Why read Politics of Piety?

Book cover of Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Book description

Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Politics of Piety as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Romina Istratii

Author

Saba Mahmood’s book is an intellectually stimulating and insightfully written study of a grassroots women’s mosque movement in Cairo, Egypt.

Speaking to a North American audience, Mahmood challenged secular-liberal theorizations of human agency and views that depicted Muslim women in patriarchal societies as without agency. Her nuanced and multi-dimensional study evidenced a considerably more complex picture of moral choice, agency, and Islamist politics that centered on the women’s own understandings and interpretation of a complex religious and political landscape.

It is Mahmood’s balanced and reflexive approach that makes this book a deeply educational study for students and scholars alike.

From Romina's list on The best books to understand gender, religion, and domestic violence through non-Western eyes.