Al -Jazeera Net Dialogue with Anthropology, Nada Mumtaz about her book "The Maligration of God: Islam, Charity and the Modern State in Lebanon"

Until the twentieth century, Islamic charitable endowments were a model for linking individual ownership to the sensual dimension, and a basis for uniqueness in the Islamic world and its societies.

In Lebanon, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the imposition of the French colonial rule, many of these endowments returned to the private ownership in the market.In contemporary Beirut, charitable endowments returned to appearing in the form of mosques, Islamic centers and non -profit organizations.

Although these transformations - related to the modern state - have produced new types of loyalties and a new way to exist in society, the author and the academy in anthropology Nada Mumtaz reveals the hidden insistence on endowment practices that perpetuate old ways of self -thinking and the responsibilities of the individual towards the family and the state.

In contemporary Lebanon, which witnessed the return of the endowments to appear to be embodied in mosques, Islamic centers and non -profit organizations, historical anthropology in its interaction with Islamic law shows how the logic of the modern state acquired these endowments, to reshape them and interact with the challenges of development and emerging modernity.

The importance of the book entitled "The ownership of God: Islam, and the modern state" (God's Protenty: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State)) issued by the University of California for the year 2021 for anthropologists Nada Mumtaz, professor of religious studies and Middle East civilizations in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Turinto, Canada, inIt is an attempt to shed light on criticism on the relationship between the endowment and the modern state in Lebanon.In order not to dwell on you, I leave you with the dialogue that Al -Jazeera Net had with it:

My interest in the endowment was out of consideration of a lens to analyze the vast modern changes in the state and Islamic societies, especially the transformations of the concepts of "intention", "charity" and "public interest" within it.Certainly, Lebanon is not an "Islamic society", but I focus on Muslims inside it, especially the Sunni Muslims of the Sunnis;So my book is partly deals with the following question: What can you tell us the change of practices and concepts of endowment from the modern state, family and subjectivity?She made it clear how some changes in the way the state deals with the endowments, such as establishing a Ministry of Endowments and providing new approaches to organizing and controlling endowments is something that reflects the specificity of the modern state;It is represented in the way the economy becomes the center of its attention and concerns caused by its desire to increase wealth and progress.

I also tried to highlight the presence of different expressions of this modern state, in the Ottoman period and the French Mandate and in the era of independence.The modern state project has various effects depending on whether the state considers itself an Islamic state that applies Sharia or a civil state. The endowment is part of the religious affairs of society.At the same time, although I am fully aware of the importance of the transformations made by the modern state, I noticed how practices and sensitivities that pretend to be embodied..

Today's dominant endowment practices reflect important transformations from the pre -organizations (mid -19th century))..Some reflect the various formations of the state, religion and law in the modern state;For example, endowment today is not seen as individual charity initiatives as much as "the king of the religious community";This concept arose during the French mandate when Lebanon defined it as a state formed from different sects that interact with the endowment as the king of the religious community.Other transformations reflect the changes in the concept of charitable work and the economy.For example, almost eliminated civil endowments because of the popular logic that believes that charity cannot be directed to the people.Today, we see a restriction of "religious" worship and its separation from the "economic" side, which can be seen in the way in which the endowments are used mostly to build mosques and Islamic centers, and we rarely find these new endowments that contain lands and buildings that return to these institutions as it wasIt is mentioned in the 19th century AD.

At that time, the Endowment Foundation was used to finance, run and maintain charitable and religious institutions.What is happening today reflects the vanity of the curriculum of religion;Where any activity, whatever worldly, can when the correct intention is invoked in it, it becomes a worship that brings the perpetrator closer to God.Finally, today we are also witnessing the emergence of a new form of endowment, when it is not used to finance "religious" practices;Here is the talk about the endowment as a legal person, who behaves like an non -governmental institution, which I will explain later.

The speeches of Western development, which began to prosper in the post -World War II period, is based on the assumption that the "third world" needs assistance for "economic, social and political development without recognizing the role of colonialism and the new global economic system in the lack of these countries.Some of the goals behind development were of course linked to the Cold War era;Where the United States was looking at development as a way to ward off the expansion of communism.The development discourse of course has changed over decades, but in all its formulas, it was aimed at "liberating ... the poor from their suffering and misery", as described by Arturo Escobar once..

This reflects a recent approach to dealing with poverty as a problem that needs a solution.Until the modern era, when the ideas of linear time, progress and continuous growth have become normal (unlike the circular time of Ibn Khaldun)), poverty was inevitably considered in this world.When poverty is also the trend behind the giving is to reduce the suffering in the present, and not to eliminate it in the future.The popularity of progressive thought with contemporary researchers has led to the assumption that most charitable works, especially those emanating from religious practices, only address immediate suffering, and therefore they are not sustainable endeavors.But the endowments, by virtue of being ongoing charity, must be by virtue of their eternal definition, capable of sustaining the tender until the Day of Resurrection.

Therefore, the endowments were often based in Ottoman Beirut on lands, buildings or parts of them, because it had an inaccurate benefit;Therefore, the endowments were not provided to the poor only once through a random charitable work, or through the annual zakat that could vary according to the wealth of the benefactors, as well as those who decide to pay them.

Instead, the endowment work was continuing and sustainable.However, at the same time, it was not aimed at eliminating poverty or towards improvement and permanent progress.Especially when we talk about the soup kitchens (what the Ottomans call the architecture as the one still is today in the formation of Sultan Sultan in Jerusalem)), etc., which was aimed at immediate relief.Even education facilities were not the goal behind teaching people how to hunt to be independent, but rather the motive behind them was to get closer to God by allowing acquiring knowledge and preserving Islam.I do not call for abandoning an attempt to eliminate poverty and its causes, but I believe that the endowments are not going towards this future goal and by meeting immediate needs, it can provide the necessary sustainable relief that can be relied upon instead of waiting for a just future future.

In the face of the Hanafi school, which was prevalent in the Ottoman Sultanate, when the endowment is established, the endowment of the endowment of the endowment and the king moves to God;So the endowment of the endowment is the standing of the endowment, and they care to rent it and distribute its proceeds to the arrested person, so the royal relations related to the endow.

As for the secular Meccan system that the French legislated, it is not seen as a owner.You can see the effect of God's absence in the endowment in the ownership registration bonds in the survey conducted by the colonial state in the 1920s, when it came in every real estate newspaper, a box of the owner.Who is the owner now if not God?It is not possible to look at the detainee, nor the standing, nor the assumption as an owners and give them a royal rights that are not for them.Instead, the "endowment" surveyors placed in the owner of the owner;At this bureaucratic moment of the course of registration of ownership, the endowment itself turned as the owner;Any moral person "possesses" property ... What made this step also possible to create the corporate law, but the essential factor that led to this matter is the state's view of the necessity of God's absence from the Meccan relations, which established the Ottoman practice of treating the endowment "as if" a moral person,Even if all the books of jurisprudence were reported that it is "no endowment".The door was opened to consider the endowment as a owner, which paved the way for dealing with it to become almost like non -governmental organizations, without being restricted to real estate property in kind..

Before the 19th century, most of the endowments in Beirut had taken care of their interests according to the conditions that I stand under the supervision of the appointed judge of Sharia from the attic state, despite the lack of a mechanism to activate this supervision. There was no, for example, the condition of submitting those who are taken for the annual accountability to the judge..But in the event of any dispute, the arrested person or those who are taken to present it to the judge was present to the judge.It was also the judge who often appointed the assumptions and employers, whose appointment was confirmed through the Royal Patents ... The state was not much concerned with the Endowment Administration (but here it is worth mentioning the endowments of the sultans that were administered by the dignitaries in the tiles)), even if it wasParticipate in supervision through judges.

The Ottoman Empire was in the 19th century, even before the Ottoman organizations, established the Ministry of Awqaf and began to seize many endowments that were locally managed under the pretext of "improving management"..The state also started issuing the laws of the Endowment Management to address the details of the endowment management that the Sharia did not appoint.The Ottoman Empire in the 19th century was very interested in developing endowments as a resource and entered the modernization projects it was (such as the army's update));Therefore, there was something of "rationalization" to manage it, by strengthening accounting requirements and unified curricula for appointments..etc..

With the French Mandate, the endowment, which was a site for the reproduction of certain Islamic relations between God, the family and society, has become an important resource as well as a threat at times when it was funding the resistance against the French..

In this era, civil endowments seemed to the French, as well as for many Muslims and renewed, in violation of Sharia, so they began to cancel it..Since the French state classified the endowment as a kind of ownership and civil transactions, it subjected it to positive legislation, while the "religious" side was legalized for the endowment through what is known as the Supreme Islamic Islamic Council.Likewise, the conversion of the endowment from the treatment and worship in the Sharia by the jurists to the treatment of heavily organized by the state, so the state has become desirable at different Sunni groups because of its implementation of many legislation with different visions of Islamic practices for stopping (a restricted field)).

Part of the new property and endowment system is to examine the structure of the standing.I noticed this new interest first through a referendum sent to the Sheikh of Islam in Istanbul from Mount Lebanon in the 1970s, asking about the validity of endowments established with the intention of avoiding imprisonment of the mortgage because of debt;Where in the late 19th century a new system of property and debt appeared in the Ottoman Sultanate, the mortgage imprisonment became more common, especially since many debts were intertwined with European merchants.With the prevalence of mortgage, the endowment became a virtue that it was not for sale and purchase, a way to escape from this process.

At that time, I realized to what extent was the jurists who were not interested in the intention of the standing, as I was accustomed to the pattern of contemporary historians and researchers who focus heavily on social and political goals and other worldly goals of the endowment;They explain the charitable works of Al -Waqif as a way to gain legitimacy, or avoid the state's confiscation of property (..)).I then realized that according to the Hanafi school, the judges do not touch on the intention of those who stand;Rather, they looked at the endowment of the endowment through the interest of the arrested person, etc. to verify the intention.When I was searching for endowment practices today, I noticed that this new doubt about the intention appears at times, and it disappears at other times because of leaving the intention to God on the Day of Judgment.