ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the link between ideas of voluntary gifting to deep-rooted notions of salvation and seeks to understand how ideas about charity integral to Islamic belief and practice have been reformulated in various circles in contemporary Turkey. It attempts to identify the sources of inspiration, the conditions of possibility, and associated dispositions for giving inculcated among sections of Ankara’s entrepreneurial class. The chapter explores what constitutes the “contemporaneity” of zakat in Turkey. “zakat can be used to assist the poor and needy, to support employees of zakat administration, to spread Islam, to free slaves, to free people of debt, and to help travelers”. Zakat becomes the mechanism for effecting positive societal change rather than simply an investment in the afterlife, or a surety for individual salvation. The chapter reviews what our interlocutors shared about their experiences of “doing” educational zakat in Central Asia.
