Politics of piety : the Islamic revival and the feminist subject / Saba Mahmood.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mahmood, Saba, 1962-2018.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Feminism--Islamic countries.

Feminism.

Muslim women--Religious life--Egypt--Cairo--Case studies.

Muslim women.

Muslim women--Religious life.

Gender identity.

Islamic renewal.

Egypt--Cairo.

Islamic countries.

Islamic renewal--Egypt--Cairo--Case studies.

Feminism--Religious aspects--Islam.

Women in Islam.

Gender identity--Islamic countries.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 233 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [2005]

Summary:

Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Saba Mabmood's compelling exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are indelibly linked within the context of such movements. Not only is this book a sensitive ethnography of a critical but largely ignored dimension of the Islamic revival, it is also an unflinching critique of the secular-liberal principles by which some people hold such movements to account. The book addresses three central questions: How do movements of moral reform help us rethink the normative liberal account of politics? How does the adherence of women to the patriarchal norms at the core of such movements parochialize key assumptions within feminist theory about freedom, agency, authority, and the human subject? How does a consideration of debates about embodied religious rituals among Islamists and their secular critics help us understand the conceptual relationship between bodily form and political imaginaries? Politics of Piety is essential reading for anyone interested in issues at the nexus of ethics and politics, embodiment and gender, and liberalism and post-colonialism.

Contents:

Chapter 1 The Subject of Freedom 1

Chapter 2 Topography of the Piety Movement 40

Chapter 3 Pedagogies of Persuasion 79

Chapter 4 Positive Ethics and Ritual Conventions 118

Chapter 5 Agency, Gender, and Embodiment 153.

Notes:

Based on the author's thesis (Stanford University, 1998).

Includes bibliographical references (pages [205]-223) and index.

ISBN:

069108694X

0691086958

OCLC:

54096953