Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (67 page)

"If none of this works, and you are certain that you have tried everything and
only you canjudge how ha you have
tried-and he still does not change his ways, then you have the right to demand a divorce from him
[ea
le
yki - 1Ja4q tutlubi it,talaq minnu] ."

Some of the women gasped in surprise: "Ya!" ("Ya!" is an expression of sur..

prise women often use in Egyptian colloquial Arabic). Noting this reaction, Hajja Asma responded, "Of course-what else can you do
[IJa, emli !) ?
Live

with a sinning husband, raise your children in a sinful atmosphere-who will then grow up to be like him? How can you be obedient to God if you are l iv.. ing with a man like this
[tikuni fi..t..tl(a allah izay lamma tikuni maea rli

zayyu]
?" She continued, "If it was only a matter of him being harsh with you
[la kan qli maeaki] ,
or having a rough temperament
[
ta
bTeatu kan khishn] ,
then you could have endured it
[ti�abbiri ealey] .
But this is something you cannot be

patient about or forebear: it is an issue between you and your God."

Hajja Asma's words were received with somber silence, since divorce is not something that is easy for Egyptian women to contemplate given the social taboos associated w ith it, the bias against women in Egyptian law regarding child custody, and the economic hardship a divorcee must face in raising her children. Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, Islamic law does not make it easy for a woman to seek divorce, even in such a situation. In talking to Hajja Asma later, it was obvious to me that divorce was not something she took lightly ei.. ther. Notably, Hajja Asma emphasized ( as she does above) that if a woman was faced with a husband who had a harsh temperament, it was her obligation to be patient, given that patience ( �abr) is an Islamic virtue that she should cultivate

as a pious Muslim. But to practice forbearance in a situation where
God's claims

over her
were being compromised, was to place her own interests ( in terms of the security and safety marriage provides) above her commitment to God. When I asked the other daeiyat and their audiences what they thought of Hajja Asma's response, they argued that not all women would have the courage and strength to risk the scorn and hardship a divorcee would be subjected to in Egyptian society in order to uphold high standards of virtuous conduct. Among

the d�f who took such a position, some of them said that women like Hajja Asma "were true slaves of God
[humma eibad allah 1Ja4 qiyyan] ! "

As is clear from these disparate answers, the choice between submission to

God's will and being obedient to one's husband did not follow a straightfor- ward rule, and at times placed contradictory demands on the mosque partici.. pants. As a result, women were called upon to make complex judgments that entailed an interpretation of the Islamic corpus as well as their own sense of

responsibility in the situation.
28
The questions the audience members posed,

and the answers the daeiyat provided, assumed that a woman is responsible for herself and her moral actions; the anguish underlying these queries was a product of both the sense of moral responsibility these women felt and the limited scope of choices available to them within orthodox Islamic tradition. Within the moral..ethical framework articulated by Hajja Asma, a woman must, prior to asking for divorce, have a clear understanding of the order of priorities entailed in God's commands so that she challenges her husband only on those issues that compromise her ability to live as a dutiful Muslim. According to Hajja Asma's framework, if husbands interfere with matters per.. taining to voluntary, rather than obligatory, acts (such as praying in a mosque instead of at home, practicing supererogatory fasts, undertaking daewa, or wearing the full face and body veil), then women are advised to give up these practices and to not disobey their husbands' wishes and commands. Similarly, a husband's harsh treatment of his wife is not regarded as suffi ient reason to seek a divorce ( although Egyptian women have been known to do so). Only when the nature of a husband's conduct is such that it violates key Islamic in.. junctions and moral codes, making it impossible for a woman to realize the ba.. sic tenets of virtuous conduct in her own and her children's lives, is she al..

lowed to resort to divorce.

When viewed from a feminist perspective, the choices open to the mosque participants appear quite limited. The constraining nature of these altema.. tives notwithstanding, I would argue that they nonetheless represent forms of reasoning that must be explored on their own terms if one is to understand the structuring conditions of this form of ethical life and the forms of agency they entail. Note that the various paths followed by the women do not suggest the application of a universal moral rule (in the Kantian sense), but are closer to what Foucault calls ethics: the careful scrutiny one applies to one's daily ac. tions in order to shape oneself to live in accordance with a particular model of behavior. Thus, Hajja Asma's advice entails a variety of techniques of intro.. spection and argument, including: examining oneself to determine whether one has exhausted all possible means of persuading one's husband prior to ask..

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To make informed decisions about such an issue, Muslims often tum to a mufti (juriconsult) who, after consulting various established opinions and evaluating the individual situation, issues a fatwa that is legally nonbinding. In the context of the mosque lessons, the daeiyat, though not trained to be muftis, in practice enact this role by helping women interpret the sharta in light of their per.. sonal situations. For more complex issues, the daeiyat often refer their audiences to a qualifi mufti.

ing for a divorce; being honest with oneself in such an examination, since no one else can make such a judgment; and employing a variety of techniques of persuasion, both oral and embodied, to change the immoral ways of the hus.. band. This stands in contrast to the kind of self-scrutiny applied by a woman who chooses to stay with an impious husband: such a woman must constantly watch that she does not use her husband's behavior as an excuse for her own religious laxity, assess her intentions and motivations for the actions she pur.. sues, make sure she does everything in her capacity to raise her children in ac.. cord with standards of pious conduct, and so on. In both situations, moral in.. junctions are not juridically enforced but are self..monitored and entail an entire set of ascetic practices in which the individual engages in an interpre.. tive activity, in accord with shariea guidelines, to determine how best to live by Islamic moral codes and regulations.

Only through attention to these kinds of specifi can we begin to grasp the different modalities of agency involved in enacting, transgressing, or inhab.. iting ethical norms and moral principles. The analysis I have presented here should not be confu with a hermeneutical approach, one that focuses on the meanings that particular utterances, discourses, and practices convey. Rather, the fr I have suggested analyzes the
wor
that discursive practices per.. form in making possible particular kinds of subjects. From this perspective, when assessing the violence that particular systems of gender inequality enact on women, it is not enough to simply point out, for example, that a tradition of female piety or modesty serves to give legitimacy to women's subordination. Rather it is only by exploring these traditions in relation to the practical en.. gagements and forms of life in which they are embedded that we can come to understand the signifi nce of that subordination to the women who embody it. Finally, in respect to agency, my arguments in this chapter show that th ana.. lytical payback in detaching the concept of agency fr the trope of resistance lies in the series of questions such a move opens up in regard to issues of perfor.. mativity, transgression, suffering, survival, and the articulation of the body within different conceptions of the subject. I have insisted that it is best not to propose
a
theory of agency but to analyze agency in terms of the diff modal.. ities it takes and the grammar of concepts in which its particular affect, meaning, and form resides. Insomuch as this kind of analysis suggests that different modal.. ities of agency require different kinds of bodily capacities, it forces us to ask whether acts ofresistance ( to systems of gender hierarchy) also devolve upon the ability of the body to behave in particular ways. From this perspective, trans- gressing gender norms may not be a matter of transforming "consciousness" or ef.. fecting change in the significatory system of gender, but might well require the retraining of sensibilities, afect, desire, and sentiments-those registers of corpo..