Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Egyptians

Abstract

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

Imagining an Ideal Husband: Marriage as a Site of Aspiration among Pious Somali Women in London

“…In contrast to this work, more recent analyses have turned away from an emphasis on discourse, to focus on the complexity of the everyday lives of young Muslims (Schielke 2010a, Marsden 2007, Osella and Soares 2010, Schielke and Debevec 2012, Deeb and Harb 2013. This work has distanced itself from Mahmood's concern with doctrinal debate and argumentation which, these scholars argue, portrays piety as a unilinear and coherent process sealed off from its context, and from other ideals and aspirations.…”

“…Schielke's (2010aSchielke's ( , 2010b work, for example, has been influential in shifting focus to the complexities of everyday forms of religiosity. He describes the ambivalent, and at times immoral, views and experiences of young men in a northern Egyptian villa ge.…”

“…I demonstrate how a focus on marriage debates as a site of aspiration enables us to connect these women's intimate imagined relations with self and other with their engagements with pious ideals and discourses, and with other values, desires, and norms. I thus bring to the fore the importance of intersubjectivity, and the processes of fantasy and the imagination, for our understandings of these young women's practice of Islam, and the work on piety and Muslim subjectivities more broadly (Mahmood 2005, Schielke 2010a, Deeb 2006, Deeb and Harb 2013.…”

“…Through "marriage talk" these young women debate and experiment with differe nt forms of knowledge 4 and various "moral registers" (Schielke 2010a), some of which are newly encountered, others not. These are employed to imagine novel relations to self and other (Moore 2011), and marriage, therefore, is also a privileged site from which to observe processes of change.…”

The social life of prayers – introduction

“…In order to do so it is vital to broaden the scope of enquiry from cultivation to the existential aspects of seeking protection and comfort in times of crisis, a time when prayers, more than constituting a moral self, are a way of acting upon the world (see also Mittermaier 2012). Here it is important also to focus on the subjects who are not equally invested in the religious labour such as prayer, or who are so only when particular issues are felt pressing or specific occasions invite and incite this practice (Schielke 2009;Simon 2009). Where the Foucauldian perspective is conducive in bringing out the individualising forces of discipline and techniques, this special issue wants to highlight the accompanying communalising force of prayer.…”