Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (56 page)

This analytical framework is particularly helpful in grasping the ethical and political force of nonliberal movements such as the one I worked with. This is because, as I suggested in chapter 1, their political agency does not consist in engaging the usual forms and institutions of politics (such as making claims on the state or the judicial system, using the language of rights and identity, and public protest). Instead their ethical practices are a necessary condition of their political agency insomuch as these practices have produced unantici.. pated effects in the prevailing social fi One sign of their political effectiv.. ity is the ire the pious activists have provoked from the Egyptian state ( as we saw in chapter
2)
and the criticism they have elicited from fellow Islamists as well as secular.-liberal Muslims. Notably, these critics of the piety movement share an orientation toward nationalist..identitarian politics, one that is called into question by the practices of the mosque movement in particular and the piety movement in general. In order to understand what precisely this move.. ment unsettles about the nationalist.-identitarian imaginary
and
how it has transformed the sociopolitical landscape of Egypt, it is essential to analyze the architecture of ethical practices through which this movement has produced a particular form of embodied sociability. My analysis of the practices of the mosque movement in this chapter invites us to seriously explore what it means to acknowledge that politics involves not simply rational argumenta.. tion and evaluation of moral principles, but issues forth from intersubjective levels of being and acting-requiring us to think through the problematic of politics in a way that is adequate to the variable understandings of the self and its embodied powers.

5

Agen cy, Gen der, and Embod iment

W
hile in the earlier chapters of this book I explored how the ethical prac.. tices of the mosque movement have been shaped by, and in tum transformed, the social fi d of Egyptian secularity in unexpected ways , here I want to focus on how we might think about these ethical practices in the context of relations of gender inequality. Given the overwhelming tendency of mosque movement participants to accept the patriarchal assumptions at the core of the orthodox Islamic tradition, this chapter is animated by the following questions: What were the terms the mosque participants used to negotiate the demands of the orthodox Islamic tradition in order to master this tradition? What were the dif.. ferent modalities of agency that were operative in these negotiations? What difference does it make analytically if we attend to the terms intern to this discourse of negotiation and struggle? And what challenges do these terms pose to notions of agency, performativity, and resistance presupposed within liberal and poststructuralist feminist scholarship ?

In chapter 1, I argued for uncoupling the analytical notion of agency from the politically prescriptive project of feminism, with its propensity to valorize those operations of power that subvert and resignify the hegemonic discourses of gender and sexuality. I have argued that to the extent that feminist scholar.. ship emphasizes this politically subversive form of agency, it has ignored other modalities of agency whose meaning and effect are not captured within the logic of subversion and resignifi of hegemonic terms of discourse. In this chapter, I want to attend not only to the different meanings of agency as they emerge within the practices of the mosque movement, but also to the kinds of

analytical questions that are opened up when agency is analyzed in some of its other modalities-q stions that remain submerged, I would contend, if agency is analyzed in terms of resistance to the subordinating fu of power.

I should make clear that my exploration of the multiple forms agency takes is not simply a hermeneutical exercise, one that is indifferent to feminism's in.. terest in theorizing about the possibility of transforming relations of gender subordination. Rather, I would argue that any discussion of the issue of trans.. formation must begin with an analysis of the specifi practices of subjectiva.. tion that make the subjects of a particular social imaginary possible.1 In the context of the mosque movement, this means closely analyzing the scaffolding of practices-both argumentative and embodied-that secured the mosque participants' attachment to patriarchal forms of life that, in tum, provided the necessary conditions for both their subordination and their agency. One of the questions I hope to address is: how does the particularity of this attach.. ment challenge familiar ways of conceptualizing "subordination" and "change" within liberal and poststructuralist feminist debates?

Finally, since much of the analytical labor of this book is directed at the specifi ity of terms intern to the practices of the mosque movement, I would like to remind the reader that the force of these terms derives not from the motivations and intentions of the actors but from their inextricable entangle.. ment within confl and overlapping historical formations. My project is therefore based on a double disavowal of the humanist subject. The fi t dis.. avowal is evident in my exploration of certain notions of agency that cannot

out

be reconciled with the project ofrecuperating the lost voices of those who are written
,
of "hegemonic feminist narratives," to bring their humanism and

strivings to light-precisely because to do so would be to underwrite all over again the narrative of the sovereign subject as the author of "her voice" and "her..story."

My project's second disavowal of the humanist subject is manifest in my re.. fu to recuperate the members of the mosque movement either as "subaltern feminists" or
as
the "fundamentalist Others" of feminism's progressive agenda. To do so, in my opinion, would be to reinscribe a familiar way of being human that a particular narrative ofpersonhood and politics has made available to us,

1 I
am in agreement with anthropologists such as Jane Collier, Marilyn Strathem, and Sylvia Yanagisako who have argued th all cultures and societies are predicated upon relations of gender inequality, and that the task of the anthropologist is to show how a culturally specifi system of in.. equality ( and its twin, equality) is constructed, practiced, and maintained (Collier
1988, 1997;

Collier and Yanagisako
1 989;
Strathem
1988).
My only caveat is that
I
do not believe that there is a single arrangement of gender inequality that characterizes a particular culture; rath
I
believe

that diff arrangements of gender inequality oft coexist within a given culture, the specifi forms of which are a product of the particular discursive formation that each arrangement is a part of.

forcing the aporetic multiplicity of commitments and projects to fi into this exhausted narrative mold. Instead, my ruminations on the practices of the women's mosque movement are aimed at unsettling key assumptions at the center of liberal thought through which movements of this kind are often judged. Such judgments do not always simply entail the ipso facto rejection of these movements as antithetical to feminist agendas (e.g. , Moghissi 1999); they also at times seek to embrace such movements as forms of feminism, thus enfolding them into a liberal imaginary (e.g., Fernea 1998 ). By tracing in this chapter the multiple modalities of agency that informed the practices of the mosque participants, I hope to redress the profound inability within current feminist political thought to envision valuable forms of human fl

outside the bounds of a liberal progressive imaginary.

ETH ICAL FO RMATI ON

In order to begin tugging at the multiple twines that hold this object called agency in its stable locution, let me begin with an ethnographic vignette that focuses on one of the most feminine of Islamic virtues, al--ba, � ( shyness, diffi.. dence, modesty), a virtue that was considered necessary to the achievement of piety by the mosque participants I worked with. In what follows, I want to ex.. amine the kind of agency that was involved when a novice tried to perfect this virtue, and how its performance problematizes certain aspects of current theorizations within feminist theory about the role embodied behavior plays in the constitution of the subject.

In the course of my fi ldwork, I had come to spend time with a group of four working women, in their mid.. to late thirties, who were employed in the pub.. lic and private sectors of the Egyptian economy. In addition to attending the mosque lessons, the four also met as a group to read and discuss issues of Is.. lamic ethical practice and Quranic exegesis. Given the stringent demands their desire to abide by high standards of piety placed on them, these women often had to struggle against the secular ethos that permeated their lives and made their realization of piety somewhat difficult. They often talked about the pressures they faced as working women, which included negotiating close interactions with unrelated male colleagues, riding public transportation in mixed.- compartments, overhearing conversations (given the close proxim.. ity of their coworkers) that were impious in character and tone, and so on. Often this situation was further compounded by the resistance these women encountered in their attempts to live a pious life from their family members particularly from male members-who were opposed to stringent forms of re. ligious devotion.

When these women met as a group, their discussions often focused on two challenges they constantly had to face in their attempts to maintain a pious lifestyle. One was learn to live amicably with people-both colleagues and immediate kin-who constantly placed them in situations that were far from optimal for the realization of piety in day..to..day life. The second challenge was in the intern struggle they had to engage in within themselves in a world that constantly beckoned them to behave in unpious ways.

On
this particular day, the group had been reading passages from the Quran and discussing its practical signifi for their daily conduct. The Quranic chapter under discussion was "The Story" ( Surat al..Qa�a�), which discusses the virtue ofshyness or modesty ( al..l) ') , a coveted virtue for pious Muslims in general and women in particular. To practice al..l).aya' means to be diffi nt, modest, and able to feel and enact shyness. While all of the Islamic virtues are gendered ( in that their measure and standards vary when applied to men ver.. sus women), this is particularly true of shyness and modesty ( al..Q. ') . The struggle involved in cultivating the virtue of shyness was brought home to me when, in the course of a discussion about the exegesis of "The Story one of the women, Amal, drew our attention to verse 25 . This verse is about a woman walking shyly-with al..l) Moses to ask him to approach her fa.. ther for her hand in marriage. Unlike the other women in the group, Amal was particularly outspoken and confi and would seldom hesitate to assert herself in social situations with men or women. Normally I would not have described her as shy, because I considered shyness to be antithetical to quali.. ties of candidness and self..confi in a person. Yet, as I was to learn Amal had learn to be outspoken in a way that was in keeping with Islamic stan.. dards of reserve, restraint, and modesty required of pious Muslim women. The conversation proceeded as follows.

Contemplating the word
isti�ya�,
which is form ten of the substantive

bay;f,2 Amal said, "I used to think that even though shyness [al..l). was re.. quired of us by God, if I acted shyly it would be hypocritical
[nifaq]
because I didn't actually feel it inside of me. Then one day, in reading verse 25 in Surat

al..Qa�a� ["The Story"] I realized that al..l). was among the good deeds
[huwwa min al..af!mal al..�ali�] ,
and given my natural lack of shyness [al..l). , I had to make or create it fi st. I realized that making
[�ana1
it in yourself is not hypocrisy, and that eventually your inside learn to have al..Q. too." Here

she looked at me and explained the meaning of the word
isti�ya�:
"It means making oneself shy, even if it means creating it
[Yaf!ni ya Saba, yi f!mil nafsu yit.. kisif �tta
la
�anaf! i] ."
She continued with her point, "And fi I under..

2
Most Arabic verbs are based on a triconsonantal root from which ten verbal forms ( and some- times fi en) are derived.

stood that once you do this, the sense of shyness [al..l)
a
'
]
eventually imprints itself on your inside
[as..- ueur yitbae eala guwwaki] ."

Another friend, Nama, a single woman in her early thirties, who had been sitting and listening, added: "It's just like the veil
[
l) j
a
b
]
. In the beginning when you wear it, you're embarrassed
[maksufa]
and don't want to wear it be.. cause people say that you look older and unattractive, that you won't get mar.. ried, and will never fi a husband. But you
must
wear the veil, first because it is God's command
[�ukm allah] ,
and then, with time, because your inside learns to feel shy without the veil, and if you take it off, your entire being feels uncomfortable
[mish ra4z]
about it."