Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (21 page)

47
At one point, for example, Rida argues, "Calling to excellence and the doing ofgood and the forbidding of evil
[al-- 3ila al-- wa amr bil maeru,f wal-- ean al--
is a defi duty
ff r4 batm]
incumbent upon every Muslim" (Rida 1970, 35).

48
For a number of medieval theologians who are important to Salafi thought-such as Za- makhrashi, A. H. al..Ghazali, al.- zi, and Ibn Taymiyya-amr bil maeruf was a societal obligation (fan;! al.- ifaya). Well aware of the threat such a calling entailed to social order, they went to great lengths to spell out a number of conditions that had to be met in order to perform this obligation correctly (see Cook 2000, 13 1-32, 153-55, 364-65; Roest Crollius 1978, 267-7 1). Even though Rida refers to A. H. al..Ghazali's work extensively in his commentary, he departs from
A.
H. al.. Ghazali in treating the obligation as incumbent on every Muslim (fan;l aV� n).

49
Hasan al-- anna was a product of the Salafi school of thought: he inherited the editorship of Rashid Rida's journ
al..-
upon Rida's death and edited it until 1 940 (Skovgaard--

1997 , 156).

50
The Muslim Brotherhood was a part ofthe anticolonial struggle against the British, and had a relationship of mutual support with the Free Offi responsible for the 1 952 coup. But soon af.. ter the 1952 revolution, sharp diff developed between the Brothers and President Gamal Adbul Nasser, who led the coup. Nasser banned the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954 and jailed the majority of its members. Not until Anwar Sadat came into power in 1971 was the Brotherhood allowed to fu again, although offi it remains outlawed. For the early history of the Muslim Brotherhood (1928-1954), see R. Mitchell 1993 .

whose primary focus was on missionary activity among non..Muslims, al.. Banna directed his organizational efforts at the education and reform of fellow Muslims who, in his opinion, were becoming increasingly secularized and western under an indigenous leadership that had abandoned Islam in fa.. vor of Western values and lifestyles.51 Various aspects of al..Banna's critique continue to be echoed by participants in the mosque movement, and their pedagogical activities have given a new life to his reconstructive project.

In extending the classical meaning of da�wa, al..Banna incorporated many of the concepts and organizational strategies integral to the practice of mod.. em politics and governance. For example, in his writings and public speeches he addressed fellow Muslims as citizens whose collective project was to sustain the Egyptian nation as an integral part of the
umma
( the Muslim commu.. nity) .52 Similarly, the Muslim Brothers made the public spaces of urban life (cafes, clubs, and public squares) a key site of their da�wa activity, and used au.. ral and print media extensively to propagate their message.53 They engaged in trade union activities and established professional syndicates, which to this day form the backbone of the Muslim Brotherhood's popular activism. The Brothers successfully transformed mosques from spaces reserved for worship to, what
Banna described as "schools [for] the commoners, the popular uni.. versities and the colleges that lend educational services to the young and old alike" (al.-Banna, quoted in Abu Rabt 1 996 , 78 )-a legacy that continues to thrive in the role mosques are playing in the current Islamic Revival.

The fi of the da�iya emerged from the confl of two trends put into motion by reformers like al..Banna and the activities of the Muslim Brother..

51
Hasan al.. Banna held the Western..style education system (which had been gradually adopted since the late nineteenth century in Egypt) largely responsible for having turned indige.. nous elites into effi vehicles for the propagation of Western and secular values. In pointing to the effects of this system of education, al..Banna wrote: "They [Western powers] founded schools and scientific institutes in the very heart of the Islamic domain, which cast doubt and heresy into the souls of its sons and taught them to demean themselves, disparage their religion and their fatherland, divest themselves of their traditions and beliefs, and to regard as sacred any.. thing Western, in the belief that only that which had a European source could serve as a model to be emulated in this life" (al..Banna 1978, 28).

52
For example, see al..Banna's open letter to King Faruq I of Egypt and a number of leaders of the Muslim world (al..Banna 1978, 103-132).

53
Al..Banna wrote, "The methods of dacwa today are not those of yesterday. The dacwa of yes.. terday consisted of a verbal message given out in a speech or at a meeting, or one written in a tract or a letter. Today, it consists of publications, magazines, newspapers, articles, ordinary films, and radio broadcasting. All these have made it easy to infl the minds of all mankind, women as well as men, in their homes, places of business, factories and fi (al..Banna 1978,
46 ).
Note that even though the translator of al..Banna's work, Charles Wendell, translates
daewa
as "propa.. ganda," here
I
have retained the original word, which captures the wider sense in which the term is used.

hood. On the one hand, the interpretation of daewa/amr bil maerii as a reli.. gious duty that is incumbent upon every virtuous Muslim woman and man (far9 al..eain) further strengthened the general propensity toward the individ.. ualization of moral responsibility so characteristic of modem Islam ( al..Banna 1978, 80). The other trend that gained further ascendancy through al..Banna and his organizational activities was a trenchant critique launched against tra.. ditional religious education, in particular against religious scholars ( eulama�) and their institutions for making religion into a specialized fi d of knowledge that served only the interests ofthe ruling elite.54 This critique of the eulama' as a professional class only intensifi after independence from colonial rule when the state took over many institutions of religious learn and training, harn ssing their energies for its own nationalist project (see Gaff ey 1991; Skovgaard..Petersen 1997 ; Zeghal 1999 ). 55 It was in the· context of a growing perception that scholars and preachers trained within the govern .. administered religious institutions were no more than state functionaries and bureaucrats that there arose the fi of the self..trained preacher/d�t who took on daewa as a vocation rather than as a form of employment. Unencum.. bered by the patronage of the state, the daeiya could claim to act and speak in the name of pious commitment and not as a condition of his bureaucratic re.. sponsibility to the modern ng state. Signifi ly, it is not an accident that it is secular universities-!l the state..run Islamic University of al..Azhar where the eulama� are usually trained-that have produced the most prominent daeiyat (both male and female ) of the last century. 56

It should come as no surprise that women have entered the fi d of religious pedagogy under the rubric of
daewa, especially in light of how the practice has

54
Th critique had already been initiated by the Salafi thinkers, but gained a new valence through the work of the Muslim Brotherhood (Skovgaard..Petersen 1997, 155).