Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2 page)

Progressive leftists like myself explained this turn of the "masses" to Islamic forms of sociability in a number of ways: sometimes we attributed it to the lack of education and enlightened thinking among the vast majority of the popu- lation, sometimes to the conservative form of Saudi Islam that immigrant la- borers return from the Arabian Gulf states had brought back into Pakistan, and sometimes to the mimetic effects that Zia ul-- repressive regime had inevitably engendered in the populace. And then there was always the expla- nation that the unholy alliance bet-ween Western capital ( particularly Amer.. ican) and oil.- monarchies of the Gulf (notably Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates) had actively aided and abetted a conservative form of Islam around the Muslim world so as to defeat those progressive movements that might have opposed such alliances.

While none of these explanations is entirely without merit, over the last twenty years or so, I have increasingly come to fi them inadequate. Part of this dissatisfaction stems from a recognition that the social and political con- stellations mobilized by Islamic revival movements vary dramatically and have often taken forms quite distinct from what has been happening in Pak..

PREFACE

istan from the period of Zia ul..Haq's rule to the present. In a number of Mid.. dle Eastern countries, for example, Islamic political parties have been instru.. mental in giving voice to popular demands for democratization of the political arena, for an end to single..party rule, and for a more critical stance toward

U. S.
hegemony in the region. Moreover, Islamic welfare organizations around the Muslim world have increasingly stepped in to fi the vaccum left by post.. colonial states as these states, under neoliberal economic pressures, have withdrawn from providing social services to their citizens.

The reason progressive leftists like myself have such diffi y recognizing these aspects of Islamic revival movements, I think, owes in part to our pro.. found dis.. ease with the appearance of religion outside of the private space of individualized belief. For those with well.- secular..liberal and progres. sive sensibilities, the slightest eruption of religion into the public domain is frequently experienced as a dangerous affront, one that threatens to subject us to a normative morality dictated by mullahs and priests. This fear is accompa.. nied by a deep self-assurance about the truth of the progressive.- imagi.. nary, one that assumes that the life forms it offers are the best way out for these unenlightened souls, mired as they are in the spectral hopes that gods and prophets hold out to them. Within our secular epistemology, we tend to translate religious truth as force, a play of power that can be traced back to the machinations of economic and geopolitical interests.

I am certainly glossing over a number of diff rent complications for the sake of brevity here, but what I want to communicate is the profound sense of dis.. satisfaction I have come to feel about my ability, as well as the ability of those I have shared a long traj ectory of political struggle with, to understand how it is that the language of Islam has come to apprehend the aspirations of so many people around the Muslim world. I have come to question our conviction, however well.- ntioned, that other forms of human fl and life worlds are necessarily inferior to the solutions we have devised under the ban.. ner of "secular.-left" politics-as if there is a singularity of vision that unites us under this banner, or as if the politics we so proudly claim has not itself pro.. duced some spectacular human disasters. This self..questioning does not mean that I have stopped struggling or fi against the inj ustices-whether they pertain to issues of gender, ethnicity, class, or sexuality-that currently com.. pound my social existence. What it does mean is that I have come to believe that a certain amount of self- and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments.

This is not an exercise in generosity but is born out of the sense I have that we can no longer arrogantly assume that secular forms of life and secularism's progressive formulations necessarily exhaust ways of living meaningfully and

XI

richly in this world. This realization has led me to parochialize my own polit.. ical certitude as I write analytically about what animates parts of the Islamist movement, and has compelled me to refuse to take my political stance as the necessary lens through which the labor of analysis should proceed. In short, it has compelled me to leave open the possibility that my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human fl that I hold most dear, and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence.

The fact that this book focuses on the Islamist movement in Egypt, a place distant from the land of my birth and my formative struggles, is one indication of the kinds of intellectual and political dislocations I felt were necessary in order for me to think through these conundrums, puzzles, and challenges. The fact that Egypt does not face an immediate situation of civil warfare in which Islamists are central players, as is the case in Pakistan and Algeria, made Egypt a more conducive place to undertake the labor of thought-a labor that can.. not thrive under a pace of events that constantly demands political closure and strategic action. I do not think I could ever have been able to see what
I
was made to see during the course of my fi ldwork in Egypt had I remained within the familiar grounds of Pakistan. I hope that my attempts at thinking through this postcolonial predicament within the Muslim world will fi some resonances with my readers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
have incurred innumerable debts in the writing of this book that I would like to acknowledge here, however inadequately. I feel a profound sense of grati.. tude to\vard my mentors and teachers, without whom I would never have quite learned what it means to stay with a problem, to dwell on its multiple complexities, to push against one's own inadequacies of comprehension, and moreover, to savor the slow process of discovery. Foremost among these are Talal Asad and J ane Collier, both of whom, through their exemplary scholar.. ship and patient interlocutions, have made the undertaking of this project both a tremendous challenge and a tremendous pleasure. Those who are fa... miliar with Talal Asad's work will recognize the infl of his thought per.. meating practically every page of this book: there is no greater gift that a scholar can bestow and no adequate words that can express one's gratitude for such a gift. If I am successful in re..creating even a modicum of the acumen and courage that Talal's work represents, I will be happy. Jane Collier has ex- tended to me both her intellect and her labor through practically every phase of this project-from its initial conception to its present form. This is a debt that I can never hope to repay except perhaps by extending to my own stu.. dents the same generosity Jane has offered to me. Sylvia Yanagisako will her- self recognize how her provocations about bodily practice and gender have born fruit, perhaps in directions that neither she nor I could have predicted. Whether in her offi or at her kitchen table, those moments of exchange marked the conception of many of the ideas animating this book. To Ira Lapidus I am indebted for guiding me through a panoramic view of the history of Islam, where my own predilections would have sequestered me to the Mid- dle East. He has also inspired me to live more richly and expansively, despite the pressures of academic life, through his own exemplary practice.

My colleagues at the University of Chicago sustained me through the rewrit.. ing of various drafts of this book through their friendship, collegiality, and in.. tellectual engagements. I would like to thank Nadia Abu El..Haj , Catherine Brekus, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Jim Chandler, Jennifer Cole, Jean and John Co.. maroff Wendy Doniger, Bruce Lincoln, Martin Rieserbrodt, Richard Rosen.. garten, and Lisa Wedeen. I would particularly like to thank Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Povinelli for invititt me to participate in the Late Liberalism Pro.. ject, which proved to be one of the more stimulating contexts in which to col.. lectively mull over the multiplicity of forms that the discourse of liberalism has taken in the last century. Though I only overlapped with Amy Hollywood at
·
Chicago for a short time, she has nevertheless become, I believe, a lifelong in.. terlocutor who will always push me to think more thickly about the vexing topic of gender and religion. Her reading of various chapters of this book was invaluable in working through the knotty subject of feminist theory.

Then there are colleagues and friends who are dispersed across the academy but whose engagements with the arguments in this book at various stages of their gestation have pushed me to be attentive to a number of issues that would have otherwise escaped my attention. In this regard, I would like to thank Lila Abu..Lughod, Janice Boddy, John Bowen, Steve Caton, William Connolly, Bill Hanks, Stefan Helmreich, Enseng Ho, Suad Joseph, Webb Keane, Michael Lambek, Bill Maurer, Paul Rabinow, Peter van der Veer, and Michael Watts. I would like to thank Brinkley Messick for his close reading of the manuscript and his insistence that I show the contemporaneity of this movement, an insis.. tence without which chapters
2
and
3
would never have been written in their current form. I am not sure how adequately these chapters address his con.. cems, but I am grateful for what Brinkley's comments made me see about the modem character of Islamic practices. To Judith Butler I am indebted for read.. ing through the manuscript and pointing me in directions that I would not have necessarily followed had it not been for her interventions. The thought and labor she put into her comments has restored my faith that interdiscipli.. nary dialogue is not only possible in the academy but is also the most gratify aspect of this business. While this text does pot address all the issues Judith raised, I hope that we have initiated a conversation that will continue in the years to come. I am grateful to Donald Moore for his erudite peregrinations through the pages of this text, which have proved to be a source of insight and inspiration. It is rare that one has the opportunity to passionately discuss the connections between Cairo pietists and Zimbabwean peasant struggles, but Donald's gifted imagination has always made this pleasure a reality. To Michael Warn I owe the pleasure of a series of conversations around the theme of sec.. ularism that have proven to
be
crucial to my thinking. And to Iftikhar Dadi I owe a special debt for his artfu counsel.