In Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Saba Mahmood (2005) analyzes particular aspects

of Egyptian society in light of increasing pressures from secularizing social, economic and political forces. The focus of her analysis rests upon how womens lives have been directly affected by these forces, and how women in Egyptian society have searched for and achieved means to negotiate their way as autonomous agents in a world that has been generally construed by Western secularists and liberal feminists as one of oppression and subordination to patriarchal norms. In her approach Mahmood troubles assumptions that Western progressivist scholars, like herself, have made about practices adopted by Islamic women, practices which have been perceived as forms of passivity, docility, marginalization, and subjectification constricted to so called traditional and conservative social and religious settings. Moreover, Mahmood challenges liberal notions such as freedom, agency and resistance, placing them in their historical and cultural contingency. She argues that ideas of freedom from norms and liberty as political ideals are new to the modern world, and she wonders how could systems of power, that do not fit the liberal model, be analyzed or mediated if we recognized that these liberal discourses have been historically constructed and naturalized over time. Furthermore, Mahmood invites the reader, and herself to critically examine the formation of normative discourses, both liberal and non-liberal. The model of critique she proposes is more self-reflective, rather than a form of dismantling each opposing argument. Critique, in her view is most powerful when it leaves open the possibility that we might also be remade in the process of engaging anothers worldview and when we turn the critical gaze upon ourselves, to leave open the possibility that we may be remade through an encounter with the other (Mahmood, 2005: 36-37). It could be

argued that she proposes an ontologic model of understanding the world, and of how normative discourses, or even notions of agency, come into being, rather than a teleology of secular rationalization, through which sets of rules and norms, viewed as culturally specific, are believed to be equally followed by everyone. As the title of the book suggests, central to Mahmoods analysis is the notion of piety. Together with its associated social or religious practices, piety has become an uncomfortable topic of debate and reflection among western progressivists and feminist theorists, because it has been historically constructed to invoke the idea of subordination and subjugation of women. Among most Egyptian women, and particularly among the women Mahmood worked with, virtues of modesty and piety are both created and expressed through the veiled body. The resurgence of Islamic forms of sociability, such as donning the veil, has been seen by scholars of Islamic movements as a form of resistance against the increased prevalence of western values in Muslim societies, and against secularizing and modernizing projects undertaken by postcolonial Muslim political regimes (Mahmood, 2005). In her analysis Mahmood emphasizes that an important distinction should be made between the notions of agency and resistance. She draws attention to the fact that scholars have focused too much on identifying resistance, romanticizing it as a creative force of the human spirit to resist normative discourses and coercion. Mahmood argues that when resistance is simply read as a refusal towards hegemony, this interpretation narrows the possibility to reflect upon how systems of power work. Furthermore, drawing on Lila Abu-Lughods work and selfcriticism, Mahmood points out that notions of womens resistance have been attributed with forms of consciousness or politics that are not part of their experience, born out of the feminist

discourse itself (cf. Abu-Lughod [1990:47], as cited by Mahmood, 2005:8). As Mahmood puts it, this predicament stems out from the difficult task to locate clear forms of womens agency in a male dominated world. She further invites us to move away from the binary discourse of resistance and subordination, because it leaves out important aspects of womens lives and realities. It is possible then to interpret that rather than trying to escape from hegemonic power relations, women reinscribe alternative forms of power, therefore acts of resistance should be situated within fields of power, rather than outside of them (cf. Abu-Lughod [1990], as cited by Mahmood, 2005:9). The stance Mahmood takes, when analyzing the piety movement, is that of political responsibility. While remaining faithful to the needs and desires of the women she worked with, Mahmood attempts to understand and reflect upon her own and her fellow scholars assumptions and biases. Mahmood confesses that one problem she experienced during her work was the sentiment of discomfort associated with conservative practices that conferred a subordinate status within Egyptian society to the women involved in the mosque movement, a sentiment she shares with many secular and liberal scholars. The strategy she adopts to overcome this problem is avoiding denunciatory models of characterizing Islamist movements in todays academia as fundamentalist. Mahmood argues that these models limit the understanding of the complexity of practices, and more importantly, of what makes these practices powerful, and meaningful. She further encourages the reader to look with more humility at what feminist politics really is, and remember that feminism is contingent to its historical and cultural context, within which it needs to be continuously (re)negotiated.

The piety movement among certain womens circles in Egyptian society cannot be looked at from a single angle, for example from a political, religious, social, or ethical perspective alone. Nor should it be seen as simply an act of resistance towards western cultural and political hegemony, or furthermore against masculine authoritative discourses. Rather, practices such as veiling or religious lessons taught by women to women, should be considered as integral parts of an entire manner of existence, meant to cultivate the virtues of modesty and piety in all lifes aspects (Mahmood, 2005). Moreover, the piety movement could be regarded as an act of critical agency, because through self and embodied powers prescribed by the religious discourse, the women participating in this movement define themselves in terms of individual responsibility. Mahmood argues that her analysis is not hermeneutical, whereas certain actions or utterances are analyzed in terms of the meanings they convey. Rather, she looks at how particular kinds of subjects are formed within the limits of certain discursive frameworks. Drawing from Foucaults analysis of ethical formation, and particularly from his notion of the paradox of subjectivation, Mahmood points out that agency, or the capacity of action is made possible through specific relations of subordination. By using the same religious discourse that ascribed them a subordinate status to male authority, family, and above all to God, the women participating in the piety movement, create the space and means through which they can autonomously act upon themselves. Furthermore, by applying the Aristotelian notion of habitus to the practices women promote for cultivating a virtuous life, Mahmood argues that bodily behaviour endows the self with certain kinds of capacities that provide the substance from which the world is acted upon (2005:27).

The womens mosque movement, and the pietists have received extensive criticism from members of the Islamic revival movement, who argue that the former privatizes the world of worship instead of using either formal or informal lessons to create a certain kind of political and nationalist activism among its members (Mahmood, 2005). Indeed, each of these movements are characterized by different teleologies, and by distinguishing the aims of each it could be possible to read in what particular way the piety movement becomes a political tool for its participants. The Islamist revival movement was born as a form of resistance against western secularizing forces. Mahmood notes that within two decades, Egypt witnessed at least 330 percent increase in the number of mosques built overall (2005:58, fn.). Within this space, the practice of dawa, or religious lessons, has been institutionalized, socializing the participants into the moral conduct encouraged by Quranic teachings. Overall, the Islamic revival movement aimed at creating institutional structures and sensibilities able to resist western cultural and political hegemony, and strengthen Islamic values and identities (Mahmood, 2005). In this effort, donning the veil was seen as a cultural and nationalistic effort. However, women participating in the mosque movement, which was born out of Islamic revival movement itself, do not look at the practice of veiling as an act of resistance against secular forces, but rather as a way to achieving a certain state of being, that of piety, and modesty (Mahmood, 2005). In a sense, it could be argued that women attempt to reestablish a sense of social cohesiveness, and use dawa as an instrument of moral reform to cultivate a virtuous life for themselves and the people around them. Furthermore, it could be argued that the piety movement acts a a political tool for the women who participate in it, because by using the same language as that which is enforced upon them,

women gain agency and act as autonomous individuals within a system that prescribed to them a subordinate status. To end her discussion, Mahmood draws attention to the dangerous links between secularfeminist discourse and war politics. She argues that when feminism becomes a politically prospective project it constructs images of women whose lives contrast the emancipatory visions of feminist discourses. For example, the knowledge about Afghanistan and its women were essentialized to the image of burka, which became a symbol of oppression in contrast to ideas of freedom in the liberal world. During Bush administration these feminist discourses became part of one imperialist project of our time, conferring legitimacy to bombing Afghanistan, in the name of democracy, freedom from oppression, and emancipation (Mahmood, 2005). Mahmood asks what stance should western feminists take towards non-liberal discourses. She also wonders whether feminist scholarship provides the tools or lens through which movements such as womens mosque or the piety movement could be translated into nonwesternized narratives. While these questions provide a challenge to finding an immediate answer, they nevertheless invite the reader to reflect upon how notions of freedom and agency could be understood and mediated between unfamiliar cultural contexts. Furthermore, they provide the means to critically reflect the ways in which we, and the people we call the other look upon the world we all live in.

References: Saba Mahmood 2005 The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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