A divine cosmopolitanism? Religion, media and imagination in a socially divided Cairo

Abstract

With a focus on young Egyptian women, this article explores the different ways it becomes possible to reconcile a Muslim identity with a cosmopolitan openness towards the world. Informed primarily by transnational television, these women articulate a divine cosmopolitan imagination through which they form multiple allegiances to God, the nation and global culture simultaneously. Thus, a close analysis of their regular consumption of transnational television helps challenge linear and somewhat naturalized preconceptions of how Muslims articulate perceptions of self and others. In the articulation of both their cosmopolitan imagination and religious identities, young Egyptian women have become skilled negotiators, moving within and between mediated and non-mediated discourses. They move physically within a grounded place that sets the moral boundaries for bodily existence, yet shift subjectively between disembedded spaces of mediated representation, often providing new contexts for meaning and inclusivity. The result, for young Egyptian women, is a divine cosmopolitan imagination.