Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

POLITICS OF PIETY

BLAN PAGE

POLITICS OF PIETY

THE ISLAMIC REVIVAL AND THE FEMINIST SUBJECT

Saba Mahmood

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
•
PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright
©
200 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Wood Oxfordshire OX20 1SY

Al
Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging..in..Publication Data Mahmood Saba, 1962-

Politics of piety : the Islamic revival and the feminist subject
/
Saba Mahmood.

p. em.

Based on the author's thesis (Stanford University, 1998). Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN
o
..691..08694
..X
(cl : alk. paper) -ISBN 0..691..08695..8 (ph: alk. paper)

1. Feminism-Islamic countries. 2. Muslim women-Egypt--Cairo- life--C

studies. 3. Islamic renewal-Egypt--C studies. 4. Feminism-Religious
aspects-Islam. 5. Women in Islam. 6. Gender identity-Islamic countries. I. Ti Islamic

revival and the feminist subject. II. Ti

HQ1785.M34 2005

305.48'697'096216-dc22

British Library Catalogi ..in..Publicati Data is available This book has been composed in Goudy

Printed on acid..free pape
oo

pup.princeton.edu

Printed in the United States of America 10
9 8
7
6
5

ISBN-13: 978-0-691-08695-8
(pbk.)

ISBN-10: 0-691-08695-8
(pbk.)

2004044289

Dedicated to my father and other spirits who have watched over me....

BLAN PAGE

CONTENTS

PREFACE
ix

ACKNOW'L
xiii

NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION
xvii

CHAPTER
I

The Subject of Freedom
1

CHAPTER
2

Topography of the Piety Movement 40

CHAPTER
3

Pedagogies of Persuasion 79

CHAPTER 4

Positive Ethics and Ritual Conventions
118

CHAPTER
5

Agency, Gender, and Embodiment
153

EPILOGUE
189

GLOSSARY OF COMMONLY USED ARABIC TERMS
201

REFERENCES
205

INDEX
225

BlANK PAGE

PREFACE

E
ven though this book is about Islarn politics in Egypt, its genesis owes to a set of puzzles
I
inherited from my involvement in progressive left politics in Pakistan, the country of my birth. By the time my generation of Pakistanis carn to political consciousness during the 1970s and 1980s, the high moment
of postcolonial nationalism had passed and there was considerable disillusion
..
rn with what the now "not,so.. new" nation could provide for its citizens. There was, however, still a sense among the feminist left in Pakistan that some form of critical Marxism, combined with a judicious stance toward issues of gender inequality, could provide a means of thinking through our predica.. ment and organizing our pragmatic efforts at changing the situation in which we lived. In this we were perhaps not so different from our counterparts in countries like Algeria, Egypt, and Tunisia, where the postcolonial condition had generated a similar sense of disappointment but also a continued sense of nourishment, borne out of the promises that the twin ideologies of critical Marxism and feminism held out for us.

This sense of stability and purpose was slowly eroded for a number of us in Pakistan for reasons that are too complex to fully recount here, but two devel, opments in particular stand out. One was the solidifi of the military die, tatorship of Zia ul..Haq ( 1977-1988), who, while using Islam to buttress his brutal hold on power, turned Pakistan into a frontline state for the United States's proxy war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The military and monetary advantage that this alignment bestowed on Zia ul.. Haq's regime made any effective organized opposition to it infeasible. Furthermore, Zia ul.. Haq's top..down policy of "Islarn ng" Pakistani society through the use of the media, the educational system, and, more important, the judiciary (which in.. eluded the promulgation of a number of discriminatory laws against women),

cemented in the minds of progressive feminists like myself that our very sur.. vival depended upon an unfl stance against the Islamization of Pak.. istani society. If there was any shred of doubt in our minds that Islamic forms of patriarchy were responsible for our problems, this doubt was firmly removed given the immediate targets of our day--to-- struggles: feminist politics came to require a resolute and uncompromising secular stance.

A second development that I recall being crucial to our sense of being em- battled emerged more slowly over time: it started with the eruption of the Iranian revolution in
1979,
an event that confounded our expectations of the role Islam could play in a situation of revolutionary change and, at the same time, seemed to extinguish the fragile hope that secular leftist politics repre- sented in the region. While the Iranian revolution was a product of the in- tense repression carried out by the Shah's regime, it coincided with a gradual but inexorable movement within many Muslim societies toward a reemphasis on Islamic doctrines and forms of sociability. Most surprising for feminists of my generation was the fact that this movement was not limited to the mar- ginalized or the dispossessed, but found active and wide support among the middle classes who increasingly conjoined a critique of their emulation of Western habits and lifestyles with a renewed concern for living in accord with Islamic social mores. We in the Pakistani left frequently dismissed this upsurge of religiosity as superfi ial, on the grounds that it did not translate into success at the polls for Pakistani Islamic political parties. (A coalition of Islamic po.. litical parties did, however, win a signifi majority in the National Assem- bly for the fi time in Pakistani history in 2002 ).