Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (3 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In Egypt, where I conducted my fi ldwork, I have a debt that I can never repay to the women I worked with, the participants in the mosque movement, whose generosity and insights animate the words and phrases in this book. Without their patience and eloquence, it would not have been possible for me to write about many of the issues addressed here. Then there are colleagues and friends who made life in Cairo not only livable but pleasurable, taking the sting out of the diffi ulties that inevitably characterize fi In this re.. gard, I would like to thank Kamran Asdar Ali for introducing me to Cairo on my fi t visit; to Asef Bayat, Linda Herrera, Abdel Wahab el.- iri, and May al..Ibrashy for their generous hospitality during my two years in Cairo; to Clarissa Bencomo and J amal Abdul Aziz for challenging conversations about Egyptian politics; to Michael Gasper for making the streets of Cairo seem a plausible place to discuss the vagaries of academia; to Samira Haj for her in.. valuable camaraderie and friendship; to Saif al.- for his searing and witty questioning of my interest in Islamist politics; and fi , to Ted Swe. denburg for/the fabulous dinners and animated discussions his home always provided for interlopers like myself. My thanks also to Akhil Gupta and Purnima Mankekar for providing me a home base in the United States during my fi work when such a center seemed to escape me.

This book rests on research conducted with generous support from the So.. cial Science Research Council, the Wenner.- Foundation for Anthropo.. logical Research, and the National Science Foundation. During the writing phase of this book, I was fortunate to be supported by a Chancellor's Postdoc- toral Fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley and a Harvard Academy Fellowship at Harvard University. This book also benefi from a semester's leave at the University of Leiden, the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, in the Netherlands.

I am indebted to Mary Murrell at Princeton University Press and my copy editor Krista Faries for their impeccable assistance with the completion of this book. I am also grateful for the suggestions and comments made by the anony.. mous reviewers for Princeton University Press. I do not know how I could have fi this undertaking without the assiduous research assistance of Noah Salomon, to whom I extend my heartfelt thanks. I am also grateful to Catherine Adcock, Fatma Naib, Scott Richard, Alicia Turner, and Warda Yousef for their help in procuring the research materials for this book.

Finally, I would like to thank certain friends and family members whose care, affection, and support have borne me through the many impasses I have encountered in undertaking this journey-of which this book is only a small part. The sustenance and nourishment William Glover's longstanding friend.. ship has provided me cannot be measured in words or deeds-none of the crit.. ical decisions I have taken in the last twenty years, especially the decision to

XV

change careers midstream, could have been possible without his support, ad.. vice, and unquestioning confi in my ability to succeed. I would like to extend my thanks also to George Collier, Dawn Hansen, Nadeem Khalid, Khalid Mahmood, Farina Mir, Rabia N ader, Jackie Wolf, and Rich Wood for their nurturing friendships. To Charles Hirschkind I owe the pleasure of a life that only a meeting of spirits can make possible. This book is, in an important sense, the result of our joint labor at thinking through the conundrums I be.. gan my preface with-this labor restores my faith in the ability of humans to learn to love and think collectively even when answers seem impossible. I hope that together we will be able to pass some of this on to Nan1eer.

NOTE ON TRANSCRI PTION

I
n general, I have used
a
modifi version of the system outlined in the
Inter- national Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (I]MES)
for transcribing words and phrases in Modern Standard Arabic. For words and phrases that appear in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, particularly in ethnographic quotes, I have fo}.. lowed a combination of sources, key among them
A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic
composed by El-- aid Badawi and Martin Hinds. In order to make the transcription of Modem Standard Arabic words and Egyptian Colloquial Ara.. bic words as consistent as possible, while still conveying the fl or of Egyptian colloquial speech, I have adapted the Badawi and Hinds system to that of
I]MES.
In case of proper names, honorifi titles, and Arabic terms that are found in an unabridged English dictionary, I have omitted the use of diacriti.. cal marks. I have deferred to transcriptions that have been used in standard bibliographic reference texts, and to the styles that have been chosen by au.. thors for their own names when these have appeared in English..language publications. English..language titles that incorporate Arabic words retain the original style of transcription.

POLITICS OF PIETY

1

The Subject of Freedom

O
ver the last two decades, a key question has occupied many feminist theo- rists: how should issues of historical and cultural specifi ity inform both the analytics and the politics of any feminist project? While this question has led to serious attempts at integrating issues of sexual, racial, class, and national difference within feminist theory, questions regarding religious difference have remained relatively unexplored. The vexing relationship between femi- nism and religion is perhaps most manifest in discussions of Islam. This is due in part to the historically contentious relationship that Islamic societies have had with what has come to be called "the West, " but also due to the chal- lenges that contemporary Islamist movements pose to secular--liberal politics of which feminism has been an integral ( if critical) part. The suspicion with which many feminists tended to view Islamist movements only intensifi in the aftermath of the September
11 , 2001,
attacks launched against the United States, and the immense groundswell of anti--Islamic sentiment that has fol- lowed since. If supporters of the Islamist movement were disliked before for their social conservatism and their rejection of liberal values (key among them "women's freedom"), their now almost taken-- or-- association with terrorism has served to further reaffi their status as agents of a danger- ous irrationality.

Women's participation in, and support for, the Islamist movement provokes strong responses from feminists across a broad range of the political spectrum. One of the most common reactions is the supposition that women Islamist supporters are pawns in a grand patriarchal plan, who, if freed from their

bondage, would naturally express their instinctual abhorrence for the tradi.. tional Islamic mores used to enchain them. Even those analysts who are skep.. tical of the false..consciousness thesis underpinning this approach nonetheless continue to frame the issue in terms of a fundamental contradiction: why would such a large number of women across the Muslim world actively sup.. port a movement that seems inimical to their "own interests and agendas," es.. pecially at a historical moment when these women appear to have more emancipatory possibilities available to them?1 Despite important diff rences

between these two reactions, both share the assumption that there is some.. thing intrinsic to women that
should
predispose them to oppose the practices, values, and injunctions that the Islamist movement embodies. Yet, one may

ask, is such an assumption valid? What is the history by which we have come to assume its truth? What kind of a political imagination would lead one to think in this manner? More importantly, if we discard such an assumption, what other analytical tools might be available to ask a diff rent set of ques.. tions about women's participation in the Islamist movement?

In this book I will explore some of the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular, and to secular..liberal thought in general, through an ethnographic account of an urban women's mosque movement that is part of the larger Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt. For two years ( 1995-97) I conducted fi with a move.. ment in which women from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds provided lessons to one another that focused on the teaching and studying of Islamic scriptures, social practices, and forms of bodily comportment considered ger.. mane to the cultivation of the ideal virtuous self.2 The burgeoning of this movement marks the fi time in Egyptian history that such a large number of women have held public meetings in mosques to teach one another Islamic doctrine, thereby altering the historically male..centered character of mosques as well as Islamic pedagogy. At the same time, women's religious participation within such public arenas of Islamic pedagogy is critically structured by, and serves to uphold, a discursive tradition that regards subordination to a tran..

1
Th dilemma seems to be fu compounded by the fact that women's participation in the Is.. lamist movement in a number of countries (such as Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, and Malaysia) is not lim.. ited to the poor (that is, those who are oft considered to have a "natural affi for religion). In.. stead the movement also enjoys wide support among women fr the upper.- and middle..income strata.