WOMEN Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, by Saba Mahmood Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004 xvi + 199 pages Gloss, to p 203 Refs to p 223 Index to p 233 $55 cloth; $1795 paper This book explores "the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt" (p 2) However, Saba Mahmood promises more than an ethnography based on two years of fieldwork (1995-1997) She embarks on an intellectual journey of selfreflection in which she has come "to believe that a certain amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments" (p xi) By refusing to take her own political stance as the necessary lens through which the analysis proceeds, the author opens up the possibility that "my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human flourishing that I hold most dear and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence" (p xii) It is necessary, the author cautions as she embarks upon her inquiry, not to assume that the political position we uphold will necessarily be vindicated or provide the ground for our theoretical analysis As readers, we are invited to join her in "parochializing our assumptions, about the constitutive relationship between action and embodiment, resistance and agency, self and authority - that inform most feminist judgments from across a broad range of the political spectrum about non-liberal movements such as the women's mosque movement" (p 38) It is within that spirit that I have critiqued this book The five chapters are a running argument with and against key analytic concepts in liberal thought as these concepts have come to inform various strands of feminist theory through which non-liberal movements, such as the women's mosque movement, are analyzed Through each chapter Mahmood makes her ethnographic talk back to the normative liberal assumptions about human nature against which such a movement is held accountable "The Subject of Freedom" illustrates the different ways in which the activism of the mosque movement challenges the liberal conception of politics Mahmood analyzes the conception of self, moral agency, and politics that undergird the practices of this non-liberal movement in order to come to an understanding of the historical projects that animate it The pious subjects of the mosque movement occupy an uncomfortable place in feminist scholarship because they pursue practices and ideals embedded in a tradition that has historically accorded women a subordinate status "Topography of the Piety Movement" provides a brief sketch of the historical development against which the contemporary mosque movement has emerged and critically engages with themes within scholarship of Islamic modernism regarding such movements We sense the broad-based character of the women's mosque movement through the author's description and analysis of three of six mosques where she concentrated her fieldwork Despite the differences among the mosque groups - ranging from the poorest to the upper-middle income neighborhoods of Cairo - they all shared a concern for the increased secularization of Egyptian society and illustrate the increasing respect accorded to the da 'iya preacher/religious teacher (who undertakes da'waliterally call, summons or appeal that in the 20th century came to be associated with proselytization activity) "Women and the Da'wa" (pp 64-72) is particularly insightful, as the author juxtaposes the emergence of secular liberalism with the da'wa movement and concludes that "the modernist project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, undertaken by a range of postcolonial states (and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses and challenges …

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

In this chapter we will be concentrating on one of the key processes in the ‘cultural circuit’ (see Du Gay et al., 1997, and the Introduction to this volume) – the practices of representation. The aim of this chapter is to introduce you to this topic, and to explain what it is about and why we give it such importance in cultural studies. The concept of representation has come to occupy a new and important place in the study of culture. Representation connects meaning and language to culture. But what exactly do people mean by it? What does representation have to do with culture and meaning? One common-sense usage of the term is as follows: ‘Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.’ You may well ask, ‘Is that all?’ Well, yes and no. Representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture. It does involve the use of language, of signs and images which stand for or represent things. But this is a far from simple or straightforward process, as you will soon discover. How does the concept of representation connect meaning and language to culture? In order to explore this connection further, we will look at a number of different theories about how language is used to represent the world. Here we will be drawing a distinction between three different accounts or theories: the reflective, the intentional and the constructionist approaches to representation. Does language simply reflect a meaning which already exists out there in the world of objects, people and events (reflective)? Does language express only what the speaker or writer or painter wants to say, his or her personally intended meaning (intentional)? Or is meaning constructed in and through language (constructionist)? You will learn more in a moment about these three approaches. Most of the chapter will be spent exploring the constructionist approach, because it is this perspective which has had the most significant impact on cultural studies in recent years. This CHAPTER ONE

From Work to Representation

Recent studies report significant cross-national variation in the conceptual distinctions or “symbolic boundaries” used by majority groups to construct notions of “us” and “them” Because this literature compares only a handful of countries, the macro-level forces by which certain symbolic boundaries become more salient than others remain poorly understood This article provides the first panorama of these processes by comparing the relative salience or “configuration” of multiple symbolic boundaries in 21 European countries I use fuzzy-set analyses of data from the 2003 European Social Survey to create a typology of symbolic boundary configurations The results indicate that the symbolic boundaries deployed by the general public do not correspond to the official “philosophies of integration” emphasized in the literature Moreover, the data suggest previous comparisons have focused too heavily on Western Europe, overlooking important variation in other regions of Europe where immigration began more recen

The Configuration of Symbolic Boundaries against Immigrants in Europe

The paper evaluates the burst in geographical research on religion in the last decade. It examines: (1) the relative emphases and silences in analyses of different sites of religious practice, sens...

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3045&context=soss_research

Global shifts, theoretical shifts: Changing geographies of religion

Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and the ’Mystic East‘

While there is still some evidence of conflict over the planning and building of mosques in Britain, in this article I demonstrate that this is not currently the case in Bradford. Having first considered issues relating to the status and significance of mosques in Britain, and then the institutionalisation of Islam in Bradford, I suggest that this absence of mosque conflict has much to do with the social and political implications of a densely populated ‘Muslim’ inner city. However, the absence of conflict over mosques in Bradford does not mean that the pervasive Islamisation of the inner city is not an issue; quite the reverse. After riots involving youth of Pakistani–Muslim heritage, a dominant discourse has emerged focusing on ethnic and religious ‘self-segregation’ and the need for ‘community cohesion’. Moreover, commentators have identified mosques, and the religious leadership and education they provide, as a part of the problem. My article examines why this might be so and the extent to which Bradf...

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Mosques and the Public Space: Conflict and Cooperation in Bradford

Contents: Preface, SeA!n McLoughlin Introduction, Jocelyne Cesari. Secularity in Europe and the Institutionalization of Islam: Legal Regulation and Political Recognition: The secularity of the state and the shaping of Muslim representative organizations in Western Europe, Silvio Ferrari Discrimination and claims for equal rights amongst Muslims in Europe, Valerie Amiraux Islam, secularism and multiculturalism after 9/11: a transatlantic comparison, Jocelyne Cesari. The State, Civil Society and Muslim Leaderships: Contested Representations of Islam in Europe: The State, 'new' Muslim leaderships and Islam as a 'resource' for public engagement in Britain, SeA!n McLoughlin Religious authorities or political actors? the Muslim leaders of the French representative body of Islam, Alexandre Caeiro Interests, identities, and the public sphere: representing Islam in the Netherlands since the 1980s, Thijl Sunier New modes of social interaction in Italy: Muslim leaders and local society in Tuscany and Venetia, Chantal Saint-Blancat and Fabio Perocco From 'foreign workers' to 'sleepers': the Churches, the State and Germany's discovery of its Muslim population, Gerdien Jonker. Practising Islam in secular contexts: authority, religiosity and identity: Migration and the religiosity of Muslim women in Spain, Gema MartA-n-MuA+-oz and Ana LA^3pez-Sala Individualizing faith, individualizing identity: Islam and young Muslim women in Belgium, Nadia Fadil The quest for authenticity: Islamization amongst Muslim youth in Norway, Christine Jacobson The transformation of a Sufi order into a lay community: the SA leymanci movement in Germany and beyond, Gerdien Jonker Locating the British Imam: the Deobandi 'Ulama between contested authority and public policy post 9/11, Jonathan Birt Index.

European Muslims and the secular state

Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities

This article begins to fill a gap in recent discussions of the future of Islamic studies with an account of the nature and significance of Anthropological and Ethnographic contributions to the study of Islam and Muslims. Drawing attention to both the problem of essence in Orientalism and the dissolution of Islam’s significance for Muslims in Said’s (1978) anti‐Orientalism, the article examines how shifts between essence and silence have been played out in the short history of Anthropology, from colonial ethnography through functionalism to the relationship between so‐called Great and Little Traditions, the fresh impetus of Geertz’s (1968) Islam Observed and subsequent debates about Islam and plural islams. My account culminates with discussion of an increasingly specialised and interdisciplinary body of work on the reproduction and transmission of Islamic discursive traditions published mainly in American Anthropology since the 1970s and 1980s. I contend that such literature suggests a theoretical startin...

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Seán McLoughlin

Papers

Mosques and the Public Space: Conflict and Cooperation in Bradford

European Muslims and the secular state

Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities

Islam(s) in context: Orientalism and the anthropology of Muslim societies and cultures

The State, 'New' Muslim Leaderships and Islam as a 'Resource' for Engagement in Britain