Holger Weiss

• Åbo Akademi University

The chapter discusses horizontal and vertical forms of philanthropy. It focuses on the contemporary discourse on zakat as a tool for the eradication of poverty among imams and Muslim scholars in Ghana. Traditionally, various forms of horizontal informal philanthropy such as zakat and sadaqa constituted the basic form of private support within the M...

This chapter outlines the articulations and actions of Muslim NGOs with a special focus on their instrumentalization of Islamic social finance instruments, namely sadaqa or voluntary almsgiving and donations and zakat or mandatory almsgiving in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. Zakat constitutes a form of vertical philanthropy in all cases above as...

The chapter analyzes the attempts by the maritime section of the Red International of Labour Unions (RLIU/Profintern), the International Propaganda Committee/International Propaganda and Action Committee of Transport Workers in the 1920s and its successor, the 1930-established International of Seamen and Harbour Workers, to engage in anticolonial a...

The environmental history of the Caribbean has been strongly associated with the consequences of sugar cane agriculture and extreme weather phenomena. Consequently, other aspects of environmental change at play in the Caribbean region have remained less known. However, islands such as Anguilla, Barbuda, and Saint Barthélemy had no or very few sugar...

p>The Complex Space of the Swedish Colonial Project: Slavery under the Swedish Flag in the Late Eighteenth-Century Caribbean and Atlantic World When Sweden took over Saint Barthélemy in the Caribbean in 1784, the island was inhabited by French colonists and their slaves. As the island was too small and barren for large-scale plantations, the Swedi...

This chapter gives an outline of the intertwined multiple cultural and social dynamics in the Danish enclaves and their hinterlands on the Gold Coast (Ghana) during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Similar to the other European ports of exchange, the Danish forts had been built next to African settlements. The interaction between the...

This article is a critical assessment of the documentary sources of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) available at the Comintern Archives in Moscow. The organization was the key platform within the Comintern Apparatus to establish an African-Atlantic network of radical activists and organizations in Africa and the Ca...

This article is a critical assessment of the documentary sources of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) available at the Comintern Archives in Moscow. The organization was the key platform within the Comintern Apparatus to establish an African-Atlantic network of radical activists and organizations in Africa and the Ca...

Since the 1980s, scientific experts have made a number of recommendations for averting food insecurity and famine in Northern Ghana and other dryland areas of West Africa. These studies are based on regional meteorological data, and their suggestions include early warning systems, smallholder agricultural development, and the depopulation of densel...

During the second half of the twentieth century the contribution of Muslim NGOs in providing basic social welfare became a significant feature in Ghana. However, none of the Muslim NGOs are able to finance their projects themselves but rely on foreign financial assistance. On the other hand, Ghanaian Muslim scholars have argued for the need to deve...

In late autumn 1898, the German emperor Wilhelm II visited Constantinople and Damascus and in a spectacular speech declared himself as a friend of Islam and the protector of the sultan and the Muslim world. Emperor Wilhelm's declaration was especially directed against French and Russian attempts to put pressure on the Muslim world in Morocco and th...

BORGU'S ‘PROBABLE PAST’ Wasangari und Wangara: Borgu und seine Nachbarn in historischer Perspektive. Bei RICHARD KUBA. Hamburg: Lit, 1996. Pp. 401. No price given (ISBN 3-8258-2802-6). - - Volume 40 Issue 2 - HOLGER WEISS