Living an ethical ‘Muslim lifestyle’ within and beyond neoliberal governmentalities: discourse and practice of a youth-led British Muslim charity

Abstract

In the early 2010s the then Conservative-led coalition UK government implemented its ‘Big Society’ agenda for the neoliberal renegotiation of the relationship between the state, civil society, and individual citizens. More or less inadvertently, Big Society opened up spaces for everyday ethical agency and postsecular rapprochement. In this environment, faith-based organisations enjoyed a renewed role in the British public sphere, presenting both areas of resonance where neoliberal forms have been co-constituted; and areas of dissonance where neoliberal forms have been resisted. This contribution presents how the youth-led British Muslim charity Muslim Action for Development and the Environment (MADE) inserted itself at the intersection of these spaces, by articulating and trying to enlist young British Muslims into a project of ethical ‘Muslim lifestyle’–that is, one where everyday ethical agency and pious self-cultivation are mutually integrated and shaped through a constant engagement with, and commitment to, the Islamic tradition. At one level, MADE’s discourse and practices replicated technologies of agency and ‘ideal citizen’ subjectivities constructed by Big Society. However, MADE also resisted this mode of governmentality (and wider neoliberal forms) by explicitly grounding its motivations, values, and norms within an Islamic ethical framework that it self-confidently mobilised as a hopeful counternarrative.