Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (19 page)

26
In regard to the veil, the issue seems to be even more complicated given its embattled history during the colonial period. As Leila Ahmed points out in her seminal study of the discourse on the veil in the colonial and early nationalist periods in Egypt, the practice of veiling acquired a new valence for Egyptians as the British made it a key signifi of "Muslim backwardness'' and the Egyp. tian elite mobilized for its banishment (1992, 127-68). One might argue that the fact that the veil was assigned such a key place in the colonial discourse better_ explains its salience within contem.. porary Egyptian politics than does a general theory of the objectifi of devotional practices.

At the same time, it should also be acknowledged that practices of self.. reflection have varied historically, depending upon shifts in notions of the self and pedagogical conditions of mass publicity and literacy. What is needed to understand changes in notions of refl vity is an inquiry into the creation of historically specifi forms of subjectivity that require, and in some sense make possible , particular modes of self--refl tion (see pp. 146-48 ). Fur- thermore, in order to grasp what is historically unique about modem forms of refl on in relation to Islamic practices, it is necessary to explore both the discursive conditions under which
specifi
kinds of deliberations become pos- sible, and the practical task that an act of reflection is meant to accomplish. For example, it is worth recalling that the distinction Hajja Nur draws be- tween customs/habits and religious obligations has been made by theologians at least as far back as the thirteenth century, and is not just a modern inven- tion.27 What has changed between a classical invocation and a contemporary one are the
practical
conditions under which the distinction between custom- ary and religious acts is made, the new modes of refl under which this distinction is taught and learned, and the relations of social hierarchy and in- stitutional power that attend each historical context. Theological and doc- trinal issues that were once the provenance of male religious scholars are now debated by ordinary women in the context of mosque lessons modeled to some extent on protocols of public address and modern education (rather

than on the traditional Islamic schools,
kuttab
)
,28
where they openly discuss

how to render even the most intimate details of their lives in accord with standards of Islamic piety. Similarly, working women and students now bring questions of virtuous practice to bear upon ne\v problems, such as how to conduct oneself modestly on public transportation, and in schools and offi where pious protocols of sex segregation are not observed (for an analysis of these issues, see chapters 3 and 5). We must pay attention to this level of mi- cropractices in order to understand what is unique about the contemporary focus on Islamic arguments and practices, rather than assuming that they are

27
For example, the preeminent theologian al.- awawi (d.
1 248)
wrote, "It is intention [a[
.. niyya]
that distinguishes between custom rada] and worship ['ibada] or distinguishes between lev-

els of [diff ent acts of] worship. First example, sitting in a mosque for [the purpose of] relaxation constitutes a custom, and when undertaken for ttika [a period of residence in a mosque dedicated to worship marked by minimal interaction with people], it is considered an act of worship, and it is intention that makes it so. And so with bathing: bathing when undertaken for cleanliness is custom, and it is intention that makes it an act of worship"
(
1990, 18).
All translations from Ara- bic are mine, unless otherwise noted.

28
Kuttab
were traditional Islamic schools, usually associated with the mosque, which came to

be slowly replaced by the modern system of schools, colleges, and universities from the late nine. teenth century onward in Egypt. For a general discussion of the transformations in the discipli .. nary practices of education in modem Egypt, see T. Mitchell
1 991;
Starrett
1 998.

instances of a universal modem process wherein previously habitual actions become objects of conscious refl ction.29

Moreover, one must also learn to distinguish how particular refl

upon a religious practice are geared toward diff rent kinds of ends. In the cases of Adil Hussein, Heba Saad Eddin, and Hajja N ur, even though all three sup, port the adoption of the veil, their remarks are situated within very different visions of a virtuous society. For Adil Hussein, the veil stands in a relation of signifi to the expression of one's cultural and nationalist heritage, whereas for women like Fatma and Hajja Nur it is understood to be part of an entire process through which a pious individual is produced. In the eyes of someone like Hajja Nur, one may argue, the meaning of the veil is not ex.. hausted by its signifi nce as a sign (of a civilization, culture, or identity), but encompasses an entire way of being and acting that is learn through the practice of veiling. Similarly, the goals that Heba Saad Eddin wants the prac.. tice of veiling to achieve ( "truth, justice, and freedom") stand in contrast to those sought by Hajja Nur and Fatma, and even to some extent those of Adil Hussein, with whom she shared a political project. Thus, each of these views needs to be analyzed in terms of the larger goals toward which it is teleologi, cally oriented, the different practical contexts in which each type of refl on is located, and the consequences each particular form of understanding has for how one lives practically, both in relationship to oneself and to others.30

The practices of the women's mosque movement have not emerged as a result of an abstract tendency toward objectifi but are provoked by a specifi problem, namely, the concern for learn to organize one's daily life according to Islamic standards of virtuous conduct in a world increasingly or.. dered by a logic of secular rationality that is inimical to the sustenance of these virtues. As I observed earlier, the women I worked with argue that they have had to create new structures of learning-in the form of mosque lessons-to inculcate values that were previously part of a social and familial ethos in Egypt, but which are no longer available in those arenas. The devel..

29
Th modern history of Islamic sermons may be used to demonstrate the same point. As Charles Hirschkind notes, the practice of the Friday sermon
(khutba),
a key communal event in

Muslim societies since the time of Muhammed, only started to receive elaborate doctrinal atten.. tion in the last century with the development of a national public sphere and the concomitant rise in the importance of the practice of public speech making (2004
)
.
This should not therefore

lead us to conclude that khutba required little or no self..refl on the part of the preachers and listeners prior to the modem period. Rather, what this draws our attention to is the particu.. lar mode of refl entailed in the delivery and audition of khutba in the modem period, one uniquely tied to the formation of a mass..mediatized reading public that the advent of modern heralded in Muslim societies.

30 I will return to many of these points in chapter
4 ,
under a discussion of the diff economies of self..formation and bodily discipline.

opment of the women's mosque movement should, therefore, be understood as an organized attempt to address what has come to be conceived as a practi.. cal need, one grounded in recent historical and social circumstances. The key concept that has been most useful for the development of institutional prac.. tices conducive to virtuous conduct is
da t:wa,
a concept around which the women's mosque movement is organized. It is to the analysis of this concept that I now turn.

TH E MOSQU E MOVEM ENT IN A HI STO RICAL CO NTEXT

Few Islamic concepts capture the sensibility of modern socioreligious activism and the spirit ofdoctrinal innovation better than the concept of daewa.
Da ewa
is the umbrella term under which the mosque movement, and the Islamist movement more generally, have organized many of their disparate activities. Daewa literally means "call, invitation, appeal, or summons." It is a Quranic concept associated primarily with God's call to the prophets and to humanity to believe in the "true religion," Islam.11 Dac: did not receive much doctrinal attention in classical Sunni Islamic scholarship, and it was only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that it was given extensive elabora.. tion.32 The term
da eiya
literally means "one who practices daewa"-it is also the label used for the teachers in the women's mosque movement.33

While daewa may also be directed toward non..Muslims, the contemporary piety movement in Egypt primarily understands it to be a religious duty that requires all adult members of the Islamic community to urge fellow Muslims to greater piety, and to teach one another correct Islamic conduct. While the practice of daewa commonly takes the form of verbal admonishment, in Egypt

11
See Canard 1999.

12
Mendel has shown that during the early years of the Caliphate1
da wa
was used interchange, ably with other terms, such as
shatta
(Islamic Law),
drn
(religion),
Sunna
(the tradition of the

Prophet and his Companions), and sometimes even jihad ( which means both "holy war" and "ef,
fort directed at a specifi goal") (Mendel 1995 , 289). In the Shi'i tradition of Islam, however, the
term
da·wa
has a diff history: it refers to a widespread Ismaili movement in the tenth century
that later resulted in the establishment of the Fatimid dynasty in North Africa. See Kaabi 1972;
Walker 1993 . Since Egypt is primarily a Sunni country, my references are limited to the Sunni in,
terpretation of daewa.

31
Even though Arabic makes a distinction between male and female forms of the active par, ticiple, the word used in Egyptian colloquial and Modern Standard Arabic for someone who con.
ducts da'wa does not make this distinction: someone undertaking da·wa-whether a man or a

woman-is referred to as di.(i the feminine form. The distinction is made in the plural: male
practitioners of daewa are called
du·at,
and women
da•iyat.
Gender distinction in the nominative

singular is gradually emerging, however, as more women daeiyat become active, and the Islamic
press increasingly uses the term
da i
to refer to men.

today it encompasses a range of practical activities that were once considered outside the proper domain of the classical meaning of the term. These activi.. ties include establishing neighborhood mosques, social welfare organizations, Islamic educational institutions, and printing presses, as well as urging fellow Muslims toward greater religious responsibility, either through preaching or personal conversation. While many of these institutionalized practices have historical precedents, they have, in the last fi years, increasingly come to be organized under the rubric of daewa.34 In many ways the fi of the daeiya ex.. emplifi. the ethos of the contemporary Islamic Revival, and people now of.. ten ascribe to this figure the same degree of authority previously reserved for religious scholars (Gaffney 1 991; Haddad, Voll, and Esposito, 1 991 ; Zeghal 1 9%).

Despite the fact that
da�wa
has become a reigning organizational term for a range of activities, few historical works explore its semantic and institutional development.35 This lacuna is all the more striking given the attention paid to other terms used by the Islamist movement, such as
al
..
jihad or
al..- .36
Where we do fi some discussion of the notion ofdaewa is in relation to a sis..

ter concept, one whose semantic determination is tightly intertwined with that of daewa. This is the principle of
amr bil ma�ruf wal
..
na
�an al..munkar
("to enjoin others in the doing of good or right, and the forbidding of evil or

wrong"), around which many of the daewa activities, especially those of reli.. gious exhortation and preaching, have been elaborated.37 In fact, one could

34
The Islamic Revival has been characterized by a proliferation of these activities. For exam.. ple, there has been at least a 330 percent increase in the number of mosques built overall in Egypt between 1975 and 1995 (al,Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies 1996; Zeghal 1 996). Similarly, the number of Islamic nongovern organizations grew by 1 7 percent in the 1960s, 31 percent in the 1970s, and 33 percent in the 1980s (al,Ahram Center for Political and Strate.. gic Studies 1 996, 236).

35
For an exception to this rule, see the articles by Roest Crollius 1978; Hirschkind 2001a; Mendel 1995. While Roest Crollius and Mendel provide a historical background for the develop.. ment of the Sunni concept of daewa in the Middle East, Hirschkind analyzes the effects of the contemporary practice of daewa on popular modes of sociability and public debate in Egypt. Also see the important work of Barbara Metcalf (1993 , 1 994, 1998 ) on the South Asian Tablighi Jamaeat, which is also organized around the concept of daewa, but more focused on th question of spiritual renewal than social welfare, which seems to be the hallmark of the Egyptian daewa movement.

36
On the concept ofal-·jihad see Kepel 2002; Peters 1996. For discussions of the concept of al
..

daula
see T. Asad 1980; Ayalon 1987; Zubaida 1993 .

37
The key words involved in this principle are
ma"ruf
and
munka
the former means "what is known and accepted according to acknowledged norms," whereas the latter means "what is dis.. avowed or rejected" and therefore unacceptable. Notably, the former is considered to be consub.. stantial with what is mandated by God and the latter with iniquity. For the historical roots of the