Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (18 page)

In many cases religion is used as a kind of escape where the focus of the individual is to pray and read the Quran. But if we mean by [the Islamic] Revival more involvement in social change, I believe then that the [resurgence of the] veil should be understood as religiosity [al--tada n] , but not Revival. It does not necessarily refl a bigger participation in social life for the sake of social change toward Islam. ( York 1 992)

22
Heba Saad Eddin also goes by the name Heba Raouf Ezzat. She has published under both names.

Saad Eddin's position on the veil accords with her larger criticism of the ac.. tivities that mosques have increasingly undertaken in recent years in Egypt. In one of her weekly columns, "Saut al..Nisa�" ("Women's Voice"), which she used to write for the Labor Party newspaper
al..- at: 3
Saad Eddin criticizes Egyptian mosques for having become a space primarily for the performance of prayers and Islamic rituals, rather than a platform for the call to "truth, jus.. tice, and freedom," that is, a place where people come to learn "how to ana.. lyze their social situation and how to struggle to defend their freedom" (Saad Eddin 1997 ).
24
In other words, for Islamists like Saad Eddin and Hussein, reli.. gious rituals should be aimed toward the larger goal of creating a certain kind of polity, and the mosque movement fails precisely to make this linkage, keep.. ing matters of worship and piety incarcerated within what for them is a priva.. tized world of worship.

the "objecti(l ion" of religion?

A number of scholars of the modern Muslim world have noted that, as a result of widespread literacy and mass media, ordinary Muslims have become in.. creasingly familiar with doctrinal concepts and forms of religious reasoning that had previously been the domain of religious scholars alone (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996 ; Skovgaard..Petersen 1997; Zeghal 1996 ). In making this observation, these scholars echo an argument made most forcefully by Wilfred Cantwell Smith when he proposed that "religion" in the modern period has come to be understood as a self-enclosed system whose proper practice often entails, even on the part of lay practitioners, some form of familiarity with the doctrinal assumptions and theological reasoning involved in religious rites and rituals (1 962 ). This observation has prompted some scholars of the Mid.. dle East to conclude that the proliferation of religious knowledge among ordi.. nary Muslims has resulted in an "obj ectifi of the religious imagination," in that practices that were observed somewhat unrefl ively in the premod.. ern period are now the focus of conscious deliberation and debate (Eickelman 1992; Eickelman and Piscatori 1996; Salvatore 1998 ). Contemporary Mus.. lims' refl upon the religious character of ritual practices are, therefore, seen as evidence of a "modern objectifi religios ity. "25

21
Heba Saad Eddin was a regular contributor to
al-- b
until she ended her affiliation with the Labor Party in 2000. She currently writes for the Islamist website
www. islamonline.net.

24
The Egyptian government banned
al..Shav
in May 2000 for jeopardizing state security inter�

ests by publicly criticizing state policies and offi

25
For Eickelman and Piscatori
(1 996 ),
objectifi involves three processes: fi st, "discourse and debate about Muslim tradition involves people on a mass scale"
(39);
second, there is a ten� dency to see religious belief and practice "as a system to be distinguished from nonreligious ones"

At first glance it would seem that the debate about the veiLis an illustration of this objectify attitude toward religion, especially in the profusion of dis- course on a practice that many would have performed unrefl ively in the past.26 I ndeed, Hajja Nur's remarks seem particularly relevant to the observa.. tions made by these scholars: she assigns conscious deliberation a privileged role within the performance of religious duties, especially when she criticizes those who adopt the veil unrefl ively (out of habit or custom) for failing to apprehend its true
religi
signifi While I generally agree with these scholars that modern conditions of increased literacy, urban mobility, and mass media have undoubtedly made ordinary Muslims more familiar with doctrinal reasoning than was previously the case, I would like to question the claim that this set of changes is best analyzed in terms of
a
universal tendency toward the "objectifi ation of the religious imagination." There are several reasons for my disagreement.

To begin with, one must note that any kind of skilled practice requires a certain amount of refl and deliberation on the specifi mental and bod- ily exercises necessary for its acquisition. Insomuch as the capacity to perform a task well requires one to be able to stand back and judge the correctness and virtuosity of one's performance, a certain amount of self-- efl ion is intern to such labor. For example, in order for a child to learn to pray, the parent must make her conscious of her gestures, glances, and thoughts. When the child undertakes the act hurriedly, or forgets to perform it, her parents may present her with various kinds of explanations for why praying is important, what it signifies, and how it is different fr the child's other activities. Such a pedagogical process depends upon inducing self--refl in the child about her movements and thoughts-and their relationship to an object called God-all of which require some form of refl ion about the nature of the practice. In other words, conscious deliberation is part and parcel of any ped.. agogical process, and contemporary discussions about it cannot be understood simply as a shift from the unconscious enactment of tradition to a critical re- fl upon tradition, as the aforementioned authors suggest.
-

(42); and third, a reconfi of the "symbolic production of Muslim politics" occurs as a re.. sult of the fi two processes (43 ). What is lacking in these authors' writings is an analysis of how

t
he three processes are articulated to produce the effect of objectifi