Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (63 page)

nation. Just as our own lives don't fi neatly into such
-
a paradigm, neither should we apply such a reduction to the lives of women like Nadia and Sana, or to movements of moral reform such as the one discussed here.

TH E PARAD OXES OF PI ETY

As I suggested in chapter 1, it is possible to read many ofthe practices of the mosque participants as having the effect of undermining the authority of a va..

the assumption that the highest virtues of the tradition must be pursued while one is immersed in the practicalities of daily life, rather th through seclusion in an enclosed community (of nuns, priests, or monks), or a predefi religious order
(
as
is the case in certain strains of Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism). Consequently all of life is regarded as the stage on which these values and attitudes are enacted, making any separation between the secular and the sacred diffi to maintain.

riety of dominant norms, institutions, and structures. Indeed, my analysis of the overall aims of the mosque movement shows that challenging secular.. liberal norms-whether of sociability or govern central to the movement's self..understanding. Moreover, regardless of the movement's self.. understanding, the objective effects that the movement has produced within the Egyptian social fi d de facto pose stiff impediments to the process of sec.. ularization. Despite this acknowledgment, as I suggested before , it would be a mistake to analyze the complexity of this movement through the lens of resis.. tance insomuch as such a reading fl out an entire dimension of the force this movement commands and the transformations it has spawned within the social and political fi ds.

This caution against reading the agency of this movement primarily in terms of resistance holds even more weight when we turn our attention to the analysis of gender relations. In what follows , I want to show why this is the case through ethnographic examples in which women may be seen as resisting aspects of male kin authority. While conceding that one of the effects of the mosque participants' pursuit of piety is the destabilization of certain norms of male kin authority, I \Vant to argue that attention to the terms and concepts deployed by women in these struggles directs us to analytical questions that are closed off by an undue emphasis on resistance. The discourse of the mosque movement is shot through, of course, with assumptions that secure male dom.. ination: an analysis that focuses on terms internal to the discourse of piety must also engage the entire edifi of male superiority upon which this dis .. course is built. Indeed, my analysis of the mosque participants' practices of pedagogy and ritual observance ( in chapters 3 and 4) is in part an exposition of this point. But the fact that discourses of piety and male superiority are in.. eluctably intertwined does not mean that we can assume that the women who inhabit this conjoined matrix are motivated by the desire to subvert or resist terms that secure male domination; neither can we assume that an analysis that focuses on the subversive effects their practices produce adequately cap.. tures the meanings20 of these practices, that is, what these practices "do" within the discursive context of their enactment. Let me elaborate.

The pursuit of piety often subjected the n1osque participants to a contradic.. tory set of demands, the negotiation of which often required maintaining a del.. icate balance between the moral codes that could be transgressed and those that were mandatory. One common dilemma the mosque participants faced was the opposition they encountered to their involvement in dacwa activities from their immediate male kin, who, according to the Islamic juristic tradition, are supposed to be the guardians of women's moral and physical well..being. In

20
Obviously,
my use of the term "meaning" here goes well beyond mere sense and reference.

order to remain active in the field of dacwa, and sometimes even to abide by rig.. orous standards of piety, these women often had to go against their male kin, who exercised tremendous authority in their lives, authority that was sanc.. tioned not only by divine injunctions but also by Egyptian custom.

Consider for example the struggles a woman called Abir had with her hus.. band regarding her involvement in dacwa activities. I had met Abir during one of the lessons delivered in the low.-income Ayesha mosque and, over a pe.. riod of a year and a half, came to know her and her family quite well. Abir was thirty years old and had three children at the time. Her husband was
a
lawyer and worked two j obs in order to make ends meet. Abir would sew clothes for her neighbors to supplement their income, and also received fi help from her family, who lived only a few doors down from her. Like many young women of her class ,,and background, Abir was not raised to be religiously ob.. servant, and showed me pictures from her youth when she, like other neigh.. borhood girls, wore short skirts and makeup, fl the conventions of modest comportment. Abir recounted how, as a young woman, she had sel .. dam performed any of the obligatory acts of worship and, on the occasions when she did, she did so more out of custom
( elida
than out of an awareness of all that was involved in such acts. Only in the last several years had Abir be.. come interested in issues of piety, an interest she pursued actively by attend.. ing mosque lessons, reading the Quran, and listening to taped religious ser.. mons that she would borrow from a neighborhood kiosk. Over time, Abir became increasingly more diligent in the performance of religious duties ( in.. cluding praying five times a day and fasting during Ramadan). She donned the headscarf, and then, after a few months, switched to the full body and face veil ( niqab). In addition, she stopped socializing with Jamal's male friends and colleagues, refusing to help him entertain them at home.

Abir's transformation was astonishing to her entire family, but it was most dis..
turbing
to her husband, Jamal. Jamal was not particularly religious,-
even
though he considered himself a Muslim-if an errant one. He seldom performed any of his religious obligations and, much to Abir's constern sometimes drank al.. cohol and indulged his taste for
x
..
rated fi Given his desire for upward

mobility-which required him to appear (what Abir called) "civilized and ur.. bane"
(mutalur)
in fr of his fr and colleagues-Jamal was increas.. ingly uncomfortable with the orthodox Islamic sociability his wife seemed to be

cultivating at an alarming rate, the fu face and body veil (niqab) being its most "backward"
( mutakhallif)
sign. He was worried, and let Abir know in no un ..

tain terms that he wanted a more worldly and stylish wife who could facilitate his entry and acceptance into
a
class higher than his own.

Things became far more tense between them when Abir enrolled in a two..

year program at a nongovernmental institute of da�wa so she could train to be.. come a d�f She had been attending the local mosque lessons, and felt that she would make a more effective teacher than the local da�iyat if she had the proper training. Jamal did not take her seriously at first, thinking that she would soon grow tired of the study this program required, coupled with the long commute and daily child care and housework. But Abir proved to be res- olute and tenacious: she knew that if she was lax in her duties toward the house, her children, or Jamal, she did not stand a chance. So she was espe.. cially diligent in taking care of all household responsibilities on the days she attended the da�wa institute, and even took her son with her so that Jamal would not have to watch him when he returned from work.

Jamal tried several tactics to dissuade Abir. He learned quickly that his sar.. castic remarks about her social "backwardness" did not get him very far: Abir would retort by pointing out how shortsighted he was to privilege his desire for worldly rewards over those in the Hereafter. She would also ridicule his de.. sire to appear "civilized and urbane," calling it a blind emulation of Western values. Consequently, Jamal changed his tactic and started to use religious ar.. guments to criticize Abir, pointing out that she was disobeying Islamic stan.. dards of proper wifely conduct when she disobeyed the wishes and commands of her husband. He would also occasionally threaten to take a second wife, as part of his rights as a Muslim man, if she did not change her ways. On one oc.. casion, when he had just fi making this threat in front of her family and myself, Abir responded by saying, "You keep insisting on this right God has given you [to marry another woman] . Why don't you fi take care of
His
rights over
you [haqq allah eelaik]
?" It was clear to everyone that she was talking about Jamal's laxity in the performance of prayers, particularly since just an hour before, Abir had asked him, as the man of the household, to lead the evening prayer
(�alat al..- ghrib
)-a call he had ignored while continuing to watch television. Abir had eventually led the prayers herself for the women present in the house. Jamal was silenced by Abir's retort, but he did not refrain from continuing to harass her. At one point, after a particularly harsh argu.. ment between the two of them, I asked Abir, when we were alone, if she would consider giving up her daewa studies due to Jamal's opposition. She an.. swered resolutely, "No! Even if he took an absolute stand on the issue
[hatta