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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Mystic Saints, Motherly Virtues
| Panel |
48. Women, Men, and Faith: Reconfigurations of Authority
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| Paper ID | 147 |
| Author(s) |
Schielke, Samuli
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | Sufi groups and the cult of Sufi saints have historically offered a field of religious activity that has been more easily accessible for women than other fields such as prayer in the mosques, legal scholarship, and preaching. Curiously enough, while the past decades have seen some, albeit modest, opening of the latter fields for female participation, even leadership, in Sufi milieu the participation of women has become subjected to strong criticism and pressure at the same time. Looking at the story of al-Hagga Siham, the charismatic leader of a middle-class Sufi group in Alexandria, I try to trace the specific styles of leadership and participation that make a significant presence of women possible in the first place, at the factors that make their participation problematic from the point of view of public religious discourses, and at the strategies that women like Siham employ to balance in an often precarious field between devoted followers and a sceptical, even hostile public. Two interrelated yet contradicting trends, one of a moralist opposition to women’s public participation in religious rituals, and another of increasing female presence in the professional and public sphere on the condition of a moral and civil discipline, shape the possibilities of action for Sufi women. They can either act in opposition to these trends from a socially marginal position, or - as Siham does - adapt their style to these requirements through the display of middle-class standards of piety and professional status in combination of matriarchal and spiritual leadership while delegating formal symbols of religious leadership to male followers. |
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