Saba Mahmood: Secularization, Practice, and the “Ethical Turn”

Abstract

[Extract] IN HER TRAGICALLY short life, Saba Mahmood (1961–2018) established an international reputation for her critique of conventional secularization theories, her appreciation of religious practices, and her contribution to the so-called “ethical turn” in religious studies. Apart from edited works and numerous articles, she published two major volumes: Politics of Piety. The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2005; second edition 2012) and Religious Difference in a Secular Age. A Minority Report (2015). Politics of Piety is probably the more celebrated work. It was simultaneously provocative and influential. Based on her ethnographic study of a piety movement in Cairo, it describes the pious woman (the da’iya) who calls on the community to follow the true path of Islam. In modern Islam, these mosque movements call the faithful to a greater and more comprehensive piety. They were politically important in a context where educated scholars and preachers who had been trained in government-administered religious institutions were “no more than state functionaries and bureaucrats” (Mahmood 2012, 64). Against this elite, there emerged the self-trained preacher for whom da’wa (call, invitation, appeal, or summons) was a vocation rather than paid employment.