Muslimness on Demand: Critical Voices of Islam in Egypt

Abstract

Academic research on Islam in Egypt often focuses on the entanglement of religion and politics, mostly analysed with regard to public spaces. This article seeks to nuance the focus on pious activism and the idea that Islam is dominating everyday life in Egypt by taking individuals’ intimate non-religious perspectives into consideration. This research on individual pieties, on being religious and doing being religious, especially opened up the worlds of individuals who are different. Drawing on fieldwork with young Alexandrians this article considers the subtle voices that are currently becoming increasingly louder, which hint at tendencies away from mainstream Islam and express alternative options and different versions of belief. These silent, and often silenced, voices are heard only under exceptional circumstances, because they often coincide with criticism of present social and political conditions. Criticism that mixes religious, social, and political content is almost impossible to express publicly in Egypt. By focusing on these narratives, this article tries to understand the relationship between criticism of Islam and processes of individualization. In addition, it seeks to analyse these narratives in order to explore the dynamic character of the self in the realm of religiosities and non-religiosities.