Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (17 page)

Consider for example how Fatma, an active member of the mosque move.. ment, articulated this widely shared view. Fatma was in her late twenties when I met her and, after the death of her father, was one of three breadwin.. ners in a family of ten. Despite the long hours she worked, Fatma found time to attend mosque lessons regularly. She strongly believed that her involve.. ment in the mosque movement had taught her what piety really entailed. In an interview with me, Fatma voiced her concerns about the folklorization of Islam:

The state and society want to reduce Islatn to folklore , as if Islam is just a collection of ceremonies and customs, such as hanging lanterns from doorways or baking cookies during Ramadan, or eating meat on
al.. ezd al..kabzr
[feast that celebrates the end of Ramadan] .17 Mere ceremonies
[mujarrad al..
ma
without any bearing on the rest of life.

Noting the look of puzzlement on my face, Fatma asked, "Have you spent the month of Ramadan in Cairo ?" I nodded yes. Fatma continued:

So you know what happens during Ramadan in Cairo.18 You must have heard the popular saying in colloquial Arabic that the fi third of Ramadan is cookies, the second third is expenses [on food and clothing] , and the last third is [visitation of] relatives.19 Where is worship in this saying
[qaul] ?
You fi special programs that the state television puts on every evening, showing all kinds of things that are prohib ited
[l:t
in Islam. The entire society seems to be focused on preparing food all day long and festivities in the evenings, all of which are contrary

[bititnaq
to the real meaning and spirit of Ramadan. If it were not for the mosque lessons [durii I began to attend two years ago, I vvould also have continued to think, like others, that Ramadan was about abstaining from food during the day, and in the evenings eating a lot and going out to the market or al--

17
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim calendar during which Muslims are required to fast, abstaining from food and drink from sunrise to sunset.

18
While Ramadan is observed in all parts of the Muslim world, Egypt's celebration of it is dis- tinctive for the festivities that start at sundown and continue well into the early hours of the morning during the entire month. Working hours are limited, and most Egyptian families cele-
b
rate
b
y cooking special foods and spending evenings outdoors. Television and the entertainment industry put on special shows, and markets are full of consumer items (prepared foods, household goods, etc. ). It is to these aspects of Egyptian Ramadan that Fatma refers.

19
In contrast to this popular saying was one that I had come to hear in the mosques, but which few Egyptians outside the mosque circles seemed to know: "The fi third of Ramadan is kindness of God
[ra�mat alla ,
the second third is His forgiveness
[maghfi tihi] ,
and the last third is refuge from hell's fire
[eitq al--na ."
This saying is indicative of the special status accorded to Ramadan in Islamic doctrine in that increased frequency of worship during the month is supposed to lead to greater rewards from God.

Hussein [the area around the tomb of Hussein where Egyptians gather in large numbers in the late evening during Ramadan].

When I questioned Fatma further about what she meant by "the real mean.. ing and spirit of Ramadan," she explained to me that this entailed a range of behaviors that a Muslim must undertake when fasting, behaviors that con.. veyed the fuller meaning of the fast, such as abstaining from anger and lying, avoiding looking at things that stir one's appetite (sexual or culinary), and be.. ing extra diligent in one's prayers. It was not that baking cookies or decorating one's house during Ramadan was wrong, she said: in fact, celebrating Ra..

madan is considered a "good deed"
(al.. �amal al..�ali�)
because it follows the ex..

ample of the Prophet and his Companions. What gets lost in these popular festivities, she argued, is the understanding that the act of fasting is a neces.. sary means to a virtuous life ( what she called "the realization of piety"-ta]fq

al..-taq a) .
"Fasting is not simply abstaining from food," she explained to me,

"but it is a condition through which a Muslim comes to train herself in the virtues
[fa# !l l]
of patience
habr ,
trust in God
[tawakkul] ,
asceticism from worldly pleasures
[zuhd ,
etc." In Fatma's view, therefore, an act of fasting that

does not enable one to acquire these virtues transforms fasting from a religious act to a folkloric custom.

Fatma's concern were echoed widely in mosque circles. Hajja Nur was a d�tiya who had taught at the Nafi mosque for several years but now gave les .. sons at another mosque to a small number of women. In her characteristically lucid style of argument, she reiterated Fatma's critique of the way Islamic obli.. gations are currently practiced in Egypt, using a different example:

It is the project of the govern and the secularists ralmaniyin] to transform religion [al.- in] into conventions or customs [�ada . People may not even know that they are doing this, but in fact what they do in actual behavior

[�arr atuhum al..
l:wq
T
q
i
yy
a
] is to tum religion into no more than a folkloric

custom ! An example of this is the use of the veil [Q.ij ab]2° as a custom eada] rather than as a religious duty ff r4] . When you [here she addressed me directly] as a foreigner look at Egyptian society right now and see all these women wearing the

Q. ab you must remember that a lot of them wear it as a custom, rather than a religious duty that also entails other responsibilities. These people are in fact no different than those who argue
against
the Q. j ab and who say that the Q. ab is [an expression of] culture [and therefore a matter of personal choice], rather than a religious command. So what we have to do is to educate Muslim women that it is not enough to wear the veil, but that the veil must also lead us to behave in a

20
Note that even though the term
�ijab
refers to the headscarf (which is distinct from other forms of the veil such as the khimar or the niqab), it is also used as a general term for the veil in Egyptian colloquial and Modem Standard Arabic.

truly modest manner in our daily lives, a challenge that far exceeds the simple act of donning the veil.

Undergirding Fatma's and Hajja Nur's critique is a conception of religiosity that discriminates between a religious practice that is part of the larger project of realizing Islamic virtues in the entirety of one's life, and a practice that is Is- lamic in form and style but does not necessarily serve as a means to the train- ing and realization of a pious self. Fatma and Hajja Nur are critical of the process by which practices that are supposed to be part of a larger program for shaping ethical capacities lose this function and become little more than markers of identity: such as when people fast because they have learned that this is simply what Muslims do. In summary, Fatma and Hajja Nur's remarks imply a critique of those forms of Islamic practice whose raison d'etre is to sig- nal an identity or tradition and which are , therefore, shorn of their ability to contribute to the formation of an ethical disposition.

Notably, Hajja Nur's statement above suggests that the attitude of those women who wear the veil out of habit is not dissimilar from those who regard the veil as a local custom (similar to regional styles of clothing, eating habits, and so on). In making this observation, she is referring to a widely known argument put forward by Egyptian intellectuals that veiling is not so much a di- vine injunction as it is a continuation of regional customs, practiced by women in Arabia at the advent of Islam, that has mistakenly become enshrined as a re- ligious edict.21 Hajja Nur faults both of these attitudes (the one that regards veiling to be a regional custom, and the other that unthinkingly reproduces the tradition of veiling) for ignoring how the practice of veiling is an integral part of an entire manner of existence through which one learns to cultivate the virtue of modesty in all aspects of one's life. In making her argument, she uses a key distinction, often invoked by the mosque participants, between customary and religious acts, a distinction that women like Hajja Nur think is elided when religion is understood as yet another kind of cultural practice.

Hajja Nur's remarks about the veil can be usefully compared to the views of a key Islamist public fi , Adil Hussein, who served as the general secretary of the Islamist Labor Party ( l:Iizb al..C: ) until his death a few years ago. The following is an excerpt from an interview with him in a documentary on the Islamic Revival (produced by the American Public Broadcasting System, PBS), where he explains why he thinks the veil is important:

In this period of [Islamic] Revival and renewed pride in ourselves and our past, why should we not take pride in the symbols that distinguish us from others [like

21
See, for example, Harb 1984, 172-98; Muhammed 1996. For a comparable point of view, also see Leila Ahmed's discussion of the origins of the veil
(
1992, 1 1-63 ).

the veil] ? So we say that the first condition is that clothing should be modest. But why can't we add a second condition that we would like this dress to be a continuation of what we have created in this region, like the Indian sari? . . . Why can't we have our own dress which expresses decency, a requirement of Islam, as well as the special beauty that would be the mark of our society which has

excelled in the arts and civilization? (York 1 992)

While Adil Hussein, like the daciyat, recognizes that the veil is an expres.. sion of the principle of female modesty, there are clear diff rences between their two views. Hussein regards the veil as a symbol of, among o ther things, an Islamic identity, culture, and civilization-not unlike the sari worn by South Asian women. For people like Adil Hussein, the increased popularity of the veil is a sign of the vitality of the Islamic Revival ( al.- bwa al.. Islamiyya), which in turn is interpreted as the Muslim world's awakening to its true identity and cultural heritage. While women like Hajja Nur and Fatma do not entirely disagree with this view, they do, in contrast, regard the phenomenon of veiling as an
insuffi ient,
though necessary, part of making the society more religiously devout. As Hajja Nur's remarks reveal, the criti.. cal issue for her is whether the proliferation of what
appear
to be Islamic prac.. tices ( in form and style)
actually
enable the cultivation of Islamic virtues in the entirety of a Muslim's life.

The remarks of Adil Hussein and Hajja Nur about the veil register a differ.. ence that indexes a key line of fracture between the piety movement ( of which the mosque movement is an integral part) and Islamist political orga.. nizations. Islamist political figures and publications often criticize mosque par.. ticipants for promoting a form of religiosity that is devoid of any sociopolitical consequences, especially for the task of restructuring the state. Heba Saacl Ed.. din22 was a prominent member of the Labor Party, along with Adil Hussein, when I conducted my fi In the PBS documentary from which I quote above, Saad Eddin is asked how she, as a prominent Islamist activist who is veiled herself, views the popular resurgence of the veil in Egypt. She responds skeptically by saying: