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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Faith, love, and despair: Contradictions of morality and religiosity among young Egyptians
| Panel |
14. New Modes of Sociality in Muslim Africa
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| Paper ID | 693 |
| Author(s) |
Schielke, Samuli
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The projects of modernity and Islamic moral reform that have gained a hegemonic position in contemporary Egypt by the outset of the 21st century, strongly advocate discipline, clarity, and perfection, be it in religious and moral, or ideological and administrative issues. In everyday lives of young men from the Nile Delta region strict Salafi-inspired religiosity and the stark progressive faith of developmentalist modernity stand in a contradiction to earlier understandings of religiosity and morality that offer more space for ambivalence of negotiation. In practice, the projects of crating comprehensive moral and civic virtues compete and coexist with other, less total moral registers such as community obligations, good character, romantic love, and self-realisation. This paper will focus on the unintended consequences of the attempt to replace ambiguous everyday morality by comprehensive perfection and discipline, often leading to more fragmentation rather than perfection. Doing so, it will also critically discuss the focus on committed activists and the analytical preference for perfection rather than ambivalence in many current ethnographies of Islam. Finally, it will try to develop ways to think about the long-term effects of the current wave of religious euphoria on the people and societies involved in it. |
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