Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (43 page)

your part?" The young woman looked somewhat perturbed and guilty; but per.. sisted and asked, "What does
ghafla
mean?" Mona replied that it refers to what you
d
o in the day: if your mind is mostly occupied with things that are not re..

lated to God, then you are in a state of ghafla (carelessness, negligence). Ac..
to Mona, such a condition of negligence results in inability to say the
_
morn prayer.

8
Examples of al,a�mal al,�alib. include doin good deeds for the elderly, treating one's parents with respect, helping the needy, giving charity, and so on.

Looking puzzled, the young woman asked, "What do you mean what I do in the day? What does my saying of the prayer
[�alat]
have to do with what I do in the day?" Mona answered:

It means what your day--to--day deeds are. For example, what do you look at in the day ? Do you look at things that are prohibited to us by God, such as immodest images of women and men? What do you say to people in the day? Do you insult people when you get angry and use abusive language ? How do you feel when you see someone doing acts of disobedience [ma e�i] ? Do you get sad? Does it hurt you when you see someone committing a sin or does it not affect you? These are the things that have an eff on your heart
[qalbik],
and they hinder or impede
[taeanal]
your ability to get up and say the morn prayer. [The constant] guarding against disobedience and sins wakes you up for the morning prayer. Salat is not

just what you say with your mouth and what you do with your limbs. It is a state of your heart. So when you do things in a day for God and avoid other things

because of Him, it means you're thinking about Him, and therefore it becomes easy for you to strive for Him against yourself and your desires. If you correct these issues, you will be able to rise up for the morning prayer as well.

Perhaps responding to the young woman's look of concentration, Mona asked her, "What is it that annoys you
[bitghr
the most in your life ?" The young woman answered that her sister fought with her a lot, and this bothered her and made her angry most days. Mona replied, "You, for example, can think of God when your sister fi with you and not fi back with her be.. cause He commands us to control our anger and be patient. For if you do get angry, you know that you will just gather more sins
[dhunub] ,
but if you are quiet then you are beginning to organize your affairs on account of God and not in accord with your temperament. And then you will realize that your sis.. ter will lose the ability to make you angry, and you will become more desirous
[raghiba]
of God. You will begin to notice that if you say the morn prayer, it will also make your daily affairs easier, and if you don't pray it will make them hard."

Mona looked at the young woman, who had been listening attentively, and asked: "Do you get angry and upset
[tizeali]
when you don't say your morning prayer ?" The young woman answered yes. Mona continued, "But you don't get upset enough that you don't miss the next morning prayer. Performing the morning prayer should be like the things you can't live without: for when you don't eat, or you don't clean your house, you get the feeling that you
must
do this. It is this feeling I am talking about: there is something inside you that makes you want to pray and gets you up early in the morning to pray. And you're angry with yourself when you don't do this or fail to do this." The young woman looked on and listened, not saying much. At this point, we

moved back to our previous discussion, and the young woman stayed with us until the end.

The answer Mona gave this young woman was not a customary answer, such as invoking the fear of God's retribution for habitually failing to perform one's daily prayers. Mona's response refl the sophistication and elabora.. tion of someone who has spent considerable time and effort familiarizing her.. self with an Islamic interpretive tradition of moral discipline.9 I would like to draw attention here to the economy of discipline at work in Mona's advice to the young woman, particularly the ways in which ordinary tasks in daily life are made to attach to the performance of consummate worship. Notably, when Mona links the ability to pray to the vigilance with which one conducts the practical chores of daily living,
all
mundane activities-such as getting an.. gry with one's sister, the things one hears and looks at, the way one speaks become a place for securing and honing particular moral capacities. As is evi.. dent from the preceding discussion, the issue of punctuality clearly entails more than the simple use of an alarm clock; it encompasses an entire attitude one cultivates in order to create the desire to pray. Of signifi is the fact that Mona does not assume that the desire to pray is natural, but that it
must be created
through a set of disciplinary acts. That is to say, desire in this model is not the
antecedent
to, or cause of, moral action, but
its product.
10 The tech.. niques through which pious desires are cultivated include practices such as avoiding seeing, hearing, or speaking about things that make faith ( iman) weaker, and engaging in those acts that strengthen the ability to enact obedi.. ence to God's will. The repeated practice of orienting all acts toward securing God's pleasure is a cumulative process, the net result of which is, on one level, the ability to pray regularly and, on another level, the creation of a pious self.