For these Muslim women outward bodily practice is the means of acquiring virtue

Evidence

In contrast, for the women I worked with, this relationship between interiority and exteriority was almost reversed: a modest bodily form ( the veiled body) did not simply express the self’s interiority but was the means by which it was acquired. Since the mosque participants regarded outward bodily markers as an ineluctable means to the virtue of modesty, the body’s precise movements, behaviors, and gestures were all made the object of their efforts to live by the code of modesty. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1091

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the common Western interiority-first model of ethics; echoes the body-work claims in the soundscape/deep listening reading list about how practice shapes the self.
• DEFINE: Distinguishes the ‘expressive’ model of the body (interiority expressed in form) from ‘acquisitional’ model where bodily form produces the interior virtue.