Counting good and bad deeds under military rule: Islam and divine bookkeeping in Nablus (Palestine)

Abstract

This chapter describes the challenges of a distinct aspect of ethical formalism, that of quantification, and the tension in many ethical traditions between calculation and the incalculable. Certain facets of ethical conduct can be weighed or counted, while others – such as matters of faith, mercy and trust – disrupt or evade calculation. The chapter explores this tension in the context of Sunni Islam, where adhering to religious rules in one’s personal conduct is often assumed to gain one points in a divine system of bookkeeping. Through ethnographic research in the Palestinian city of Nablus, it is argued that such divine bookkeeping can be understood as a technology of the self. Other aspects of being a good Muslim, however, break calculation apart. Ethical qualities that bear on one’s relation to God or other human beings are particularly difficult to think of in such formalistic terms. Regarding contemporary Islam, some scholars have argued that an interest in calculation stems from the rise of neo-liberal forms of capitalism. Yet attention to comparable ideas in the Christian tradition shows otherwise. St Anselm, for instance, phrased similar notions in the terms of the feudalism of his time. The chapter points instead to the repressive politics of the occupied Palestinian territories, which combine capitalist political economies with extensive security surveillance. There is an elective affinity between the microscopic scrutiny of such state surveillance and the calculated tallying of good and bad deeds.