Secular-liberal discomfort is a datum to interrogate, not a ground for judgment

Evidence

It is in light of this expanded notion of critique that, during the course of my fi I was forced to question the repugnance55 that often swelled up inside me against the practices of the mosque movement, especially those that seemed to circumscribe women’s subordinate status within Egyptian society. This is a sentiment that I share with many secular progressives and liberals who feel a deep sense of discomfort when confronted with socially conserva.. tive movements of the kind I describe here-a sentiment that is continually brought home to me both in the sympathy I receive from audiences who mar.. vel at my ability to withstand the asceticism of my informants’ lives and in the anger my argumentative framework ignites for its failure to condemn my in.. formants as “fundamentalists.” — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 265

Categorization

• QUESTION: Where does the felt repugnance against conservative women’s movements come from, and what does it hide about liberal presuppositions?
• XREF: Connects to the Islamophobia cluster by exposing how scholarly reception demands condemnation of informants as fundamentalists.