Entangled Universals

The international aid landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. Long before the swift dismantling of USAID, developed countries were already pulling back official development assistance funds. In 2024, humanitarian funding fell by 7.1% for the first time in decades. In 2025, even optimistic figures estimated a further 34% decrease in funding from government institutions.  

Amidst this shrinking ecosystem, international organizations have discovered another source of aid: Islamic philanthropy. In 2017, UNHCR has assisted refugee across the Muslim world through the Refugee Zakat Fund. Two years later, UNICEF and the Islamic Development Bank partnered to launch the Global Muslim Philanthropy Fund for Children. More recently, the International Organization on Migration (IOM) established its Islamic Philanthropy Fund. Taken together, these initiatives highlight a unique convergence: 1) a concentration of development activity among Muslim populations, and 2) the Islamic obligation to give, namely through zakat (mandated almsgiving) and sadaqa (voluntary almsgiving).  

These circumstances ensure that Islamic giving will only continue to grow in influence. Yet, despite a proliferation of partnerships between development agencies and zakat funds, little research has been conducted on how Muslim givers imagine their role as humanitarians on a transnational scale. 

For this reason, a central aim of our research project is tracing genealogies of humanitarianism within an Islamic perspective. Of particular concern is understanding how conceptions of dignity (waqar/karama), obligation (farz/iltizam), and common good (maslaha) inform Islamic giving across difference. This theoretical framework will inform our ethnographic fieldwork in both Muslim-minority contexts (i.e., India, Tanzania, US, UK) and Muslim-majority contexts (i.e., Pakistan, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia).