Muslim Economies, Charities, and Capitalism

This roundtable on Muslim economies and charities examines Muslim engagements with capitalism in the United States and South Asia. The first panelist examines critiques of late capitalism in global Muslim revivalist discourses in the mid-twentieth century. The second panelist explores the strategic choice of American Muslims to formalize charity into non-profits in the post-Cold War period and analyzes racialization and citizenship as factors that contributed to the uneven participation in this project. The third panelist looks at zakat projects in the contemporary US and India to illustrate how zakat marks out new domains of care, solidarity, and justice-seeking. The fourth panelist explores the “racial” in racial capitalism by extending the analytic to frame Muslim engagements with capitalism in postcolonial contexts, with a special focus on Pakistan’s Islamic banking industry. The final panelist discusses possibilities for anti-racist economies with a special emphasis on organizing to invest in local communities.