Politics Of Piety
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Politics of Piety
An 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. The author's exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are linked within the context of such movements.
An Analysis of Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety
Saba Mahmood’s 2005 Politics of Piety is an excellent example of evaluation in action. Mahmood’s book is a study of women’s participation in the Islamic revival across the Middle East. Mahmood – a feminist social anthropologist with left-wing, secular political values – wanted to understand why women should become such active participants in a movement that seemingly promoted their subjugation. As Mahmood observed, women’s active participation in the conservative Islamic revival presented (and presents) a difficult question for Western feminists: how to balance cultural sensitivity and promotion of religious freedom and pluralism with the feminist project of women’s liberation? Mahmood’s response was to conduct a detailed evaluation of the arguments made by both sides, examining, in particular, the reasoning of female Muslims themselves. In a key moment of evaluation, Mahmood suggests that Western feminist notions of agency are inadequate to arguments about female Muslim piety. Where Western feminists often restrict definitions of women’s agency to acts that undermine the normal, male-dominated order of things, Mahmood suggests, instead, that agency can encompass female acts that uphold apparently patriarchal values. Ultimately the Western feminist framework is, in her evaluation, inadequate and insufficient for discussing women’s groups in the Islamic revival.
An Analysis of Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety
In this original and controversial book, Mahmood argues that Muslim women can show independence even while assuming traditional Islamic roles. Her research suggests that, in choosing to embrace the norms of their faith, these pious Muslims are not limiting, but rather affirming, themselves. They do not value the idea of 'freedom' in the same way the liberal West does, and this can give us new insights into ideas about autonomy that we all too often take for granted. Mahmood challenges many assumptions made by feminists from the secular liberal tradition. She insists these Muslim women must be understood on their own terms, rather than via conventional feminist views. -- From the back cover.