Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times by Amira Mittermaier (review)

Amira Mittermaier's second book focuses on Islamic practices of charity in Egypt during and following the uprisings of 2011, providing a nuanced picture of contemporary charitable practices in Egypt against the backdrop of statist modernization, neoliberal ideology, religious fundamentalism, popular discourses on the welfare state, and rigid class divisions. At the same time, this latest work makes it a point to "take God seriously" (6), showing how God is not only rhetorically present, but also interferes in, and directs, believers' lives (7). Yet, Mittermaier also insists, "God's will and agency do not replace human agency…One purpose of this book is to think about how God, variously understood, constitutes, shapes, disciplines, and disrupts believers' subjectivities, relationships, and communities" (8).

Mittermaier's account is grounded in two moments of ethnographic tension, related in the introduction. First, is the insistence of one of her interlocutors, Madame Salwa, that despite her untiring charitable works, "'I don't care about the poor…I do all this for God'" (3). This jarring statement emphasizes the centrality of God in understanding the practices under study. Further, it opens a space for reflection on the political, social, and ethical ramifications when such practices are grounded neither in an ethic of compassion nor in an expectation of development that can burden recipients of assistance with expectations of self-improvement. Charity, understood in terms of the Maussian gift, establishes social relations between giver and recipient with concomitant obligations particularly on the former. With God in the picture, Mittermaier points out, the dyadic gift relationship becomes triadic: the donor gives to God, while the recipient is receiving from God. Consequently, there is no expectation of gratitude on the part of the recipient, nor is he subject to any further obligation to his human benefactor.

This latter line of reflection on the emancipatory ramifications of Islamic charity is pursued further following Mittermaier's second moment of ethnographic tension. As her study of charitable practices is beginning, Egypt is caught up in the foment of the Arab Spring. The cries for social justice and the "Tahrir utopia" (11) of what aspired (but failed) to become a revolution stand in stark contrast to the mundane (and apolitical) monotony of providing endless meals to the poor as acts of personal piety. These two seemingly incommensurable fields, Mittermaier realizes, share a commitment to justice and to being-with-others that have ethical and political implications warranting ethnographic reflection (11). Her account of Islamic charitable giving thus shifts back and forth between the two spheres with their respective notions of justice and what constitutes a good society. In doing so, she questions common conceptions that dismiss charity as a palliative, failing to address the fundamental structural causes of poverty, and undermining demands for rights and justice. In her view, such practices show a different way of relating to others in need at a time when declining socio-economic conditions make giving all the more difficult. Mittermaier's study of Islamic charity thus represents "an invitation to reckon with other ways of doing good in a profoundly unequal world" (17).

The first chapter portrays the revolutionary utopia of Tahrir and the discourses of justice surrounding it as these contrast with the harsh realities of late 20th century Egyptian society. Through a series of conversations with fellow participants in the uprising, she analyzes the ideals and aspirations that motivated so many young people to mobilize and that are preserved in nostalgic accounts of the Tahrir utopia: egalitarianism, absence of gender violence and class distinction, as well as a pervasive ethos of selflessness and sharing (35–37). Tahrir thus embodies an opening to being differently, to becoming a better society. This is not so different from what charitable practices mean to pious Egyptians.

The following two chapters continue with portrayals of two forms of pious giving and reflect on the specific forms of agency enabled by each. In Chapter 2, Mittermaier details the good works of Shaykh Salah, a retired army...