{"id":4389,"date":"2009-08-13T00:00:21","date_gmt":"2009-08-13T08:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muslimahmediawatch.org\/?p=4389"},"modified":"2009-08-13T00:00:21","modified_gmt":"2009-08-13T08:00:21","slug":"an-enchanted-modern-lara-deebs-anthropologic-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/2009\/08\/an-enchanted-modern-lara-deebs-anthropologic-study\/","title":{"rendered":"An Enchanted Modern: Lara Deeb’s Anthropologic Study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It is very rare to find a book that deals predominantly with Muslim women that does not have the words, \u201cwomen\u201d, \u201cMuslim\u201d, and most significantly \u201cveil\u201d in the title, especially when hijab is a recurring topic in the book. An Enchanted Modern<\/em> by Lara Deeb immediately gets 10 points from me, for breaking the \u201cbehind\/beyond\/under\/inside\/uncovering the veil\u201d title clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n

\"k8211\"<\/a>The subjects of the book (whom Deeb refers to as the \u201cpious modern\u201d) give the reader an insider\u2019s perspective into their lives as Lebanese Shi\u2019a Muslims who consider themselves at once pious and modern\u2014contrary to popular belief, which holds that Islam and modernity are incompatible. One of the book\u2019s aims is to dislodge that notion, and the other is to show that political Islam is not static, as it is often portrayed when Western media lumps different movements and groups together (like the Taliban in Afghanistan with the Hezbollah in Lebanon). Deeb effectively critiques these stereotypes using dialogues and narratives of the women she meets, creating an engaging and lively discussion. For example, in the book\u2019s introduction, Deeb quotes one women affiliated with Hezbollah as saying, \u201cI can\u2019t believe this, what is this backwardness!\u201d in response to live television images of the Taliban destroying the Buddha statues.<\/p>\n

Although Deeb says she did not intend to focus primarily on the lives of women, they became a central focus because<\/p>\n

the status and image of Muslim women was one of the most consistently arising and contentious issues that emerged during my field research, in people\u2019s passionate and often unsolicited responses to western discourses about Muslim women. Women\u2019s lives are critical because of both local and international concern, as well as local concern about international concern.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The women of Deeb\u2019s research are particularly confused as to the above-mentioned \u201cinternational concern\u201d, as one woman expressed:<\/p>\n

all these Westerners come to interview us because they are looking to see if Islam is modern, and \u201chow women are treated\u201d or \u201cwhat the women do\u201d has become the sign of which cultures are modern.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Deeb seeks to move away from this universal standard of measure, based upon a particular liberal feminist notion of emancipation and liberation. Instead, she seeks to give voice to an emerging \u201cpious modern\u201d class of Muslim women who intertwine spiritual and material progress to form a new alternative model for ideal womanhood.<\/p>\n

After setting the scene of her field work, which was done in Al-Dahiyya, the book moves on to trace the path of Shi\u2019a revival in Lebanon, providing relevant background information to the situation of religious Lebanese Shi\u2019as today, who have come from being a severely marginalized sector of society into a fully institutionalized one. One particular scholar, Ayatollah Fadlullah, a senior Shi\u2019a cleric and marja\u2019<\/em><\/a>, who is considered one of the highest religious authorities worldwide, is quoted throughout the book as the epitome of the pious modern for his practicality, appeal to logic, and especially, his egalitarian views.<\/p>\n

Fadlullah\u2019s followers also appreciate his reformist views on Shi\u2019a religious history and on gender. With regard to gender, as we will see, Fadlullah emphasizes the necessity of women participating actively in their community. He has also stated that women may become mujtahidas<\/em> (a Muslim who makes up his\/her own ruling on the permissibility of an Islamic law) and even marjas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Deeb characterizes veiling as a symbol of public piety, for obvious reasons, but sets the record straight: not all religious women cover, and not all covered women are necessarily religious. She categorizes the many different dress codes found in Al-Dahiyya, subtly pointing to the plurality of Muslim women. Deeb notes that veiling paralleled the mobilization of Shi\u2019a society, and that \u201cwomen\u2019s increased veiling has been accompanied by a similar increase in women\u2019s public participation\u201d. In the same breath, Deeb argues that women do not veil to facilitate their participation, but rather, that veiling and participation simultaneously symbolize spiritual progress.<\/p>\n

Deeb also looks at the role of Zaynab , the sister of Imam Hussein and granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H), and points to her legacy as the reason for women\u2019s public participation and community service in Al-Dahiyya. Public participation is seen as a religious duty for the pious modern. Deeb describes the time she spent with women volunteers and women-run social organizations and gives testimonies of many women and their reasons for their involvement in the social sector.<\/p>\n

Women combat external stereotypes about themselves as nonmodern in the same ways that they confronted patriarchal norms in their community. They drew upon women\u2019s jam\u2019iyyas<\/em> (organizations) as examples, emphasized interpretations of Islamic texts that highlight gender equity, and highlighted Zaynab\u2019s model.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought it best to let the book speak for itself on this, in the form of one of Deeb\u2019s interlocutors, Hajjeh Amal, a prominent member of a social organization,<\/p>\n

And this fight is not only an internal one. We are also fighting the outside image of Muslim women. We admit that there are some bad images out there, of very oppressed Islamic women, but this is not the authentic\/true Islam. We want to represent authentic Islam and to show that iltizam (commitment) goes along with being cultures and educated. We have no examples, because the examples are either oppressed women or of western women who are equal to men in everything\u2026 our goals as women are to improve these images of Muslim women within our society that thinks that women are less than men, and to change the image of the oppressed Muslim women that exists outside our society. This work is part of our religious duty, because woman is the example of everything. A culture is judged by the level of its women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A personal favourite of mine, which may seem rather amusing to non-Muslims, is the issue of handshaking with members of the opposite gender. I especially could relate to this, me being the \u201cnon-shaking\u201d type. Ridiculous as it may seem, I appreciated the way Deeb did not trivialize the matter, but gave it due respect and seriousness.<\/p>\n

On the whole, this book is a milestone in the genre of Muslim women. Deeb manages to present the lives of Muslim women in Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs with honesty and sincerity. She does not once display a \u201csaviour\u201d mentality, or claim to be an authority on the lives of Muslim women. She also does not export her findings to the rest of the Muslim women in the world, and avoids over-obsession with veiling, so common amongst non-Muslim writers. She takes the views of her interlocutors seriously, and does not impose her own standards on them. I only wish she had focused on some other aspects of Al-Dahiyya\u2019s women\u2019s lives, such as their role in the workplace, politics and public gender relations.<\/p>\n

This book, thankfully, did not pretend to be a study of all Muslim women, everywhere, but a look into the lives of one Muslim community, a particularly neglected one\u2014that of Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs. The lives of these Muslim women might not be perfect, but the voicing of their achievements are equally as important as the voicing of the suffering of other Muslim women, elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is very rare to find a book that deals predominantly with Muslim women that does not have the words, \u201cwomen\u201d, \u201cMuslim\u201d, and most significantly \u201cveil\u201d in the title, especially when hijab is a recurring topic in the book. An Enchanted Modern by Lara Deeb immediately gets 10 points from me, for breaking the \u201cbehind\/beyond\/under\/inside\/uncovering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[112,740,752,855,1058,1251,1252],"class_list":["post-4389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-booksmagazines","category-culturesociety","tag-an-enchanted-modern","tag-lara-deeb","tag-lebanon","tag-modern","tag-pious","tag-shia","tag-shii"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Enchanted Modern: Lara Deeb's Anthropologic Study<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It is very rare to find a book that deals predominantly with Muslim women that does not have the words, "women", "Muslim", and most significantly "veil"\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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