Islamic piety movements critique treating religion as abstract values detached from daily practice

Evidence

These remarks may be interpreted as abiding by a discourse of cultural iden.. tity, one through which contemporary Egyptian Muslims seek to assert their religious distinctiveness, as expressed in styles of consumption, dress, and communication. I would like to propose an altern reading, however, that draws upon a set of debates taking place in mosque circles that express con.. cerns quite distinct from those of national or cultural identity. In this alterna.. tive reading, Hajja Samira’s comments can be understood as critiquing a prevalent form of religiosity that treats Islam as a system of abstract values that is to be cherished but that, nonetheless, remains inessential to the practi.. cal organization of day..to..day life. In Hajja Samira’s eyes, this is demonstrated by the fact that one cannot tell Muslims apart from either Christians or non.. believers, since the way Muslims organize their daily affairs gives little indica.. tion of their religious commitments. The daeiyat and the mosque attendees want to ameliorate this situation through the cultivation of those bodily apti.. tudes, virtues, habits, and desires that serve to ground Islamic principles within the practices of everyday living. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 319

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the analytic frame distinguishing the piety movement’s project from a mere identity-discourse reading.
• XREF: Rebuts the common reading of Islamic dress/consumption as cultural identity assertion — relevant to postcolonial-theory cluster on epistemic framing.
• QUESTION: How does this cultivation-of-virtue reading interact with liberal feminism’s frame of agency as resistance?