Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (28 page)

5
Sayyid Sabiq discusses this aspect ofhis book in an interview conducted a few years before his death (Abu Daud 1997 ).

6
According to the legal scholar Wael Hallaq,
talfiq
in modern "legal jargon . . . connotes the

bringing together of certain elements of two or more doctrines in such a manner as to create therefrom yet another, diff doctrine" (Hallaq 1998, 161). Hallaq notes the modem nature of the principle of talfiq, particularly its marked absence from classical and medieval juristic discourse.

7
While there are fatwas issued by the offi of the Chief Mufti of Egypt that deal with transac.. tional and contractual matters, I am referring here to the vast majority of popular fatwas, which circulate in various mediatized forms (print or aural), but which are seldom documented in the manner that the former are. The topics addressed in Egyptian popular fatwas overlap signifi

with those discussed by Messick in respect to Yemen (Messick 1996).

gal issues to questions about religious conduct in daily life (Messick 1 996, 31 7-1 9). Importantly, new Islamic genres such as fatwas and fi manuals do not simply replace traditional concern and modes of arguments; rather they point to a new set of conditions within which older commitments and themes have been given a new direction, shape, and form.8

A number of scholars have observed that the proliferation of Islamic peda.. gogical materials has led to a shift in the structures and sources of religious au.. thority. One marker of this shift
is,
as I discussed in chapter 2, the increasing respect accorded to the fi of the daciya and a concomitant decline in re.. gard for the traditionally trained religious scholar, or
ealim.
Despite the ubiq.. uity of this observation, however, we lack a clear picture of the kind of au.. thority commanded by the complex figure of the daciya, whose profi is not fi in any single social, class, or gender location but traverses a wide terrain of the social landscape. Furthermore, we lack a robust sense of the pedagogical domain that has been created through the circulation of these new Islamic knowledges and ethical materials: What kind of authority does their use evoke? In what kinds of institutional settings are these sources used? And to.. ward what end and under what circumstances? Since women's mosque lessons represent an important space where these materials are used and cited, by a variety of women from a range of social locations under the guidance of a daciya, I want to explore these questions through an ethnographic analysis of the discussions that unfolded within the context of mosque lessons.

The ethnographic vignettes that follow are drawn so as to highlight three sets of issues. One, I focus on the different practical contexts in which women deployed diverse classical and popular genres of Islamic literature, and how disparate modes of argumentation drew upon a shared conception of discur.. sive authority. Two, I explore how hierarchies of class, gender, and generation infl the kinds of Islamic materials selected, the interpretations to which these materials were subjected, and the rhetorical techniques through which the interlocutors' auth was secured. In particular I am interested in understanding how members at the lower end of the social hierarchy-such as the younger members of the piety movement, and those with limited literacy skills-brought protocols of scholarly engagements with canonical sources to bear upon their daily struggles. Finally, in the last section of the chapter,
I
will focus on how patriarchal conceptions of women's sexuality, at the core of the juristic Islamic tradition, are debated, interpreted, and adapted by mosque participants from a range of socioeconomic and age backgrounds. For exam.. ple, how did working women, students, and the daciyat abide by strict proto.. cols of sex segregation ( advocated by Muslim jurists) while at the same time

8 On
this point, also see T. Asad 1980; D. Brown 1999; Hirschkind 2001b; Messick 1996.

trying to meet the demands of an active public life ? It is only through an ex.. ploration of questions such as these that we can even begin to get a sense of the practical problems women faced when trying to restore orthodox Islamic virtues in a social context that is saturated by the demands of a secular exis.. tence, one whose logic is often inimical to the project the mosque participants want to promote.

TEXTUAL I NVOCATI ONS

Hajja Faiza, a tall woman in her mid.. to late forties, had been providing les.. sons at the upper.-middle.- lass Umar mosque for over ten years when I fi met her in 1995 . Speaking in gentle and soft tones, she structures her lessons around the Quran and a well.- nown thirteenth.- ntury compilation of the Prophet's sayings called
RiyaQ al..�ali�In (Garden of the pious)
( al..Nawawi

n.d. ).9 It takes Hajja Faiza a couple of years to guide her audience through a close reading of the two texts, at which point she begins the cycle again. Many women bring their own copies of the Quran and
RiyaQ al..�ali�In,
often taking notes in the margins of their books as Hajja Faiza provides commentary on each verse and passage. No one is allowed to interrupt the fl of her ex.. planation, and only fifteen minutes of the two.-hour lesson are allocated to an.. swering questions that women discreetly write on slips of paper and pass up to her. Seated on a podium facing the audience, Hajja Faiza speaks slowly and steadily into a microphone in colloquial Arabic, occasionally interjecting pas.. sages from various canonical sources in fl classical Arabic. Her com.. mentaries on the Quran and
Riyat}, al..�ali�In
often include passages from the works of well.- nown jurists, both classical and modern (such as Ibn Kathir [d. 13 73] and Yusuf al.- radavri [b. 1926]).10 When asked about specifi acts of worship and prayer, she ret�rs her audience to the compendium I men.. tioned earlier,
Fiqh al..sunna.

When I interviewed her about her traj ectory as a d�f Hajja Faiza was clear that despite the two..year diploma she holds in Islamic studies from a pri..

9
Riyacj. al--�ali�Yn
was assembled by the preeminent Shafi scholar Abu Zakariyya Yahya al-- (1233-1 277) in 127 1-72. It draws upon the six most authoritative collections of al)

10
Yusuf al-- radawi is arguably the premier Muslim intellectual of the Islamic Revival in the Arab world today. Trained in the clas�;ical tradition at the University of al--Azhar, he has been jailed on a number of occasions by the Egyptian govern for his support of the Muslim Broth- erhood. He currently lives in Qatar whence he commands an intern audience sympathetic to the goals of the Islamic Revival. For his various writings on the Islamic Revival and the prac- tice of daewa, see Qaradawi 1981, 1991, 1992, 1993 , and his website www.qaradawi.net.

vate institute in Cairo, her fluency in doctrinal issues is self..acquired. 11 She had already received a bachelor's degree in economics and political science from Cairo University when she developed an interest in religious pedagogy. When she tried to enroll in the University of al..Azhar, she, like many of the d�t I worked with, was refu admission because she had no prior training in religious sciences. According to Hajja Faiza, she initially pursued her inter.. est in religious pedagogy by teaching at one of the first Islamic schools estab.. lished for primary and secondary education in a weU..to..do neighborhood of Cairo. She later went on to become its chief administrator for a number of years, a period during which she also started to give informal lessons in Quranic recitation at the Umar mosque. This experience sparked her interest in further understanding the text-going beyond simply learn to recite it well. She therefore began to familiarize herself and her audience with the ex.. egetical commentaries on the Quran, and soon thereafter, the Q.adith. In so far as her interest in Quranic recitation
( tajwTd)
was an important precursor to her involvement in the provision of religious lessons, Hajja Faiza resembles the other daeiyat I knew. (All of the mosques I worked with provided weekly lessons in Quranic recitation to adults and children.)

Once she had developed a following at the Umar mosque, Hajja Faiza quit her job at the Islamic school, and now, in addition to giving religious lessons at three upper..class mosques ( including the Umar mosque), she also runs a

small charitable nonprofi organization that provides services to poor women and children. Shortly after deciding to preach full time in mosques,
H
ajja

Faiza procured the state.. issued preaching license. She did this long before the Egyptian govern made the license mandatory for preachers; this illus.. trates the caution with which Hajja Faiza has proceeded in becoming in.. volved in the fi of daewa. She seldom, if ever, makes any comments about political events in Egypt or elsewhere, and has become even more careful since the govern increased its scrutiny and surveillance of mosque les.. sons post-- 1 996. Despite her caution, the government has, since 1 997 when I fi my fi work, periodically shut down her lessons without any public explanation.

Hajja Faiza's style of argumentation differs from that of the other daeiyat I worked with, especially in her strict adherence to the scholarly sources she uses to structure her lessons, and in the learn commentary she provides to explain these texts. Hajja Faiza's style of argumentation draws upon the long tradition of scholarly commentary common among Muslim jurists, which she

11
Most institutions of religious learn outside of the University of al,Azhar, provide a two, year training program that, while suffi to develop a familiarity with the basics of religious ex, hortation, is not rigorous enough to provide a thorough command of canonical sources.

integrates within the structure and protocols of a public lecture. These quali.. ties give her lessons an air of scholarly sophistication that is consonant with the sensibilities of her well.. educated audience. When answering questions posed to her about social and religious practices-such as how to conduct oneself in a social situation, or perform a religious ritual correctly-Hajja Faiza is careful to spell out several jurists' opinions on the subject without pro.. viding specifi recommendations. By laying out the range of views among ju.. rists on a particular topic, she trains her audience in a mode of interpretive practice that foregrounds the importance of individual choice and the right of the Muslim to exercise this choice. While Hajja Faiza's use of the notion of rights and choice refl how the discourse of liberal humanism has come to inform religious arguments in present..day Egypt (particularly among the up.. per classes), it would be a mistake to ignore the ways in which her arguments depart from this discourse as well. As I will show, neither the fi d of choices nor the agents who exercise these choices simply reproduce the assumptions of the liberal..humanist tradition in Hajja Faiza's discourse. The range of choices Hajja Faiza outlines are determined by the scholarly opinions ex.. pressed within earlier traditions of juristic reasoning that provide the authori.. tative bases for any decision. As such, choice is understood not to be an ex.. pression of one's will but something one exercises in following the prescribed path to becoming a better Muslim.

During one of her lessons, for example, Hajja Faiza was asked about female circumcision
( khitan) ,
a practice that is quite common in Egypt and that has come under increasing criticism for being either un..Islamic or injurious to

women's health and sexuality. t2 Hajja Faiza did not condone or condemn the practice in her answer. Instead she reasoned that the Q. on which the practice of circumcision is based is actually Q.ac:Tf (weak) , a classifi term in Q. literature that refers to a Prophetic tradition of dubious authority.

She explained that because the Q. was weak, the practice of female cir- cumcision was neither
w
a
j
i
b
(an obligatory act), nor
mustah.
(a recom- mended act), nor Sunna (a custom of the Prophet and his Companions).13

12
The debate about female circumcision had been raging in the media at the time. The Min,

istry of Health had just banned the practice, citing concern for women's health as the prime rea, son
(al-{I
1996a). The Shaikh al,Azhar, Muhammed Sayyid al,Tantawi, had come out in sup, port of this decision, thereby rejecting the opinion of his predecessor in the offi Jad al,Haq,

who was a strong supporter of female circumcision. Much of the debate occurred around the ques,

tion of whether the }:l used in support of female circumcision was authoritative or not. For an example of this debate, see the articles in the Islamist newspaper
al,Shat!
(al,Awwa 1996a,

1996b; Ismail 1996 ).

13
Within Islamic jurisprudence, Sunna and musta}:l refer to categories of acts that are not mandatory but, if undertaken, accrue merit with God. Even though the categories of waj ib and fan) both refer to acts that are obligatory, they are also distinct in the authority each carries.

Since female circumcision falls outside these categories, she argued that it was an optional practice. Having spelled out her reasoning, Hajja Faiza continued, "There are people who support female circumcision [khitan] on the basis that it is good for the psychological health of the woman, and that it is prudent to follow even a weak badith since there must be wisdom [bikma] in it. It is up to you which opinion you want to choose, but make sure that you consult a med- ical doctor before doing it." Hajja Faiza's response stands in contrast to the styles of the other daeiyat I worked with, most of whom propounded specifi recommendations without discussing the range of interpretive positions that existed on any given topic.