduction and conclusion, the book is divided into five chapters—each engaging a particular theme or facet of charitable giving. For example, part of Chapter 2 outlines a "calendar of charity," noting that charity is common on Fridays (after the communal prayer), during holidays, and during significant life events (birth of a child, circumcision, marriage, and sickness) (72–90). Chapter 3 examines biographical accounts of the charitable activities of a few significant figures in Islamic history; Chapter 4 emphasizes the often under-studied agency of charity recipients. The author's objectives are admirable: integrating Islamic societies into general scholarship on charity (223); countering recent negative representations of Muslim charity (3); filling a perceived gap in Islamic studies (25); and, perhaps secondarily, blurring a conceptual line between charity and patronage (22).

Despite these laudable intentions, Singer's implementation lacks historical precision. She anticipates the historian's critique, noting, "some readers may protest that I did not provide a thick enough historical description, an extensive enough historical analysis, or a sufficient exploration of a theoretical idea" (27). The problem, however, is more consequential: Although the text contains many details, the data lack an interpretive framework or a narrative of historical change. By way of illustration, the first chapter—"Pray and Pay Alms," echoing Qur'anic verses—opens with an anthropological report of a contemporary Moroccan family's charitable giving. The remainder of the chapter cites or discusses al-Ghazālī (tenth/eleventh-century philosopher and jurist), Nasir-i Khusraw (eleventh-century Sh intellectual), Fazlur Rahman (1911–1988), Ebu's-Sud Efendi (sixteenth-century Ottoman jurist), contemporary Muslim charitable organizations and websites, thmān (seventh-century caliph), Sultan Akbar (of Mughal India, 1556–1605), an eighteenth-century judge in Damascus, a twentieth-century survey of rural Egypt, and much more. Without a temporal (late antique, medieval, early modern, or modern) or a spatial (Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, or Indonesia) focus, the text's center is a philological construct—the sluggishly changing, homogenous "Islam" unaffected by different economic, social, and political circumstances.

In the absence of cohesive explanations for why the selected sources were used, Singer appears to have "cherry-picked" through a multitude of distinct historical sources without a focused research agenda. The result is a compilation of references to ideas and practices of charity in Islamic societies as found in a vast and jumbled array of primary and secondary literature, with supplementary references to material evidence. Explanations of various aspects of Islamic charity are not grounded in clearly defined textual traditions, social practices, or periods. For instance, despite numerous references to Qur'anic verses pertaining to charity, Singer ignores the exegetical tradition entirely; hence, the understanding of these verses is isolated from concrete, historically attested, interpretive communities.

Charity—as a practice and a belief—is a historically contingent, situational occurrence. Singer could have illustrated this point by rigorously investigating a cohesive set of sources related to a particular component of charity in the Ottoman period (her area of expertise). Nonetheless, readers may benefit from her wide-ranging bibliography.