The Islamic worlds of welfare

Area of Science:

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Middle Eastern Studies

Background:

• Islamist social movements in Iran, Egypt, and Turkey exhibit diverse welfare strategies.
• Kevan Harris and Cihan Tuğal's monographs provide extensive fieldwork and socio-economic data analysis.
• Historical context includes Iran's 'warfare/welfare state' and failures of secular modernizers in Egypt and Turkey.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the role of welfare provision in the functioning and tensions of Islamist social movements.
• To offer a high-resolution, panoramic overview of these movements based on recent sociological research.
• To explain the resilience of regimes and the mobilization power of Islamist groups through their welfare models.

Main Methods:

• Extensive fieldwork in Iran, Egypt, and Turkey.
• Analysis of socio-economic data for Iran.
• Theoretical frameworks drawing from Gramsci and Bourdieu.

Main Results:

• The Iranian 'welfare for martyrs' model, rooted in defense and developmentalism, explains regime resilience.
• Islamist mobilization in Egypt and Turkey stems from secular modernizers' failure to meet rural masses' expectations.
• A key tension exists between neoliberal and religious egalitarian welfare models within Islamist movements.

Conclusions:

• Regime resilience and movement mobilization are significantly shaped by welfare strategies.
• The tension between different welfare models influences the non-capitalist and egalitarian vectors in global transformations.
• Welfare varieties offer crucial insights into the complexities of contemporary Islamist movements.