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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mahmood, Saba, 1962-2018.

Series:

ACLS Fellows’ publications.

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Feminism--Islamic countries.

Feminism.

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

Muslim women.

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

Islamic renewal.

Feminism--Religious aspects--Islam.

Women in Islam.

Gender identity--Islamic countries.

Gender identity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 233 p.)

Other Title:

Islamic revival and the feminist subject

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2005.

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 Mahmood'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 postcolonialism.

Contents:

The subject of freedom

Topography of the piety movement

Pedagogies of persuasion

Positive ethics and ritual conventions

Agency, gender, and embodiment

Epilogue

Glossary of commonly used Arabic terms.

Notes:

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

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

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9786612569333

9781282569331

1282569333

9781400824564

1400824567

Publisher Number:

2027/heb04721 hdl