Reflections on "Politics of Piety" by Saba Mahmood

Politics of Piety by Saba Mahmood has been one of the most ideologically challenging books I have read, as it forced me to consider the ways in which my feminist philosophy is biased towards my Western socialization. While I confronted these seemingly opposing theories of feminism and Islam in Islam, I received a much deeper understanding and transformation from Mahmood’s field study and accompanying analyses. I thought her ideas about globalization and secularization raised some important questions about the future as the world as a whole strives toward a sort of “global inclusivity.” I was especially struck by her thoughts on also veiling, as it is something I have been struggling with since my interest in Islam began about two years ago. Mahmood’s observations about the embodiment of shyness and modesty also caused me to consider alternate viewpoints about bodily agency.

Having been raised in a highly agnostic home, I always considered secularism to be generally positive, especially when it came to politics. While I have read a fair amount of literature and articles that talk about the pitfalls of secularism, it wasn’t until Mahmood’s observations that I began to understand the perspectives of grassroots movements against secularization. I realized that my upbringing had made me assume that certain things were good while others were bad, and I had not yet had opportunity to look at Islam and politics through a different lens. While I understand the imperialistic nature of secularism, I was struck by Mahmood’s thoughts that it is premature to assume that there is an inherent desire in women for freedom and equality. I had never before been faced with that notion, and so I struggled at first to challenge my own assumption that there is, as Mahmood phrases it, “something intrinsic to women that should predispose them to oppose the practices, values, and injunctions that the Islamic movement embodies.” (pg. 2) She goes on to pose questions that forced me to analyze where my assumptions of freedom have come from and helped me to set these assumptions aside as I read the rest of the book.

An increase in access to Islam can be attributed in part to globalization because an influx of reading material such as pamphlets made Islam more accessible to a wider audience of Muslims. The Ayesha Mosque also takes care to make Islam approachable to lower class and less educated women by using local colloquialisms and encouraging questions and discussion to aid understanding and embodiment of Islamic teachings. The threat secularism posed to Islam became apparent when Mahmood began discussing the urbanization and Westernization of Egypt. The women of the mosque movement are worried about the loss of Islam in everyday life, and their move towards piety aims to embody Islam in everyday thoughts and actions and “seek to imbue each of the various spheres of contemporary life with a regulative sensibility that takes its cue from the Islamic theological corpus rather than from modern secular ethics.” (pg.48) They also seek to introduce practices to mainstream social and political life that make room for Islamic ethics in institutions. While this at first sounds odd, it is important to understand the ways that the US makes room for Christian ethics and practices in a so-called “secularized” country. From school and work breaks to swearing on the Bible when giving testimony to no post on Sundays to the influence of religion in policy making, America is saturated with Christian tones that dictate, at least to some degree, how we live our daily lives, and largely exclude people who don’t fall under the umbrella of Christianity who have obligations to other religion practices.

I was curious about the link between the veil and politics in the Middle East, especially considering that one of the justifications for US intervention in the Middle East centered around “liberating” women. Mahmood makes a point to question what it means to be liberated or oppressed. I saw this dichotomy of liberation and oppression in a political cartoon a while back, and it has been brought to my mind multiple times while reading Politics of Piety. The cartoon depicts two women walking past each other, one clad in a revealing bikini and sunglasses, the other in a full covering with only her eyes showing. The woman in the bikini is thinking, “Everything covered but her eyes, what a cruel male-dominated culture!” and the covered woman is thinking, “Nothing covered but her eyes, what a cruel male-dominated culture!” I thought this cartoon served a really important purpose in challenging assumptions about oppression and liberation, which I think Mahmood also does in her book by giving voice to the women who are often spoken for by Western liberal feminists (which is quite contradictory to most feminist theory). I really enjoyed reading all the different viewpoints about the veil because we are often only told the “American” story about the oppression of veils and fail to ask the women who wear them why they do. In a country like Egypt, where it isn’t required by law to be fully covered, there appears to be more to the decision than cultural or political pressure - especially within the piety movement.

I was really struck by the women’s thoughts on the link between the veil and virtue. Mahmood explains that women in Islam are considered objects of sexual desire, and men are the subjects that act upon that desire, therefore there is a possibility of non-virtuous relations. Although men and women are both told to police their thoughts and actions regarding sexual behavior, it is women “who bear the primary responsibility for maintaining the sanctity of relations between the sexes” and “hide their charms” (pg. 10) in the public sphere. I have read some articles about women who cover who claim that they do so to ward off unwanted sexual attention in public, which I understand much more deeply after traveling to India. There were some places when women in my group would cover their heads with a scarf to try to dispel harassment and stares that happened when we walked through large groups of people. In India, there is also a modesty and virtue attached to the covering of one’s head, so oftentimes it worked rather well despite our apparent foreignness. Comparing these two contexts helped me to conceptualize why the women of the mosque movement would choose to cover.

The idea of choosing to cover, however, is something I am still struggling with because it is almost impossible to tell whether or not a woman is covering because she genuinely feels it will make her closer with god. I am also still exploring in myself if this “authentic” choice of covering is still oppressive, as it operates under and inherently patriarchal religion that has submission to men written into its texts. I very much enjoy being educated about the surrounding covering, however, and Politics of Piety has added a much-needed perspective. I have loved carrying around the book because it has served as quite the conversation piece, and it has sparked a lot of really awesome conversations with a variety of people, from my devoted Catholic friend, to my atheist friend, to my mother who doesn’t know much of anything about Islam. I have really enjoyed this book and look forward to staying engaged in the conversations about feminism in Islam.

Compelling quotes:

“In comparison with other currents within the Islam Revival, the mosque movement is unique in the extraordinary degree of pedagogical emphasis it places on outward markers of religiosity - ritual practices, styles of comporting oneself, dress, and so on. The participants in the mosque movement regard these practices as the necessary and ineluctable means for realizing the form of religiosity they are cultivating. For the mosque participants, it is the various movements of the body that comprise et material substance of the ethical domain.” (pg. 31)

“Critique, I believe, is most powerful when it leaves open the possibility that we might also be remade in the process of engaging another’s worldview, that we might come to learn things that we did not already know before we undertook the engagement. This requires that we occasionally turn the critical gaze upon ourselves, to leave open the possibility that we may be remade through an encounter with the other.” (pg. 37)

“What has changed between a classical invocation and a contemporary one are the practical conditions under which the distinction between customary and religious acts is made, the new modes of reflection under which this distinction is taught and learned, and the relations of social hierarchy and institutional power that attend each historical context.” (pg. 55)

“All of these developments have gradually opened doors for urban women to pursue religious study, and have endowed them with a sense of entitlement that they should be able to claim the Islamic tradition in a manner parallel (though not necessarily equal) to men.” (pg. 66)

“The indifference is put into question when nonliberal forms of religiosity claim the public space, and wittingly or unwittingly challenge the premise of this indifference. The fact that men’s religious attire in the context of public schools - such as Jewish men’s yarmulkes or Sikh men’s turbans - does not elicit the same response further suggests that women’s adoption of religious clothing is taken to be a sign of social coercion in a way that men’s wearing of religiously symbolic clothing is not.” (pg. 75)

“In this moral worldview, illicit sexual relationships are understood to create social discord and sedition (fitna) in a community, and are regarded as signs of its moral degeneracy. The injunctions for women to veil, dress modestly, avoid eye contact with men, and so on, all constitute the practical strategies through which the danger of women’s sexuality poses to the sanctity of the Muslim community is deterred.” (pg. 111)

“Rather [wearing the veil or conducting oneself modestly] are the critical markers of piety as well as the ineluctable means by which one trains oneself to be pious. While wearing the veil serves at first as a means to tutor oneself in the attribute of shyness, it is also simultaneously integral to the practice of shyness: one cannot simply discard the veil once a modest deportment has been acquired, because the veil itself is part of what defines that deportment.” (pg. 158)