Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (61 page)

12
Islamic jurisprudence permits men to have up to four wives.

approaches you. Yet they act as if the decision is in your hands! You know I did not get married until I was thirty..four years old: I stopped visiting my rei.. atives, which is socially improper, because every time I would go I would en.. counter the same questions. What is even worse is that your [immediate] fam.. ily starts to think that you
-
have some failing [il.. eeb] in you because no man has

approached you for marriage. They treat you as if you have a disease."

Nadia paused refl ively for a moment and then continued: "It's not as if those who are married necessarily have a happy life . For marriage is a blessing [naema , but it can also be a trial/problem [fi . For there are husbands who are cruel
[qa�i] :
they beat their wives, bring other wives into the same house, and don't give each an equal share. But these people who make fun of you for not being married don't think about this aspect of marriage, and only stress marriage as a blessing [naema]. Even if a woman has a horrible husband, and has a hard married life, she will still make an effort to make you feel bad for not being married."

I was surprised at Nadia's clarity about the injustice of this situation toward women and the perils of marr I asked Nadia if single men were treated in the same way. Nadia replied resoundingly, "Of course not! For the assumption is that a man, if he wanted to, could have proposed to any woman: if he is not married it's because he
didn't want
to, or there was no woman who deserved him. But for the woman it is assumed that no one wanted
her
because it's not up to her to make the fi move." Nadia shook her head again, and went on, "No, this situation is very hard and a killer
[il..maU(l e �av wi qli ,
0
Saba. You have to have a very strong personality
[sha �iyya qawiyya]
for all of this not to affect you because eventually you also start thinking that there is some.. thing deeply wrong with you that explains why you are not married."

I asked her what she meant by being strong. Nadia said in response, "You must be patient in the face of diffi
[lazim tikuni �abira] ,
trust in God
[tawwakali eala allah] ,
and accept the fact that this is what He has willed as your fate
[qaQ.a
if you complain about it all the time, then you are denying that it is only God who has the wisdom to know why we live in the conditions we do and not humans." I asked Nadia if she had been able to achieve such a state of mind, given that she was married quite late. Nadia answered in an unexpected manner. She said,
"0
Saba, you don't learn to become patient hahira] or trust in God
[mutawakkila]
only when you face diffi es. There are many people who face diffi lties, and may not even complain, but they are not
�abirYn
[pa.. tient, enduring]. You practice the virtue of patience babr] because it is a good deed [al..carn al..�aliQ. , regardless of your situation: whether your life is diffi.. cult or happy. In fact, practicing patience in the face of happiness is even more diffi t."

Noting my look of surprise, Nadia said: "Yes, because think of how often

people turn to God only when they have diffi times, and often forget Him in times of comfort. To practice patience in moments of your life when you are happy is to be mindful of His rights
[l)aq
upon you at all times." I asked Nadia, "But I thought you said that one needs to have patience so as to be able to deal with one's diffi ulties?" Nadia responded by saying, "It is a secondary consequence
[al..- tTja al..-thanawiyya]
of your doing good deeds, among them the virtue of patience. God is merciful and He rewards you by giving you the capacity to be courageous in moments of diffi ty. But you should practice

�abr [patience] because this is the right thing to do in the path of God [fi
sabzl lillah] ."

I came back from my conversation with Nadia quite struck by the clarity with which she outlined the predicament of women in Egyptian society: a sit.. uation created and regulated by social norms for which women were in turn blamed. Nadia was also clear that women did not deserve the treatment they received, and that many of those she loved ( including her kin) were equally responsible for the pain that had been infl on her when she was single. While polygamy is allowed in Islam, Nadia and other participants of the mosque movement would often point out that, according to the Quran, mar. riage to more than one woman is conditional upon the ability of a man to treat all his wives equally (emotionally and materially) , a condition almost impossible to fulfi l.13 For this reason, polygamous marriages are understood to create diffi situations for women, and the mosque participants generally advise against it. 14 Nadia's advice to lman that she consider marr to a mar.. ried man, however, was based on a recognition of the extretne diffi en.. tailed in living as a single woman in Egypt.

While Nadia's response about having to make such choices resonated with other, secular, Egyptian friends of mine, her advocacy of the cultivation of the virtue of �abr (roughly meaning "to persevere in the face of diffi without complaint") was problematic for them. 15 Sabr invokes in the minds of many the passivity women are often encouraged to cultivate in the face of inj ustice. My friend Sana, for example, concurred with Nadia's description of how diffi..

1
3
Both the Hanbali and Maliki schools of Islamic jurisprudence permit a woman to stipulate in her marriage contract that if the husband takes a second wife, she has the right to seek divorce. What is quite clear is that none of the schools give the woman the legal right to prevent her hus. band from taking a second wife. For recent debates on polygamy among contemporary religious scholars in Egypt, see Skovgaard.- 1997, 1 69-70, 23 2-33.

14
This is fu augmented by the liberal ideal of nuclear family and companionate marriage, which, as Lila Abu-- ughod points out (1 998), has increasingly become the norm among Islamists as well as secular.- Egyptians.

ts
I have retained the use of
�abr
in this discussion rather than its common English transla-

tion, "patience," because
�abr
communicates a sense not quite captured by the latter: one of perseverance, endurance of hardship without complaint, and steadfastness.

cult life could be for a single woman in Egypt, but strongly disagreed with her advice regarding �abr.

Sana was a single professional woman in her mid..thirties who came fr an upper..middle..class family-a self..professed "secular Muslim" whom I had come to know through a group of fr at the American University in Cairo. In response to my recounting of the conversation with Nadia, Sana said, "Sabr

is an important Islamic principle, but these religious types
[mutada inTn]
think

it's a solution to everything. It's such a passive way of dealing with this situa.. tion." While Sana, too, believed that a woman needed to have a "strong per.. sonality"
(s�iyya qawiyya)
in order to be able to deal with such a circum..

stance, for her this meant acquiring self..esteem or self..confidence
(
thiqa
nafs

wal..dJui ).
As she explained, "Self..esteem makes you independent of what other people think of you. You begin to think of your worth not in terms of marriage and men, but in terms of who you
reaUy are,
and in my case, I draw

pride fr my work and that I am good at it. Where does �abr get you? Instead of helping you to improve your situation, it j ust leads you to accept it
as
fate passively."

While N adia and Sana shared their recognition of the painfu situation sin.. gle women face, they diff red markedly in their respective engagements with this suffering, each enacting a different modality of agency in the face of it. For Sana the ability to survive the situation she faced lay in seeking self.. empowerment through the cultivation of self..esteem, a psychological capacity that, in her view, enabled one to pursue self..directed choices and actions un.. hindered by other people's opinions. In this view, self.esteem is useful pre.. cisely because it is a means to achieving self..directed goals.
16
For Sana one of the important arenas for acquiring this self.esteem was her professional career and achievements. Nadia also worked, but clearly did not regard her profes.. sional work in the same manner.

Importantly, in Nadia's view, the practice of �abr does not necessarily make one immune to being hurt by others' opinions: one undertakes the practice of

�abr fi and foremost because it is an essential attribute of a pious character, an attribute to be cultivated regardless of the situation one faces. Rather than alleviating suffering, �abr allows one to bear and live hardship
corr
as pre..

scribed by one tradition of Islamic self..cultivation.17 As Nadia says, if the prac.. tice of �abr fortifi one's ability to deal with social suffering, this is a second.. ary, not essential, consequence. Justification for the exercise of �abr, in other