Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (27 page)

liberal Western societies, and that, on the other hand, have modifi this logic in historically spe-
cifi ways (Foucault 199la).
Governmentality
in this sense refers not so much to the ruling capac-

ities of the state apparatus as to the management of a social fi d whose operations ensure that
citizens produce and monitor their own conduct as individual subjects. For discussions of govern-
mentality in non--Western contexts, see Chatterjee 1995 ; Hansen 1999; T. Mitchell 1 991 ;
D.
Moore 1999;
D.
Scott 1999.

are constitutive of the very idea of "the secular"-notions of causality, tern.. porality, space, and the limits of verifi knowledge ( on these notions, see T. Asad 2003 ; Chakrabarty 2000; Chatterj ee 1995). In these ways the Egyptian state cannot be analyzed outside the discursive logic of secular..liberal gover.. nance, just as it is impossible to describe the practices of the piety movement in religious terms alone.

The modern project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, under.. taken by a range of postcolonial states ( and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses, and challenges. One of the points that I will insist upon in the chapters that follow is that these chal.. lenges, while deeply indebted to the logic of secular..liberal govern ce, can.. not be understood solely in relation to the practices of the modern state. This is in part due to the fact that many of the resistances posed to liberal secular.. ity are the unintended consequences of a range of ethical practices that do not necessarily engage the state directly. Furthermore, insomuch as secular..liberal governance posits a putative separation between morality and politics, an analysis that remains focused on the agency of the state runs the risk of rein.. scribing this ideological separation without putting it to critical scrutiny. The analytical labor of the forthcoming chapters is directed precisely at exploring why and how movements of ethical reform-such as the piety movement unsettle key assumptions of the secular..liberal imaginary even when they do not aim to transform the state.

3

Pedagog ies of Per suasion

C
ontrary to expectations fostered by developments in European history, pub- lic education and urbanization have
not
led to a decline in religious obser.. vance in the Muslim world. Instead, the state--mandated system of secular edu.. cation has served as an impetus for popular interest in various kinds of Islamic knowledges and forms of virtuous conduct (Eickelman 1992 ). Modern Muslim citizens, raised in a culture of mass media and public literacy, have become in.. creasingly well versed in doctrinal arguments and theological concepts that were hitherto confi to the domain of religious specialists. This has fostered a market for reprints of old classical texts, as well as the creation of new genres of Islamic ethical literature-all of which are available at little expense to or- dinary citizens (Eickelman and Anderson 1997; Messick 1997; Schulze 1987; Starrett 1995b, 1 996). Furthermore, the advent of televisual and aural media has helped make many religious concepts from the classical tradition available even to unlettered Muslims, a development that has served to further stimulate interest in religious discourse (see Hirschkind 200 1 a, 200 1b).

Because these popular Islamic materials are directed at ordinary Muslims rather than at scholars , the organization and presentation of Islamic themes in the materials are marked by a concern for ease of comprehension and practi.. cal applicability. Even classical texts are commonly reprinted in new formats with tables of contents, indexes, clearly marked topical subsections, and occa.. sional comments to explain particularly diffi passages. Such characteristics make this literature easily accessible to nonscholarly audiences who have been brought up on modern protocols of reading and textual production.

A huge market also exists for Islamic ethical and pedagogical literature, in the form of booklets and pamphlets, the primary purpose of which is to pro- vide information on practical rules of pietistic conduct. The topics of these publications range from laws that govern the performance of religious obliga- tions, to issues of character formation and moral uprightness, to the training of oneself in aural conventions of Quranic recitation. These manual-- ke booklets represent a hybrid form of knowledge in which scholarly arguments and canonical sources are combined with vern commentaries on mun- dane concern of modem existence. The voluminous demand for information on how to conduct oneself in accord with Islamic precepts in day--to-- y life has also spawned an industry in tape-- sermons, religious lessons, and radio and television programs, which are available to those who lack the time or ability to consult the print literature.
1

The pedagogy of the women's mosque movement is grounded in this genre of Islamic materials and shares its focus on practical questions of virtuous be- havior. Even participants' engagement with classical commentaries on the Quran and the b. is geared not so much at developing abstract under.. standing of these texts but at a practical knowledge bearing on daily conduct. One example of the new Islamic literature widely used by the mosque partici- pants are
fi
manuals. While
fiq
is a technical term for the science of Islamic jurisprudence, it is used within such manuals as a general category referring to the collection of rules and regulations governing the performance of religious rituals and observances Cibadat). It is common to fi little booklets sold on Cairene sidewalks called
Fiqh al..-mar;,a
( Women's Fiqh) or
Fi
q
h al..-cibada
(Fiqh of Worship), though the most widely used compendium, comprised of three volumes, is
Fiqh al..-
by Sayyid Sabiq (d. 2000) ( Sabiq 1994).
Fiqh al..- unna
was written in the 1 940s and is reported to have been commissioned by the Muslim Brotherhood leader Hasan al--Banna (who wrote a short intro- duction to the book) .2 The collection condenses complicated juristic com.. mentaries on regulations govern the performance of religious obligations

1
While there are some superfi similarities between this literature and the self�help books that are published in the United States and Europe (both privilege the theme of self�improve� ment so characteristic of modern societies), there are also important differences between these two genres that will become clear in the course of this book. Not only are the sources of authority diff on which these practices of the self are based, but also, as I will show in chapter 4, the architecture of the self and its sense of potentiality are dramatically diff in these two genres.

2
Sayyid Sabiq (1 91 5-2000), a graduate of al.-Azhar, was imprisoned innumerable times for his

support of the Brotherhood in the 1 940s. He briefl held the position of the Director of Mosques and Islamic Education in the Egyptian Islamic Affairs Ministry, taught at al�Azhar University for some time, and later spent a number of years in Saudi Arabia teaching the sharta.
On
his return to Egypt, he lectured
in
various Egyptian mosques. See
al,Wa�i al,Jslami
2000 for a synopsis of Sayyid Sabiq's work.

into a list of straightforward rules that are easily understood, even by a person with limited literary skills, and that are applicable to practical situations providing what the author himself called a "simplifi ion of fi [protocols]"
( tabsYt al
..
fiq )
(Abu Daud 1997 ) .3 Manuals such as this are also striking in an- other respect in that they do not refl the doctrine of any single school of Is- lamic law
( mad b;
plural:
mad ),
4
but present the majority opinions of jurists from the four main schools, allowing readers to adopt any position they choose from those presented. 5 This doctrinal pluralism illustrates the "post- madhhab" character of modem religiosity that has been glossed as
talfYq,
namely, an increasing fl bility displayed toward one's fi lity to a madhhab in twentieth..century Islam.6

The fi manuals share many of these characteristics with other forms of Is- lamic pedagogical literature, including the popular
fatwas
( nonbinding reli- gious opinions) that are widely circulated in print and media forms today.7 Brinkley Messick has noted that in contrast to premodern times, when fatwas were primarily a technical means of resolving transactional and contractual issues and entailed a delimited interaction between the questioner and the
mufti
(juriconsult), they are now a popular medium through which scholars answer questions about practical problems of daily life (Messick 1996 ; also see Skovgaard-- ersen 1 997 ). The focus of fatwas therefore has shifted from le..

3
Fiqh al.-
has been translated into multiple languages and is immensely popular among Muslims living in Europe and North America. I found multiple websites, geared toward the needs of diasporic Muslims, that make use of Sayyid Sabiq's compendium.

4
Islamic law, or the sharta, was consolidated between the second and ninth centuries
A.D.
In Sunni Islam, this consolidation is primarily attributed to four scholars-al.-Shafi (d. 820), Abu Hanifa (d. 767 ), Malik b. Anas (d. 795 ) and Ahmad Hanbal (d. 855 )-whose names are now as- sociated with the four dominant schools of Islamic law known as the Shafi. Hanafi. Maliki, and Hanbali schools respectively. These founders developed structures of rules, based on the Quran and the Q. which were adopted by subsequent generations of jurists and address doctrinal

and practical issues pertaining to the lives of Muslim communities. The academic discipline by which religious scholars describe, explore, and debate the shariea is called
fi
See Calder and Hooker 1999.