Islamic revival found wide middle-class support, not just among the dispossessed
Evidence
Most surprising for feminists of my generation was the fact that this movement was not limited to the marginalized or the dispossessed, but found active and wide support among the middle classes who increasingly conjoined a critique of their emulation of Western habits and lifestyles with a renewed concern for living in accord with Islamic social mores. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 20
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Challenges a secular-leftist assumption echoed in The Reluctant Fundamentalist about religion as a lower-class or reactionary force.
- SHARE: Worth flagging to anyone who still holds the ‘religiosity is a refuge of the marginalized’ assumption in political analysis.
Related
- Islamic revivalism attracted middle classes through critique of Western lifestyles (similarity 0.96)
- Leftists explained religious revival through ignorance, Saudi influence, and regime mimesis (similarity 0.81)
- Women’s mosque teaching is historically unprecedented in Egypt and reshaped male-centered Islamic pedagogy. (similarity 0.81)
- Progressive leftists explained Islamic revival as ignorance or foreign imposition (similarity 0.80)
- The Islamic Revolution was fundamentally a poor people’s revolution (similarity 0.79)
- Modernizing reforms created the secular middle class that displaced the ulama (similarity 0.79)
- Early Islamic revivalism was a middle-class response to colonial threat (similarity 0.78)
- Secular-liberal discomfort is a datum to interrogate, not a ground for judgment (similarity 0.78)
- Progressive Muslim scholarship can coexist with patriarchal premises about female modesty. (similarity 0.78)