Daanish Faruqi is a visiting researcher at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he specializes in religious humanitarianism and peacebuilding in contemporary Syria. A scholar-practitioner focusing on migration and mobility in the Middle East and North Africa, his books include Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy, and From Camp David to Cast Lead: Essays on Israel, Palestine, and the Future of the Peace Process. Diwan interviewed Faruqi, coincidentally, on the first anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Syria and Türkiye.
Michael Young: You are interested in the role of religious humanitarianism in the Middle East and North Africa. Why is this issue important, specifically in the context of the crisis in Gaza? And in what ways does religious humanitarianism differ from traditional forms of humanitarian relief?
Daanish Faruqi: I’ll start by saying that it seemed initially counterintuitive for me, as a scholar focusing primarily on Syria, to see an aid charity originally founded by Syrian Sufi scholars, the International Aid Charity (IAC), seek avenues for aid delivery in the Gaza Strip immediately after the current Israel-Gaza war erupted. Having written recently on the parallels between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s war machine and Israeli tactics in Gaza, I was swiftly attacked by several leftist supporters of Palestine who decried the analogy. Figures in this vein saw Assad as an anti-imperialist, and by extension a great ally of Palestinians. Eschewing that posturing, the Syrian-founded religious aid charity that has been the basis of my latest research saw continuity in the struggles faced by Syrian and Palestinian victims of bombardment alike.
Briefly, my work in religious humanitarianism is an extension of lengthier research on the relationship between spirituality and revolutionary politics in the Syrian revolution. Focusing on the role of Sufi mystics in joining the uprising against the Assad regime, I discovered that pro-revolution Syrian Sufis established a sophisticated revolutionary architecture both on and off the Syrian battlefield. While their attempts to establish an institutionalized Sufi military presence did not endure, these mystics did succeed in establishing humanitarian aid organizations, which proved crucial in servicing the critical mass of Syrian refugees produced by the Assad regime after 2011. I myself participated in several aid convoys led by these organizations, and was intrigued by the centrality of Sufi vocabularies to the procurement and delivery of aid.
Religious humanitarianism more broadly questions the alleged universalism of traditional models employed by major international organizations. And within the broader umbrella of Islamic humanitarianism, Sufi humanitarianism makes it a point to distinguish itself from social service models employed by Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Whereas Islamist groups maintain social services in large part to bolster political support, Sufi humanitarianism purports to offer aid disconnected from this or that political project. That may seem counterintuitive, given that the IAC was founded in the crucible of the Syrian Revolution and refugee crisis, but its subsequent work in wholly unrelated geographical contexts suggests a deeper concern with spiritual service (khidma) as a basis for its organizational activity.
MY: Tell us more about the importance of geography. The forms of religious humanitarianism that you have examined have specific geographical commitments, borrowing on organizational structures in Morocco to originally service the Syrian refugee crisis. Yet now these religious humanitarian networks are operating in multiple geographical contexts, Gaza being the latest one. How does geography dictate or affect the mandate of Sufi religious humanitarianism?
DF: As I detailed in a recent journal article, years of textual and ethnographic fieldwork revealed that the roots of the Sufi contingent to the Syrian revolution originated not in Syria proper, but in North Africa. Having migrated in the 19th century from Morocco and Algeria to late-Ottoman Damascus, distinctly Maghrebi Sufi vocabularies of spiritual and political authority became indigenized in Syria. Even centuries later, these North African spiritual motifs proved palpable to their Syrian inheritors, who in moments of crisis drew on their diasporic legacy. More specifically, they employed Maghrebi idioms of authority tied to blood descent from the Prophet Mohammed, as a basis of legitimacy in supporting the Syrian revolution. Pro-revolution Sufis, operating outside a Moroccan context, relied on their Prophetic descent to command legitimacy on the battlefield. So Sufi resistance to the Assad regime in 2011 owes much to North African spiritual vocabularies.
But beyond the vocabularies of political theory, my recent investigations of Sufi humanitarianism reveal that these groups also employ distinctly Moroccan organizational models. The Moroccan Sufi lodge (zawiya) serves primarily to facilitate congregational worship, but also has an effective public administration function, such as establishing formal educational systems and public works. As economists and scholars of public administration have recently argued, the Moroccan zawiya administrative structure has for centuries successfully coexisted with a larger central state to deliver coproduced services.
The Syrian-founded Sufi humanitarian networks I study, borrowing on their North African roots, are in effect adopting the Moroccan zawiya model as a vehicle for aid delivery. But now operating in a diasporic existence, this spiritual tradition is unmoored from the strictures of Moroccan, or Syrian, geographies. Originally North African spiritual vocabularies and organizational models are now being put in service of transnational aid efforts. Drawing on the Prophetic utterance that “the leader of a people is their servant,” these aid networks operationalize spiritual service (khidma), a fundamental building block of character development in the Sufi path, through social services for the marginalized and needy. And having sequentially grown both in its operations and geographical mandate, the organization has continued to service crises in Syria while also building a presence in adjacent crises in Afghanistan, Morocco, the 2023 Syria-Türkiye earthquake, and most recently Gaza. Accordingly, this contemporary derivative of the Moroccan Sufi lodge has taken on a transnational character and ethical framework.
MY: One of the issues you have followed is how Sufi forms of humanitarianism can offer pushback against the universalist claims of Western models of humanitarianism. What do you mean by this and what are the advantages of these alternative models?
DF: Islamic humanitarianism more broadly distinguishes itself from traditional forms of humanitarianism, which anthropologists have increasingly criticized for exacerbating immigration politics and reinforcing both victimhood and existent power hierarchies. To use an example from scholarship on France, traditional models have exacerbated immigration politics, to the extent that conditions such as HIV and forms of sexual violence become advantageous for receiving residency papers. Islamic humanitarianism has been presented as an alternative to the alleged universalism of traditional models employed by international organizations and nongovernmental organizations, offering competing ecologies of compassion and care.
In the Sufi humanitarian networks with which I’m engaging, the vocabulary of khidma, spiritual service, is mobilized specifically to foster a more ethically grounded ecology of care. And that ethic is demonstrably transnational in its mandate. Owing to their ideological disdain for the Muslim Brotherhood, these groups emphatically reject the social service models of Islamist groups. Being untethered to the stakes of electoral politics, which is typical of Islamist models, may be crucial in allowing Sufi humanitarian organizations to be broader in their geographical scope.
And returning to Gaza, it’s interesting to see an indigenous form of religious humanitarianism remaining faithful to universalist concerns of relief for the downtrodden. Whereas pro-Assad leftists (rightfully) see the humanity of Palestinians, yet reject the concerns of Syrians facing similar brutality by the Assad regime, we see a Sufi tradition initially mobilized by a rejection of Assadism now aligning Free Syrians in unequivocally lending support to the Palestinians. The ethical mandate of spiritual service seems to offer a moral universalism that transcends sectarianism, as Sufi organizations rise above their disdain for Islamist groups such as Hamas to centralize the plight of Gazans facing bombardment.
MY: How have your own experiences played into the conclusions you have reached about religious humanitarianism in the region? I know you participated in humanitarian actions in countries here, so can you describe what happened?
DF: In March 2023, I participated with the IAC in a relief convoy in the aftermath of the Syrian-Turkish earthquake, in Türkiye’s Hatay Province. Through that convoy, I was able to witness the sophistication of the organization’s operations. A few observations come to mind.
First, the organization’s explicit embrace of spiritual devotional vocabularies brought it immediate credibility with its on-site staff, with international volunteers, and with aid recipients. In a warehouse in the Reyhanli municipality of Hatay, I spent mornings packaging boxes of basic essentials for earthquake victims, which my team and I would deliver later in the day. As I packed box after box with rice and essential goods, I repeatedly got lost in the melodious devotional chants offered by the IAC leadership team. Those Sufi litanies were not incidental, but were central to the operational architecture. Most international volunteers were explicit initiates of the Sufi masters stewarding the organization, and saw aid delivery as part of their devotional training. A common vernacular, of devotional Islam, offered an equity between relief organization and aid recipient that blurred power hierarchies often exacerbated by traditional forms of humanitarianism.
That equity, moreover, was reinforced through the prohibition of any photography of earthquake victims in positions of dire need. We were explicitly instructed to safeguard the dignity of aid recipients, and to avoid the exercise of conflict tourism. Aid recipients regularly invited volunteers into their makeshift tents for tea and fruit. Even in need, Turkish and Syrian refugees reaffirmed their hospitality, and their own empowerment vis-à-vis the relief organization.
Additionally, the organization’s religious legitimacy allowed it to build deep relationships with local actors. It had established lengthy partnerships with state and nonstate actors in Türkiye, which allowed it to procure supplies at cost, gave it access to warehouse space, and enabled effective distribution channels. Distribution channels, moreover, are exceptionally difficult to maintain in the aftermath of natural disasters. But the IAC was not starting from a blank slate when the earthquakes hit. Its previous work during the Syrian refugee crisis, involving meticulous census taking of newly-arrived refugee populations, allowed it to hit the ground running the moment the natural disaster occurred, offering effective emergency relief in tight partnership with local and international partners.
These overlapping layers of spiritual legitimacy suggest that Sufi humanitarianism should be taken seriously by the international development community, as natural partners in relief work globally.
