Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (22 page)

55
In 1961 Nasser literally made traditional religious institutions, such as the division ofReligious Endowments and the Islamic University of al..Azhar, parts of the state bureaucracy. Since then, the Egyptian govern has also established a variety of govern bodies to oversee mosque activities, bringing them under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Similarly, the termi. nology ofdaewa became an integral part ofthe offi enterprise of the state with the establishment in 1 961 of the Department of Daewa and Islamic Culture (Qism al..Daewa wal..Thaqafa al.- iyya), which continues to train preachers for appointment to state.- dministered mosques.

56
For example, both al..Banna and Sayyid Qutb (the ideologue of the militant wing of the Is..

lamist movement) were graduates of the Department of Dar al}Ulum (Faculty of Religious Sci.. ences) at Cairo University-a department that has produced a number of key activists of the Is.. lamist movement.

crystallized in the modern period. There are both theological and sociological bases for women's entrance into this fi Despite scant historical attention paid in the robust literature on amr bil maerii to the role of women (Cook 2000, 286), modem interpretations of daewa often draw upon those verses of the Quran that enjoin women and men equally to undertake this duty.
57
Many religious scholars (male and female) associated with the Islamic Revival maintain that the requirements for women's performance of daewa are similar to those incumbent upon men: the d�fiya must practice what she preaches, and her exhortations must be in accord with the Quran and the Sunna, un.. dertaken with wisdom and sincerity of the heart
( �ikma wa �sana) ,
and per.. formed for the purpose of pleasing God rather than for personal gain or popu.. larity (Z. al.-Ghazali 1994a, 1 996a;
al--Liwa:> al-- ami
1995 ; al.-Qaradawi 1992;

al.- a\ 1993
)
.58
Since the prevalent interpretation of daewa holds that all

those who are familiar with, and observant of, Islamic rules of conduct are qualifi to engage in this activity, the ability to practice daewa has come to depend not so much on doctrinal expertise as on one's moral uprightness and practical knowledge of the tradition-this is particularly signifi for women who have had little formal training in doctrinal issues.

Even though women's participation in the field of daewa has grown in re.. cent years, it is important to realize that this participation is structured by cer- tain limits. Foremost among these is the condition that women, while encour.. aged to carry out daewa among other women, are not allowed to do so among men. This is consistent with prohibitions forbidding women to deliver the Fri .. day sermon or to guide men in the performance of collective prayer. Hence the terms
khatTb
(one who delivers a sermon) and
ima
(one who leads the prayers) are reserved for men. Women preachers are markedly called
da eiyat
or
wa ei�at
(nominative for
wa e�'
meaning "to preach, admonish, or give good ad. vice"). The reasoning behind these restrictions is twofold. First is the general belief that since the Quran makes men the guardians of women, the latter should not serve in signifi positions of leadership over men.59 Second is the prevailing notion that a woman's voice can nullify an act of worship be.. cause it is capable of provoking sexual feelings in men-though it must be

57
The most widely cited Quranic verses on this topic are verses 71 and 35 from Surat al-- auba and Surat al--AQ. respectively. Many male leaders of the Islamic Revival support the participa.. tion of women in da�wa. See, for example, M. al-- 1996; al-- 1981; Abu Shuqqah 1995 , vol. 1.

5 8
In contrast, Cook reports that only two well-- medieval Sunni jurists-Ibn Hazam (d. 1064) and A. H. al.- (d. 11 11 }-specifi permitted women to undertake amr bil maeriif (Cook
2000,
485 ).

59
The pertinent Quranic verse here is from Surat al--Nisa!) "Men shall take full care of women with the bounties which God has bestowed more abundantly on the former than on the latter" (verse 35).

noted that this view is not shared across all Muslim societies, and in places like Indonesia some of the most popular and respected Quranic reciters are women ( see Hirschkind 2003 ).60 Women d�fiyat in Egypt today do not chal.. lenge these conditions of participation. Yet despite their adherence to these limits, as we shall see later, the daciyat continue to evoke skepticism, if not outright condemnation, from the religious establishment.

Women's entry into the fi d of dacwa is not solely the result of modem doc.. trinal innovations; it has also been facilitated by conditions of higher literacy and increased social mobility afforded to women in postcolonial Egypt. Since the 195 0s, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of women being educated at the secondary and higher levels, and women have entered the paid work force in large numbers. The years between 1 952 and 1970 witnessed a fi. teenfold increase in women's enrollment in universities, and this trend has continued into the 1 990s (Nelson 1984 ).61 Since 1961, when the University of al..Azhar began admitting female students, women have been able to spe.. cialize in religious subjects (such as Islamic j urisprudence, exegesis of the Quran and the Sunna, and so on), although there is still no College of Dacwa for women at the University of al..Azhar as there is for men. All of these de.. velopments 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 neces.. sarily equal) to men. In light of this, it is not surprising that a large percentage of the participants in the mosque movement are either students or working women employed in a range of fi , including education, medicine, govern.. ment bureaucracy, manufacturing, private enterprise, and so on.

The development of women's dacwa, therefore, is part of a shared history of transformations that have occurred in secular and religious institutions in the modem period. As we have seen, it is almost impossible to track changes in the concepts of dacwa and amr bil macrii that are purely "religious" in scope. There is perhaps no better way to illustrate the intertwined role that secular and religious institutions have played in the articulation of women's daewa

60
Despite the doctrinally contested nature of this position, many male religious fi who
sup
..
por
women's datwa also, paradoxically, espouse this position. These fi include not only promi.. nent intellectual Islamist fi (such as Abu Shuqqah, Muhammed al..Ghazali, and Yusuf al.. Qaradawi), but also the leaders of the various nonprofit religious organizations that have played a pioneering role in the establishment of datwa training institutes for women in Egypt. See, for ex..

ample, the statement made by the president of the nonprofit organization al.- ameiyya al..Shareiyya, which currently oversees the largest number ofwomen's daewa institutes in Cairo
(al
..
Nur
1 996).