PRAYER AND THE ISLAMIC REVIVAL: A TIMELY CHALLENGE

• Published in: International journal of Middle East studies Vol. 48; no. 2; pp. 293 - 312
• Main Author: Rock-Singer, Aaron
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01-05-2016
• Subjects: Academic discourse; Activism; Egypt; Graphs; Ideology; Islam; Mobilization; Narratives; Politics of the Press; Prayer; Public schools; Religion; Secularism; Social order; Speech acts; Egypt; Salafism; Islamism; piety; media; time/temporal
• ISSN: 0020-7438; 1471-6380
• DOI: 10.1017/S0020743816000052

This article traces the emergence of the early afternoon ẓuhr prayer as a key project of subject formation during the second half of the Anwar al-Sadat period (1976–81). Drawing on three Islamic magazines of differing ideological orientation (Muslim Brotherhood-Islamist, Salafi-Islamist, and state-sponsored), all containing letters to the editor and fatwa requests, it charts contestation among religious elites and the reception of their programmatic visions. Specifically, the article explores the performance of this daily prayer as a hybrid practice that disrupted the temporal and spatial claims of a state-sponsored bureaucratic order to produce national subjects within public schools and bureaucratic institutions, even as it reproduced the state's emphasis on temporal precision and social order. Based on these texts, this article challenges previous scholarly narratives that place Islamist projects of subject formation on the fringes of secularism and previous studies of Islamist mobilization that posit a separate social universe of Islamist activism.