Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (16 page)

English term "civilized") to describe Islamically devout behavior.

Hajja Samira's concern about the way popular religiosity has been trans.. formed by the process of secularization was shared across mosque groups, de.. spite their disparate class and social backgrounds. Consider, for example, a similar sentiment expressed by Hajja Faiza, from the upper..middle..class Umar mosque, in an interview with me:

Currently, religion seems to have become separated from the texts or scriptures
[nu
�u�
]
,
especially in issues of mu �amalat [commercial and social transactions]. The challenge that we face as Muslims right now is how to understand and follow the example of the Prophet, how to act in accord with the Quran and the l) in our daily lives
[biytmil bil..baJ, wil..- an izzay] .
All of us [Muslims] know the basics of religion
[al..- ,
such as praying, fasting, and other acts of worship
[�ibadat] .
But the diffi question that confronts us today as Muslims is how to make our daily lives congruent with our religion while at the same time moving with the world
[mu�arrikr
ma�a
id..- a] ,
especially given that the present period

is one of great change and transformation. For me, proselytization
[daewa]
means doing it from within ordinary acts and practicalities
[eamaliyyat] ,
and translating worship
[ eibada]
into everyday practices so that these are always directed toward God
[fahm il.. eibada kullu yittagi ilallah] .

Note that the challenge Hajj a Faiza regards as central to her work does not have to do with educating Muslims in the basic performance of religious du.. ties (such as praying fi times a day, fasting, and the like); as she says, most of the people she works with perform these duties regularly. She is concerned in.. stead with those Muslims who, despite performing their religious duties, have lost the capacity to render
all
aspects of their lives--o which worship is sim.. ply one, albeit an important, part-into a means of realizing God's will. Hajja Faiza's emphasis on practice, therefore, addresses the problem of how to make moral precepts, doctrinal principles, and acts of worship relevant to the or.. ganization of everyday life. Her engagement with sacred texts is aimed at de.. ducing a set of practical rules of conduct to guide others in resolving the mun.. dane issues of daily life.

Like the other daeiyat, Hajja Faiza recognizes that there are numerous as.. pects of contemporary life that are ruled
not
by the dictates of sacred texts ( the Quran and the Sunna),9 but by laws whose rationale is independent from, and at times inimical to, the demands of pious living. The distinction Hajja Faiza makes between acts of worship Cibadat) and those actions pertaining to social transactions ( mueamalat)10 has been part of the Islamic juridical tradition since at least the tenth century. In the modern period, although
shari ea
proce.. dures ( those moral discourses and legal procedures sometimes glossed as "Is.. lamic law") were unevenly applied in Egypt, most acts in the category of mu\imalat came to be regulated by civil law, giving the distinction between worship and social transactions a new valence and institutional force. As was the case with most non..Western nations, Egypt adopted a European legal code ( the French code) in the mid.- neteenth century, thereby restricting the application of Islamic law to matters pertaining to family law and pious en.. dowments (Hill 1 987 ).11 For most of the daeiyat, however, reinstatement of

9
The Sunna describes the practices of the Prophet and his Companions. In Islamic jurispru.. dence, the Sunna is considered to be the second most important source for the derivation of Is.. lamic laws after the Quran. For debates among Muslim reformers on this issue, see
D.
Brown 1999.

10
The term
mueamala
may best be translated as "sections of the sharta concern with trans..

actions, including bilateral contracts and unilateral dispositions" (Messick 1996, 313).

1 1
Personal status law (or family law), a legal category that emerged with the adoption of the European legal code, has become a key site of struggle over the identity of the Muslim community in a variety of national contexts. For contentious debates about changes in Muslim family law in India, where Muslims are a signifi minority, see Hasan 1994; for similar debates in Egypt, where Muslims are the majority, see Skovgaard.- 1 997.

the shari�a remains marginal to the realization of the movement's goals, and few lessons address the issue. Even though women like Hajja Faiza do not ad.. vocate the abolition or transformation of civil law as do some other Islamists,
12
this does not mean that the mosque movement endorses a privatized notion of religion that assumes a separation between worldly and religious affairs.13 In.. deed, the form of piety women like Hajja Faiza advocate brings religious obli..

gations and rituals Cibadat) to bear upon worldly issues in new ways, thereby according the old Islamic adage "all of life is worship"
(al-.yah kullaha cibada)
a new valence.

Secularism has often been understood in two primary ways: as the separa.. tion of religion from issues of the state, and as the increasing differentiation of society into discrete spheres (economic, legal, educational, familial, and so on) of which religion is one part ( Berger 1973 ; Casanova 1994; Durkhe im 1965 ; D. Martin 1978 ). Since participants in the mosque movement do not argue for the promulgation of the shari�a, they do not constitute a challenge to the former aspect of secularism as do some of the more militant and state.. oriented Islamist activists.
14
The mosque movement's solution to the problem of Egypt becoming increasingly secularized does not directly confront the po.. litical order, even though the social transformations it seeks to bring about necessarily
involve changing sociopolitical institutions and ethos.
The piety activists seek to imbue each of the various spheres of contemporary life with a regulative sensibility that takes its cue from the Islamic theological corpus rather than from modem secular ethics. In this sense, the mosque movement's goal is to introduce a common set of shared norms or standards by which one

12
For example, during the question.-and.- period, mothers often raised the issue of sexual intercourse outside the institution of marriage
(zina'),
particularly premarital sex-an act that is

considered to be a cardinal sin in Islam. In response, the da�iyat acknowledged that the classical Islamic punishment for such an act (most commonly, a hundred lashes for each participant) was no longer possible and applicable in Egypt. Instead, it was required of parents that they inculcate a sense of modesty and knowledge of proper conduct in youth so as to prevent them from con.. templating such an act. Thus the focus of the mosque lessons was precisely on those manners of thought, movements, and practices that needed to be policed in order to forestall the possibility of zina', not on the punishment that the act required.

13
I use the term "worldly" intentionally-instead of the term
mu�amalat
(social transac..

tions )-to avoid the juridical connotations of the latter. By "worldly" acts I mean those behaviors that pertain to matters in life that are distinct from acts of worship.

14
The debate about the promulgation of the sharfa peaked in Egypt after the passage of the new family law in 1985 . In the mid.. to late 1980s, distinct lines were drawn between the support..

ers of the sharta and those opposed to it, the latter being a loose alliance of intellectuals and jour.. nalists who came to be called "the secularists"
Calmaniyyin).
This debate cooled off substantially in the 1 990s, and by the time I conducted my fi ( 1995-97) the focus of the Islamist move..

ment was more on preaching, welfare, and syndicalist activities. For a general discussion of this debate and the reasons for its decline, see Skovgaard..Petersen 1997, 205-208.

is to judge one's own conduct, whether in the context of employment, educa.. tion, domestic life, or other social activities. The mosque participants' activi.. ties, therefore, pose more of a challenge to the second aspect of secularism, namely, the process by which religion is relegated to its own differentiated sphere, its infl curtailed to those aspects of modem life that are deemed either "private" or "moral."

For example, in the last three decades, supporters of the Islamist movement have established a number of "Islamic schools" in order to counter the secular character of modem Egyptian education.15 Their efforts have been directed not so much at creating a new curriculum ( which continues to be determined by the Egyptian govern ent) as at introducing practices that create an Is..

Iamie awareness (
al..waei al
..
isla )
within existing institutions (see Herrera

2003 ). This includes emphasizing the study of religious materials that are al.. ready part of the curriculum, creating space and time for prayer during school hours, hiring religiously observant teachers, and so on. Insofar as this strategy makes Islamic ethics central to the process of acquiring diff kinds of knowledges and skills, it infuses the current educational institutions with a sensibility that is potentially transformative.16

the folk/ rization ofworship

An important aspect of the mosque movement's critique of the secularization of Egyptian society focuses upon how the understanding and performance of acts of worship (ibadat) have been transformed in the modem period. Move.. ment participants argue that ritual acts of worship in the popular 'imagination have increasingly acquired the status of customs or conventions, a kind of "Muslim folklore" undertaken as a form of entertainment or as a means to dis.. play a religio..cultural identity. According to them, this has led to the decline of an altern understanding of worship, one in which rituals are performed as a means to the training and realization of piety in the entirety of one's life. Part of the aim of the mosque movement is to restore this understanding of worship by teaching women the requisite skills involved in its practice.

15
Beginning in the colonial period, public education came to focus increasingly on secular subjects (such as geography, mathematics, and biology), replacing classical religious topics and supplanting methods of traditional schooling with the disciplinary practices of modem education (see T. Mitchell 1991, 63-1 27; Starrett 1998, 23-153 ). The teaching of Islam, however, was not eradicated fr the curriculum but continued as one subj ect among others in public and private schools in Egypt.

16
It was this transformative character of Islamic education that incited the Egyptian govern.. ment to implement a number of measures aimed at the regulation of these schools (see Herrera 2003 , 171-80). The Turkish state has reacted in a similar fashion, prohibiting students fr en.. tering Islamic schools before the age of fi teen
(New Yor k Ti
1998 ).