Samuli S chielke Zentrum Moderner OrientFor young men in the northern Egyptian village of Nazlat al-Rayyis, 1 the holy month of Ramadan is a privileged time for football. Every afternoon before fast-breaking time, youths gather to play at schoolyards or other open spaces. At the secondary school, a Ramadan tournament of local amateur clubs attracts up to a hundred spectators, who sit from early afternoon until shortly before sunset in the shade, watching the usually two or three consecutive matches that take place in an afternoon. I was amazed at first by this display of what seemed to me an extreme exercise of physical endurance in face of a fasting that involves complete abstinence from food, drink, smoking, and sex from dawn to sunset. But when I discussed the subject with the young men, they said that playing football during the hours before fast-breaking is not very arduous at all. On the contrary, concentrating on the game makes one forget the feelings of hunger and thirst. 2 The hours before the fast-breaking can be long, and male students and civil servants especially often have a lot of free time in Ramadan.j rai_1540 23.. 38 Football is not only about killing time, however. It is also seen as a form of the sociality (lamma) and amusement (taslîya) that characterize Ramadan in Egypt as much as fasting and praying do. Despite the ascetic character of fasting, Ramadan in Egypt is surrounded by a festive atmosphere. Streets are decorated with flags, colourful strips of paper, lights, and lanterns. In the evenings -especially towards the end of Ramadan -people invite friends and relatives, the cafés are full, and in the cities a veritable season of cultural events characterizes the second half of the month. But festive as they may be, Ramadan gatherings nevertheless express a spirit of religious and moral discipline. Forms of entertainment deemed immoral or un-Islamic -flirting and making out, consumption of alcohol and cannabis, pornography -largely stop during the holy month. In the cities, bars are closed. In the villages, internet cafés are empty. The trade in cannabis that otherwise flourishes in cities and villages alike reaches a seasonal low. Other forms of entertainment that are not seen as immoral as such are suspended in Ramadan because they have no place in the rigid schedule of fasting. Popular celebrations such as saints-day festivals (mûlids) and weddings are not Islam, Politics, AnthropologyEdited by Filippo Osella and Benjamin Soares

So much has been written in recent years on Muslims who consciously and consistently aim to be pious, moral, and disciplined that the vast majority of Muslims who – like most of humankind – are sometimes but not always pious, at times immoral, and often undisciplined have remained in the shadow of an image of Islam as a perfectionist project of self‐discipline. Taking the month of Ramadan, as a time of exceptional piety, as a starting‐point, this paper tries to account for the different views and experiences that young people of Muslim faith in a northern Egyptian village articulate, the models of action and subjectivity they have access to, and the contradictory outcomes that the Islamic revivalist ideal of perfection has for some of them. Résumé Il a tellement été question, ces dernières années, de musulmans consciemment et constamment soucieux d’être pieux, moraux et disciplinés que la grande majorité des musulmans, qui sont parfois pieux mais pas toujours, parfois immoraux et souvent indisciplinés, comme le reste de l’humanité, est restée dans l’ombre de cette image de l’islam comme projet d’autodiscipline perfectionniste. En prenant pour point de départ le Ramadan, période de piété particulière, l’auteur tente de rendre compte de différents points de vue exprimés par les jeunes musulmans d’un village du Nord de l’Égypte, des modèle d’action et de subjectivité qui leur sont ouverts et des résultats contradictoires que donne pour certains d’entre eux l’idéal de perfection portée par l’idée d’un renouveau islamique.

In contrast to a line of studies that inquire how Muslims try to solve the problem of living piously in a society dominated by materialist tendencies and secular rationality, in this article I turn the question around and problematize the will to live piously and the focus on selfdiscipline. In everyday lives of young men from the Nile Delta region, the Islamic revivalist project of creating comprehensive moral and civic virtues uneasily coexists with other less total aims and ideals, notably community and family bonds, romantic love, success and selfrealization. I attempt to take these contradictions seriously and dwell on the ways people live them and their attempts to make sense of their lives. In particular, I look at the ways people employ the normative registers of religion, love and aspiration in their lives, the promises each of these ideals entail and the options that are available should any of these promises fail.

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In this article, I explore how the festive culture of mulids, Egyptian Muslim saints‐day festivals, troubles notions of habitus, public space, and religious and civic discipline that have become hegemonic in Egypt in the past century and how state actors attempt to “civilize” mulids by subjecting them to a spectacular, representative order of spatial differentiation. I argue that habitus must be understood as a political category related to competing relationships of ideology and embodiment and that the conceptual and physical configuration of modern public space is intimately related to the bodily and moral discipline of its users. [veneration of saints, festivals, habitus, public space, state, Islam, Egypt]