ABSTRACT
A scholarly classification of organizations as neoliberal or communitarian is certainly ridden with difficulties. The confounding factor was that actors across the board summoned religiosity and community. Religion also played an organizational role as the donors and beneficiaries contacted the association through its mosques. This chapter demonstrates the frequent mismatch between beneficiaries and organizations. It also documents significant, though less frequent, misalignments between staff and volunteers on the one hand and management on the other. The chapter classifies an organization as communitarian when its affiliates assumed and/or argued that the fundamental cause of poverty was the moral deficiency of society as a whole. Women had a separate but active role, though they were not as prominent as in the Turkish communitarian associations. The Piety Association was one of the biggest representatives of communitarian charity. Egyptian communitarian charity demonstrates that effort can be central to accumulating wealth magically, while still not culminating in an ascetically rational effort.
