‘Strange’ Affinities: Iṣlāḥ and British Muslim Volunteers in the Syrian War

British Muslim volunteers in wartime Syria have been alternatively cast as humanitarians, activists, and—under the suspicious gaze of the War on Terror—disguised militants. Yet many frame their efforts as attempts at iṣlāḥ (reform, repair, rectification). This talk ethnographically considers the ethico-political life of iṣlāḥ, a multivalent and embodied concept in the Islamic tradition, in a landscape marked by war and international relief efforts. Interpreted as a mode of care, iṣlāḥ organizes heterogeneous practices by volunteers including charitable giving, political defiance, and ethical contestation. As such, it is irreducible to either (religious) charity or its oft-purported opposite: (political) solidarity. Rather, it reveals the embedded secularity of such oppositions, which shape the reasoning of the British security state and social scientific commentary alike.

Dr. Muneeza Rizvi is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology from UC Davis in 2022. Her book manuscript follows British Muslim voluntarism in the Syrian War, focusing on ethical affinities that emerge and endure within our securitized present.