Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (66 page)

standing al..Ghazali's speech and actions, they have little power when it comes to explicating the force her life story commands in the fi of Islamist activism.

doctrinal (ir) resolutions

While many of the problems that al..Ghazali and Abir faced in their pursuit of piety were related to their goal of becoming trained daeiyat, women who did not have such ambitions also encountered structurally similar problems. Given that Islamic j urisprudence regards men to be the moral and physical guardians of women,Z6 participants in the mosque movement often complained that liv.. ing with male kin who were not as religiously devout compromised their own standards of piety. The problem seemed to be particularly acute for a woman who was married to what the mosque participants called "al..zauj al..ea�i" (a dis.. obedient husband)-this concern was widely discussed not only in the mosque circles but also in religious advice columns in newspapers. In the eyes of the shar·ta, even though a woman is not responsible for her husband's moral con.. duct but only her own and her children's, her husband's behavior nonetheless profoundly affects her own pursuit of a virtuous life, given the moral authority he commands over her and his offspring as their custodian. Faced with such a situation, it is not easy for
a
woman to challenge her husband's conduct or to seek divorce, given the stigma of being a divorcee in Egyptian society and the restrictions Islamic law places on a woman's right to divorce. It was, therefore, very common during the mosque lessons to hear the audiences ask the daeiyat what a woman should do if she was married to a husband who lived a sinful ex.. istence by the standards of virtuous Muslim conduct.

There is no simple doctrinal resolution to this problem. The responses of the daeiyat varied and the women were urged to pursue a variety of means to come to terms with the contradictions posed by the confl cting demands of loyalty to God versus fi lity to one's (sinful) husband. Most daeiyat, whether at the upper..middle.., middle.., or lower..income mosques, argued that since

men are the custodians
(auliya"'
singular:
wali )
of female kin in Islam, and not

the other way around, women are not accountable in the eyes of God for the actions of their adult male kin. They advised women to try persuading their "disobedient
to reform their behavior, and in the event they failed,

to continue living with them
-
with the understanding that they would have to be extra vigilant in monitoring their own conduct.

26
The Quranic verse often cited to support this position states, "Men shall take fu care of women with the bounties which God has bestowed more abundantly on the former than on the latter"
(al..ri al qawwamun �ala al..nisa,,
verse
34
fr Surat al-- isa' ["Th Woman"])

I questioned some of the daeiyat and the mosque participants about the con� tradictions this advice generated in a woman's life, since living with an impi� ous husband would force her into situations that compromised her ability to live by acceptable standards of virtuous conduct. Most of them acknowledged that their recommendations did not constitute the best solution to the prob- lem at hand, but insisted that most women had no choice. Some of the d�tiyat said, "If we advised women to seek divorce from disobedient husbands, we would de facto be asking half the population of married Egyptian women to be divorcees! "-implying that they thought a large number of Egyptian men were impious. Some argued that the fact that women are not held accountable for their husband's conduct is a blessing God has bestowed upon women-one that frees them to pursue piety \Vithout having to worry about the conduct of male kin-while men are burdened with having to account for their wives' actions as well as the ir own.

Other daeiyat, such as Hajja Asma, who had been Zaynab al..Ghazali's stu- dent and now served as a daeiya in a local mosque, answered the question very differently. 27 During an afternoon lesson, when Hajja Asma was presented with this question by a woman in her mid.- hirties from among a group of twelve middle.- lass housewives, she started by inquiring about the nature of the husband's sins. Once it was established that they were "grave sins"
(al
..
ka ir)-such as refusing to pray regularly
(q�r al..�alat qa�iran ),
engaging in illicit sexual activity (zina:� , and drinking alcohol-she advised the woman to employ a variety of strategies to convince her husband to change his conduct. She said:

The fi step is to cry in front of your husband, and make him realize that you are worried for him because of what God will do to him given his conduct. Don't think that this crying is in vain
[mafi fa�ida bi]
because crying is known to have melted the hearts of many� One of my neighbors convinced her husband to start praying regularly this way. She also brought other pressures to bear on him by having me talk to him, because she knows that he respects me and would be embarrassed
[maksuj]
if I \vere to question him about prayers. But if you fi that crying does not seem to have results, then the next step you can take is to stop sharing meals with him
[bagali it.- aem maea] .
Eventually this is bound to have an effect, especially because men usually have stronger willpower than women and when a man sees a woman stronger than him he is moved by her persistence and strength
[istimrariha wi quwwatiha].

27
Hajja Asma was the only daeiya I worked with who talked openly about her sympathies with the Muslim Brotherhood. As a result, she often had to move from mosque to mosque under govern.. ment pressure and was only able to offer lessons sporadically.

At this point one of the women listening to Hajja Asma asked, "What if none of this has an effect on him
[mati(ashirTsh bi] ?"
Hajja Asma replied, "The fi and last thing you can try is to refuse to sleep with him
[banali al,ishrea ma a] ."
There was a palpable silence among the women at this point, and then

a woman in her early thirties said in a low voice, "What if that doesn't work?" An older woman in her late sixties added loudly in response, "Yes, this hap.. pens a lot!
[eaiwa ,
da
�al
kitTr] ." Hajja Asma nodded in agreement and said,