| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores the piety/politics nexus by asking what it means when educated, urban Bangladeshi women who are embracing religion anew claim that their pursuit of piety, and the learning circles that inspire it, are apolitical. I explain this self-proclaimed apolitical stance through women's own accounts of why and how they maintain political neutrality. The article demonstrates that organizers of many Islamic discussion circles in Dhaka consciously strive to attain a certain political neutrality, while allowing whoever is interested to attend, irrespective of the latter's political affinities. This decision stems from an understanding of the lack of trust that accompanies organized religion in Bangladesh, and its alliance, in the national imaginary, with the explicit political agenda of the Jama'at-i Islami. The article provides an account of different discussion circle members' varied articulation of political neutrality and how they draw from different ideas and discourses about being publicly religious in their molding of the ideal, pious, Bangladeshi woman. To exemplify the pious self-fashioning of urban, educated, Bangladeshi women, I will recount the ways in which several women discussed the March 2009 Bangladesh Rifles mutiny-a highly politically charged event. Women's accounts of the mutiny serve to unify lesson attendees around the cultivation of piety. Contestations over national politics and political affinities are made secondary, as women focus on giving an ethical bend to the deeply personal, subjective and gendered experiences of being educated and upwardly-mobile in present day urban Bangladesh.
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