3 - Managing Poverty and National Development

Summary

The Majid Society, at the heart of this chapter, aspires to offer development. The development approach has not, however, replaced a religious culture of aid. Instead, the chapter explores how development can be expressed through the language of Islam and financed through Islamic charity. The chapter explores the organization’s training facility, the “productive families” approach, a program tackling illiteracy among mothers, and the use of microcredit schemes, all of which the Majid Society directed at female beneficiaries of aid.

The welfare association was established in 1998 at the initiative of Prince Majid bin ʿAbd al-ʿAziz (1938–2003). This raises the question of how far royal charity organizations can be considered part of Saudi civil society. With a focus on national development and capacity building, the Majid Society resonates strongly with the public discourse of poverty as initiated and moderated by the Saudi state. The chapter critically looks at state approaches to poverty and how the Saudi state has come to dictate the ways poverty is discussed in public. This raises the question of how far charity organizations act in support of the state, complementing state efforts rather than challenging the status quo.