Moroccan Female Religious Agents: Old Practices and New Perspectives

179 Pages·2020·1.399 MB·English

by  Aziza Ouguir

Moroccan Female Religious Agents
Women and Gender
The Middle East and the Islamic World
Editors
Susanne Dahlgren
Judith Tucker
Founding Editor
Margot Badran
volume 17
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/wg
Moroccan Female
Religious Agents
Old Practices and New Perspectives
By
Aziza Ouguir
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: ʾal-Qarrawiyyῑn Mosque in Fez, Morocco. The first mosque and university in the world,
founded by a Sufi Moroccan woman. Photo: istockphoto.com/ugurhan.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2020009920
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1570-7628
ISBN 978-90-04-42988-8 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-42989-5 (e-book)
Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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This book is dedicated to my parents and my husband who believed
in me and never stopped to encourage and support me.
∵

Contents
Preface Ix
Acknowledgements x
Notes on Transliteration xi
1 Introduction: Theories and Concepts 1
1 A Review 2
2 Research Design 5
3 The Conceptual Background 9
2 Sufism and Gender 27
1 Moroccan Islam 27
2 Approaches to Moroccan Islam 31
3 Sufism in Relation to Gender 33
4 Women’s Mysticism in Islamic History 36
5 Islamic Hagiography 38
6 Moroccan Hagiography 41
7 Diversity, Hierarchy and Authenticity 44
3 Moroccan Female Saints 50
1 The Construction of Sainthood 50
2 Types of Agency 66
3 Women Saints: ʿAzīza ʾal-Saksāwiyya (14th Century), ʿĀʾisha ʿal-ʿIdrīsiya
(16th Century) and Fāṭima Muhdūz (19th Century) 70
4 Moroccan Women Venerators’ Reception of Historical Women
Saints 90
1 Devoted Women, Shrines and Saint Veneration 90
2 Murshidāt and Waʿiḍāt as Religious Agents 102
3 Murshidāt’s and Wāʿiẓāt’s Reception of Women Saints 108
4 Murshidāt’s and Wāʿiẓāt’s Attendees 110
viii Contents
5 Moroccan Feminist Activists’ Reception of Historical Women Saints 113
1 Moroccan Feminism 113
2 Islamist Feminist Associations 117
3 Moroccan Feminist Activists’ Reception of Women Saints 129
4 Islamist Feminism 137
Conclusion 141
Bibliography 151
Index 164
Preface
My encounter with my first interviewee whom I met at the shrine of Lalla ʿĀʾisha
ʾal-Baḥriya, a shrine on the outskirts of Azmour, and her words about wom-
en’s abilities to achieve a particular self left an enduring impression on me.
Her advanced age rendered her wise and knowledgeable, but her knowledge
emanated not from any kind of formal education, as she is illiterate, but from
her extensive experience with the practicalities of life. “Look!” she said to me,
pointing to the grave of ʿĀʾisha ʾal-Baḥriya. “These are the lovers of God … and
the lovers of people.” She chose these words because she felt my strong desire
for knowledge about the woman saint. My assumptions about approaching the
study of women saints were changed by this old woman’s words of wisdom.
Our conversation in the shrine inspired me to rethink my research questions.
It helped clarify the issues I would examine in this book, issues regarding the
paths undertaken by women Sufis to cultivate saintly personalities and the
challenges that these paths posed to the conventional gender norms. It became
clear to me that I would have to consider the way women saints undergo for-
mation of the self and what made them different from conventional women.
Furthermore, it aroused my curiosity about the reception of their legacy, par-
ticularly among contemporary Moroccan women in general and among to-
day’s Moroccan women activists. This book examines the way women’s agency
in the religious sphere transgressed conventional cultural norms and the way
their agency is portrayed in the discourses of Moroccan women. My analysis of
archival material and fieldwork data suggests that women saints as moral ex-
emplars impacted and continue to impact society. I invite the reader to reflect
on women Sufi saints and on the undefinable historical importance of their
development of counter-cultural social and religious personalities. The stories
of these historical female exemplars impel me to rethink the relationship be-
tween women and Islam.
Acknowledgements
This book has been made possible thanks to a grant of the Netherlands
Organization for Scientific Research. First and foremost, my thanks and grati-
tude go to my supervisors, Professor Fāţima Sadiqi and Professor Ruud Peters,
for their invaluable advice and scholarly supervision. My thanks are also due
to Dr. Karen Vintges for her pertinent supervision, advice, help and support.
I deeply thank her for her friendship as well as her generous hospitality over
the years. Many thanks also to the Universiteit van Amsterdam, especially
to the staff members of the Faculty of Humanities and the Department of
Philosophy; and to the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Dhar Mehraz
Fes for help during the years of my research. I am thankful to Dr. Jan Hoogland,
who is the director of the Dutch Institute in Morocco, and to its coordina-
tor Cynthia Plette for their assistance and encouragement. I am also thank-
ful to many family members and friends (Rachid Touhtouh, Hanane Dahour,
Yachoulty Mohamed) for their help and support throughout my work in this
research. I would as well like to thank my parents who taught me how to read
and write and for whose souls I ask God for mercy and blessings. I am indebted
to my husband, for many fruitful discussions on the various issues and themes
of this book and for accompanying me during my fieldwork in the mountains
of Morocco. His love and support have nourished this research. I would also
like to thank my daughters, sisters, brothers for their encouragements, love
and their continuous prayers to God to help me to successfully complete
my research.