Review of "Feminist Theory, Embedment and the Docile agent: Some Reflection on the Egyptian Islamic Revival" written by Jannice Boddy and Saba Mahmood (original) (raw)
Related papers
Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion, 2006
This article argues that insomuch as feminism is both an analytical and politically prescriptive project, it aims not only to analyze the situation of women in different historical and cultural locations but also to transform their conditions of subjugation. Consequently, feminist scholarship tends to accord freedom a normative status, and to emphasize those instances that exemplify women's desire to be free from relations of subordination. An important consequence of this tendency in feminist scholarship is to limit the conceptualization of agency to acts that further the moral autonomy of the individual in the face of power. Through an examination of the women's piety movement in Egypt, this article argues for uncoupling the notion of agency from that of resistance as a necessary step in thinking about forms of desire and politics that do not accord with norms of secular-liberal feminism and its liberatory telos.
Islam and Its Impact on Women's Status and Role in Egypt
Gender relations in Islam has been the subject of serious debates among scholars in Egypt for many decades. One of the central questions was whether the status and role of women in Egypt were and are primarily influenced by Islam, or they should also be attributed to other social, economic, cultural and political factors. This study will look at the status and role of women in modern Egypt. It is commonly known that traditions based largely on religion (including Islam) and superstition are strong elements in the Egyptian culture. However, this study will show that the inequity in gender relations in modern Egypt should be more attributed to socioeconomic factors than to those religious or theological beliefs. On the other hand, one cannot overlook the formative influence of Islam on the roles of women and men in the country both in the past and in the present. The study suggests that attempts to reinterpret, reassess and re-actualize Islamic doctrines and practices pertaining to the equal status and roles of women in the context of Egyptian culture should also be considered in order to alter the women and men's perception on gender relations. Islam and its impact on women's status and role in Egypt
2015
Informed by postcolonial/Islamic feminist theory, this qualitative study explores how Egyptian feminists navigate the political and social influence of the West. The following meta-questions guided this research: How do women in Egypt who self-identify as feminists define feminism? How do they use this definition in their activism? How is Westernization influencing Egyptian feminists and their participation in national and political conflicts? Data sources were based on individual interviews. The findings indicate that although the phenomenon of Westernization in Egypt had both negative and positive influences on the Egyptian women’s liberation movement, it has caused major divisions between secular and Islamist Egyptian feminists. This study advances new ways of understanding how Westernization has penetrated into the Egyptian women’s liberation movement, how Egyptian feminists consider the notions of modernity and progress, and how Westernization has contributed to the division be...
"She did not come from his rib": Questioning Agency and Empowerment in Islamic Feminism
Vol. 2 No. 1 (2022): Gender, Religion and Feminism(s): An Interdisciplinary Approach, 2022
The aim of this article is to address the Western feminist gaze towards the Muslimwoman, a neologism miriam cooke 1 (2007) invented, which shares the same features of the Third World Woman depicted by Mohanty (1988). The idea is to shed light on productive ways of relating to religion when it comes to Islamic Feminism in particular. My argumentation proceeds as follows: after a brief introduction on the relationship between gender and religion nowadays, as a starting point for my analysis I will illustrate how religion can be employed as a source of agency and its empowering character. Agency has always been conceptualised as a form of resistance and subversion against power, however, other scholars suggest different perspectives. I will introduce and discuss them to deconstruct the idea that every religious woman needs to be saved. I will proceed by deconstructing the "Muslimwoman" neologism to provide a decolonial and intersectional reading of the relationship between gender and religion. To conclude, I will draw from the tools provided by Asma Lamrabet's reading of the Qur'an to explore the decolonial power of a pious but critical religious practice.
Islamic Feminism. Thinking Gender Justice as a Religious Knowledge Practice
in: Exploring Islam beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism Sociological Approaches, edited by Christel Gärtner & Heidemarie Winkel, 2021
The contribution aims to deepen the understanding of religion as a resource of feminist demands, namely beyond the perceived socio-historical divide to secular feminist notions of justice. This is discussed using the example of the Mashriq, and Egypt in particular. Islamic feminism is introduced as a heterogeneous field of theo-political approaches whose commonality is the break with androcentric knowledge production. Theoretically, I conceive the gender-equitable rereading of sacred texts and the law as a feminist knowledge practice. This is done from a phenomenological sociology of knowledge perspective, which can help make ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ visible as coexisting rather than mutually exclusive provinces of meaning and which aims to consolidate understanding of the way in which religion takes effect as a basic dimension of sensemaking in the everyday lifeworld. I suppose that, in the Mashriq, this province of meaning is naturally intertwined with secular modes of sensing the world. Socio-historically, I sort Islamic feminisms as part of a highly contested field of Islamic and secular knowledge practices. To this end, I frame my discussion of Islamic feminisms with a section on epistemological backgrounds of the relationship between feminism, religion, and the secular from a postcolonial perspective.