1. Of Chickens and Modern Subjects

Faraz Sheikh closes his monograph with the question: “what do industrially farmed chickens, the Internet, Usain Bolt, a professor writing a book and life in the modern world all have in common?” (166). The answer, Sheikh suggests, is speed. Despite two years of quarantined existence, modern living moves faster and harder even for those privileged enough to endure the public health and militarized crises of the last two years. The demands and perils of fast-paced existence, Sheikh notes, leads us to “rightly tell each other to slow down because our sense that our humanity just can’t keep up with the life lived at the pace we often feel compelled to sustain in order to survive, let alone flourish and be successful” (ibid.). Compulsion is antithetical to agency; the need for speed compromises flourishing.

I read Sheikh’s book as a challenge to these realities through his careful and compelling study of two Muslim writers addressing different contexts with common questions. Both the ninth-century al-Harith b. Asad al-Muhasibi and the twentieth-century Bediuzzaman Said Nursi address times in social and political change, forging different responses to the question of how to live. Both also recognize the fragility and struggles involved in daily life. In these struggles, Sheikh notes, “the discourses of subject formation we looked at in this book suggest that real change happens more slowly” (166–167). The tempo of ethical formation is slower, deliberate, and daily. And Sheikh compellingly unfolds how ideal Muslim subject formation includes self-examination (Chapter 1), embodied practices (Chapter 2), reflective beliefs (Chapter 3), and collective relations (Chapter 4). This is not a perfectionist or individualist ethics, but an ethics resonant with my own fourth-century Christian ascetic friend, John Cassian, “an ethics for fractured selves in shifting worlds.”1

2. Religious Ethics for Historians and Theorists

With Forging Ideal Muslim Subjects, Sheikh offers a vital contribution to the study of religion. He does this in two registers, attending to two contemporary audiences: historians of Islam and religious ethicists. Sheikh’s analysis of ethical formation through the ninth-century Muhasibi and the twentieth-century Nursi (notably the “New Said” perspective of Nursi’s later work) illuminates ethical formation in categories that Sheikh argues have been underappreciated by historians of Islam. Sheikh challenges the tendency to read these Muslim scholars in either legalistic or mystical terms. He considers ethical formation as pursued by both Muhasibi and Nursi as refusing reduction to either code-based moralities or hyper-individualist mystical union.

Instead, he considers the dialectics of self and social formations for Muhasibi and Nursi as two figures who seek ways of living in times of social, political, and economic change. By taking up the granular and practical contexts for the writings of Muhasibi and Nursi, Sheikh calls for religious ethicists to counter tendencies to universalism of moral judgment or particularism of contextual embeddedness. He calls ethicists to see that conceptual analysis operates—perhaps at its best—in relation to contextually and historically embedded subjects addressing the particular exigencies of their times. Sheikh admirably expands the range of Islamic practices and forms of life within political and social frameworks, yet without collapsing these forms into monolithic notions of “Islam.”

3. Toward a Technologies of Self

Sheikh contributes to a religious ethics that is comparative and historically anchored in his analyses of ninth- and twentieth-century figures who are galvanized by shared questions about how to live. In Sheikh’s own terms, this requires adopting and adapting categories of analysis on subject formation drawn from French philosopher Michel Foucault. Using Foucault’s analytics of technologies of the self, Sheikh interprets his two figures’ pursuits and practices beyond legalist and mystical frameworks alone. Sheikh affirms the multiplicities of constructions of “ideal Muslim subjectivity” through a robust hermeneutical engagement, instead of assuming a meta-perspective which dangerously inscribes a singular ideal stripped of contexts and practices.

The tacit framing of Sheikh’s book invites the reader into his inquiry and sets the stakes for learning how to “think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known” in the language of Foucault.2 Sheikh draws from the ethos of Foucault’s late work on ethics as the relation of self-to-self considered through technologies of the self, “which can be interchangeably rendered as intellectual or spiritual exercises or, as I often refer to them in this book, discursive practices” (21). Sheikh draws from religious ethics a methodology where descriptive, evaluative, and conceptual forms of analysis can be parsed yet also converge. These conceptual readings draw particularly from Foucault’s technologies of the self through the framing by Arnold Davidson as well as Pierre Hadot’s conception of discursive formations.3 While I question just how much Hadot’s spiritual exercises and Foucault’s technologies of the self should be collapsed, I see how Sheikh identifies the points of greatest overlap between these two conceptual domains in order to analyze the formation of particular Muslim subjectivities.

Sheikh does not simply impose Foucault’s analytics on Muslim subjects, past and present. Instead, Sheikh connects this reading of Muslim subjectivities to Foucault’s very formulation of technologies of the self “to interpret and understand Muslim spiritual action and self-production” (23), as elaborated by Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi in his powerful 2016 Foucault in Iran.4 I would therefore be interested in hearing more from Sheikh about how he reads the technologies of the self in relation to Muhasibi and Nursi. Identifying the four forms of self-activity in technologies of the self, for example, would allow for the parsing of the ethical substance, the mode of subjectivation, askēsis, and the telos in these two writers’ texts—and I offer a comparative table from Foucault’s History of Sexuality volumes for reference below.5 Analyzing the practical ethics of Muhasibi and Nursi could productively map the differences in technologies of the self in the ninth and twentieth centuries. Even more, reading these technologies in relation to Foucault’s own formulations of ancient Greek (History of Sexuality, Volume 2), ancient Roman (Volume 3), and early Christian (Volume 4) sexual ethics might also allow Sheikh to challenge Foucault’s own categories of analysis. Taking up “a Foucauldian invitation to think about ethics in the register of self-formation” (160) is helpful, yet perhaps a more granular use of Foucault’s technologies would contribute to Sheikh’s argument.

4. Muhasibi, Nursi, and Muslim Technologies of the Self

I read Chapters 1–2 and 3–4, on Muhasibi and Nursi respectively, with more attention to the technologies of the self as a hermeneutical frame. In Chapter 1, Sheikh underscores the significance of self-examination in relation to sincerity in Muhasibi’s teaching. Sheikh shows how Muhasibi’s emphasis on self-examination sits within the context of political and social upheaval, the formation of Islamic legal schools, and the wealth of Baghdad in the ninth century. The idealized subject in Muhasibi’s work maintains an awareness of these contexts. In parsing aspects of Foucault’s technologies of the self, one might ask further: is the ethical substance fear? Or is it desire? Is there an askēsis of self-examination practices that might also be mapped here? What is the telos for the ideal Muhasibian subject? Is there a telos in the ordinary life of practicing Muslims as well as the saintly? These are productive questions for future work on Muhasibi.

In Chapter 2, Sheikh turns from the interior practices of self-examination to the external practices of ideal Muhasibian subjects. Here Sheikh develops the ways in which an emphasis on sincerity calls for practices in the world: embodied practices of wearing a patched garment, eating earned bread, maintaining anonymity, and a vigilant attention in all spheres of life (74–75). Sheikh helpfully refuses the divide between the “theoretical” and the “practical” in religious ethics: “the theoretical or doctrinal claims in these discourses have direct practical import for how their addressees should look at themselves” (75). Keeping Foucault’s technologies of the self at play, I might also emphasize the vulnerability for Muhasibi in the mode of subjectivation.6 This chapter also notes that Muhasibi does not offer simply a model of conformity to external social power: Muhasibi advocates for forms of resistance to and evaluation of social and legal norms.7 Perhaps here is where the technologies of the self offers liberatory potentials—in forms of resistance to other forms of social discourses.

In Chapter 3, the modern context of Nursi’s twentieth century frames the role of beliefs, notably those about the afterlife and views of agency in terms of supplication. Sheikh stresses how Nursi describes the “I” of the human self in relation to God: “the agency of an ideal Nursian subject lies in making a choice regarding their standpoint toward themselves and acting in God’s name rather than in their own name” (105). Instead of a passive agency, “Quranically-informed reflective belief” (130–131) calls for supplication as an active form of human agency. Instead of an abstract system of thought, religious discourse aims at formation and transformation of subjectivities. I do wonder how these views rely on theistic views of the cosmos in a way that troubles Sheikh’s separation of religious subjectivities and moral subjectivities.

Chapter 4 features Nursi’s moral subjectivity as a dialectic between collective and individual formation. It is “post-identitarian” (154–155), Sheikh argues, as he uses Nursi’s commitment to countering atheist and materialist views by adding Qur’anic recitation practices as essential to moral subjectivity. Sheikh also emphasizes virtues of compassion and other-orientedness in Nursi’s work: “The subject should live a life and love others such that he would want to live and love others for all eternity. That is the challenge Nursi presents to the ideal moral subject” (126). Recognizing the distance between the ideal and the everyday, however, Sheikh sees Nursi as honestly “charting the ambiguities and complexities of human life” (146). An account of the telos of Nursi’s technologies of the self might help clarify the proximate and distal goals of subject formation.

5. Slow Struggles for Self-Formation

With more time, I would love to engage Sheikh about these conceptual and comparative questions. I raise these points in the spirit of conversation and as an opening onto both what Sheikh has argued and where his analyses might go next. In short, I would love to know what Sheikh has in mind in terms of technologies of the self more concretely through the forms of practical activity Foucault uses to frame differences and continuities between ancient Greece, Rome, and Christian epochs. This would also offer a more robust link to Sheikh’s invocation of Ghamari-Tabrizi’s project that identifies Foucault’s turn to ethics and care of the self in and through his recognition of the Islamic Revolution. What is it that Foucault himself might have developed in conversation with Ghamari-Tabrizi and Sheikh? How does this offer conceptual possibilities as well as conceptual problems, especially in light of the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution? I think Sheikh would have many interesting responses to Foucault as well as potential challenges to Foucault’s technologies of the self that would be helpful for other ethicists.

Perhaps the transformation of religious ethics as a discourse might be seen in a similar register—as a daily practice through which we can slowly navigate critical challenges and possibilities. Sheikh has shown me how even if the formation of ideal Muslim subjectivities is slow and a struggle, the possibilities for transformation not only tantalize but motivate self and collective transformations. I look forward to reflecting together in more depth.

Works Cited

Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Clements, Niki Kasumi. “Foucault’s Christianities.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 89, no. 1 (2021): 1–40. https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/89/1/1/6248129

Clements, Niki Kasumi. Sites of the Ascetic Self: John Cassian and Christian Ethical Formation. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020.

Davidson, Arnold I. “Archaeology, Genealogy, Ethics.” In Foucault: A Critical Reader, edited by David Couzens Hoy. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1986.

Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990a.

Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality, Volume 3: Care of the Self. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990b.

Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality, Volume 4: Confessions of the Flesh. Edited by Frédéric Gros. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 2021.

Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz. Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

Faraz Sheikh’s Forging Ideal Muslim Subjects is a timely contribution to Islamic ethical studies. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault to highlight the ways in which both al-Muhasibi (d. 856) and Nursi (d. 1960) provide accounts of ethical self-formation, Sheikh invites the reader into a thoughtful conversation about the role of human responsibility, self-control, and mindfulness in relation to ethical subjectivity. This study responds to, and ultimately rejects, overly deterministic accounts of Muslim subjectivity reflected in the contemporary work of theorists of Muslim subjectivity, for example, Talal Asad1 and Saba Mahmood.2 As an alternative to these accounts, Sheikh identifies the respective works of al-Muhasibi and Nursi as resources with which to reimagine Muslim subjectivity. Sheikh turns to these Muslim scholars, each separated by a millennium, as sources not only for their own eras but as offering insight into what might be lacking in contemporary discourses of Muslim ethics. In reflecting on Sheikh’s book, I will primarily discuss how Sheikh’s emphasis on reflexive moral subjectivity stands out in relation to the Asadian-Mahmoodian interpretation of Muslim subjectivity.

Asad and Mahmood, respectively, filter the work of Foucault through the lens of a particular view of social and political power in relation to modernity, drawing significant attention to the ways in which power shapes social dynamics and delimits the very possibility of ethics. I would argue that they read Foucault in such a manner that emphasizes the tremendous power of the modern secular state and its corresponding (mal)formation of moral subject-citizens. According to critics such as Sheikh, this emphasis frequently results in an overly deterministic account of moral agency whereby subjects uncritically conform to the dominant social and ethical norms of their culture. For Asad, for example, the ethics of the modern liberal state is determined by what he deems a hegemonic secularism so powerful that religious subjects—particularly Muslim ones, in a post-9/11 environment—are necessarily misrecognized as enemies of the state and thus remain a target of the state’s policies.3 This all-encompassing hegemony applies not only to the actions of elite actors within the modern state, however; it also pertains to the formation of all subjects. The discourses most dominant or powerful are the ones to which subjects should (normatively) conform. Therefore, the modern secular subject is formed by violence in such a way that constitutively defines the possibilities of their moral agency. Regarding Asad’s account, Sheikh observes, “the process of Muslim self-fashioning is guided so tightly by the power of authorized discourses that there is little to no room left for the fuller Foucauldian notion of technologies of the self” (31). In other words, Asad’s use of Foucault distorts a fundamental feature of the latter’s idea of subjectivity. In offering this distortion of contemporary Muslim agency, Asad deprives the moral subject of interpretive capacity and self-reflection.

In Politics of Piety, Mahmood traces the cultural formation of the pious Egyptian Women’s Mosque Movement participant, arguing that the movement thoroughly shapes the ethical possibilities of virtuous character. The reader gains the impression that the goal of the movement is both the cultivation of virtue as well as the social replication of embodied norms and conservative social roles for women and men. For Mahmood, the link between them is inextricable. By failing to consider that Muslims have diverse reasons for declaring a particular action to be moral, or that there might be a legitimate incommensurability of social and individual ethical norms, Mahmood inadvertently flattens the moral agency of the mosque participants. According to Sheikh, both Asad and Mahmood fail to represent the delicate balance between the cultivation of individual virtue and the individual’s engagement with both tradition and a community of practitioners—a set of relationships that form the conditions for the possibility of moral agency.

Asad and Mahmood provide descriptive accounts of how power forms subjects, particularly along the religious/secular binary that has been ubiquitous in religious studies discourse since the second half of the twentieth century. But the ways in which their descriptions appear to elude, or perhaps undermine, discourses of normativity is noteworthy. Their works also tend to conflate the ethical subjectivity of the individual practitioner with the prevailing social norms of a given community. For Sheikh’s study of Muslim ethics, the reduction of ethics to a descriptive state-of-affairs (and avoiding questions of better and worse action), as well as the reduction of individual subjectivity to dominant (or more negatively, hegemonic) social practices, are highly questionable and even problematic methods of ethical inquiry.4

As he addresses this trend in Muslim ethics dealing with subjectivity, Sheikh also questions the framing of Muslim ethics as divided into two distinct categories: the juridical tradition (sharia/fiqh) and mysticism (Sufism). The arbitrary postcolonial division of these two ethical discourses in Muslim ethics has tended to obscure key features of moral subjectivity. For instance, according to the juridical model of the ideal Muslim subject, the moral subject is fully formed and stable, and there is not much attention to moral subjectivity as formed over time. The work of prominent Muslim legal theorist Wael Hallaq5 fits into this category. In the other category, the ideal Muslim subject is found in the embodiment of mysticism—but in a way that often downplays the process of ethical transformation with its attendant social implications. In essence, too much focus on the Muslim subject as determined by legal discourses or mystical ruminations has resulted in scholars overlooking historical texts and figures that actually complicate and challenge these models of Muslim ethics.

In his focus on the respective works of Muhasibi and Nursi, Sheikh considers the ways that various aspects of legal and mystical traditions might be reconsidered as discursive practices with spiritual implications. By categorizing the works of Muhasibi and Nursi as types of spiritual exercise, Sheikh suggests a different paradigm for the ethical development of the Muslim subject: an engagement mindful reflection of what kind of person they seek to be in light of a right relationship with God, and how to navigate the challenges posed by external pressures. In a chapter on Muhasibi, Sheikh observes the way in which the ethical subject’s compliance with ethical teachings of the sunna guides the mind to desire beauty and justice. By conforming their will to be in harmony with the teachings, the subject is able to move away from self-centered action. But it’s important to note that Sheikh does not characterize ideal Muslim subjectivity, vis-à-vis Muhasibi’s view, as equivalent to an act of social conformity. In this way, Sheikh differentiates his argument from what he sees as the excessive deference granted to social conformity, as in Asad’s and Mahmood’s respective arguments. For instance, Sheikh argues that Muhasibi would have been suspicious of “uniformly positive” assessments of the role of the religious community in shaping subjectivity (80). Instead, Sheikh posits that this idea that religion and religious communities could keep people safe from outside corrupting influences goes against the spiritual wisdom of Muhasibi, who argued for a kind of social anonymity. Such anonymity allows a person to gain a critical distance from social norms that might conflict with God’s will.

For Nursi, ethics is best construed as Quranically guided reflection upon life and its mysteries. Nursi lived during the mid-twentieth century and the rise of modern political Islam. But Nursi took a different path than many of his intellectual coreligionists—one that was more apolitical in nature. Sheikh explains that Nursi’s work focused on the transience of life in an effort to understand God as well as the vulnerabilities and inevitable tragedy that is part of human existence. In particular, by focusing on the doctrine of tawhid (God’s oneness and unicity), Nursi maintains the importance of human connection with, and dependence upon, God. Recognition of this fundamental connection engenders greater compassion and responsibility for other creatures, allowing a subject to act in God’s name (bismillah). By recognizing the sacred in others and herself, the Nursian subject is able to properly contemplate beauty, make sense of suffering, and is able to influence the way people think about science and technology.

A set of questions arises in terms of Sheikh’s choice of these two particular historical figures. What do these theorists of Muslim moral subjectivity offer that others, given the lengthy history of Muslim ethical discourse, do not? Why these particular figures, in this particular moment? One related and more pressing concern pertains to the use of figures from diverse historical contexts to help answer the particular dilemmas of the current moment. Would the description of the self-reflective moral agent be remotely recognizable to someone such as Muhasibi? While Sheikh’s work reflects an awareness of the differences in historical context which distinguish the ninth-century world from our own, this issue persists. We can appreciate that, on the one hand, this historical consciousness allows us to question the givenness of our postcolonial categories that mark certain subjectivities (e.g., mystical vs. legal). But on the other hand, there exists a need to be more explicit about how best to utilize the work of precolonial thinkers in dealing with postcolonial dilemmas. The respective works of Asad and Mahmood draw attention to the outsized role of the hegemonic state (whether secular or not) in shaping the moral subjectivities of citizens in the postcolonial context. Is it possible to read Muhasibi, for example, without accounting robustly for this critical difference in context?

Regarding the main contributions of Sheikh’s study, I would sum them up in the following way. First, the study stresses the importance of attending to the dynamic character of moral subjectivity in ways that do not assume that it is consonant with the dominant or most powerful ethical norms of a given time and place. Second, Sheikh argues for the contingency and fragility of moral commitments, suggesting this is not a weakness of moral subjectivity, but rather a strength. By giving contingency and vulnerability a place in ethical reflection, it allows for moral growth and dependence on God. In a way it echoes the insights of Richard Rorty,6 but in a way that does not sideline theological or other metaphysical commitments. Finally, Sheikh points toward a Muslim ethics of virtue that is fundamentally nonviolent and non-othering. Each of these contributions is tied together by the conviction—found in both Muhasibi’s and Nursi’s respective texts—that life is beautiful, fleeting, and ultimately tragic. Sheikh maintains that for Nursi and Muhasibi, “there is no need to radically and forcefully restructure the outer world, but a need to act self-critically, thoughtfully, justly, and compassionately” (180). Sheikh argues that Nursi, in particular, provides a conceptual apparatus for thinking about Muslim subjectivity in a “post-identitarian” framework. Nursi rejected notions of twentieth-century political Islam (Islamism) for the reason that too often politics trumps principles when the two are in conflict. By drawing attention to the human desire for power and also the spiritual practices that enable resistance to the demands of power, Sheikh avoids the reduction of ethics to politics or power.

Sheikh’s focus on how spiritual formation affects ethical character holds import for religious traditions more generally. In a time in which people readily exploit divisions in identities and reduce ethics to the whims of political calculations, existential reflection on the relationship of the self to others (and for Muslims, to God) is necessary in providing a fundamental orientation in the world. Furthermore, Sheikh reminds the reader that the nature of ethical deliberation is dialogical, conducted in concert with others who are shaped by ethical traditions, and thus cannot ever be appropriately understood as a simple act of social conformity. The moment that one’s moral actions become dictated by social norms, devoid of some kind of spiritual reflection, conflict, or transformation, they cease to be truly ethical in nature.

A beloved teacher of mine once advised me to dedicate my research and writing only to topics and people whom I loved. As I was reading Faraz Sheikh’s Forging Ideal Muslim Subjects, this nugget of wisdom would regularly pop into my head. Sheikh’s love for his subjects, al-Harith b. Asad al-Muhasibi (d. 856) and Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (d. 1960), shines through this slim volume. Sheikh’s obvious affinity for Muhasibi and Nursi reveals itself with his careful analysis of their advice to their students about how to live as good Muslims. I am unaware of any other monograph that addresses these thinkers in such depth and that so carefully categorizes multiple aspects of their ethical teachings in a clear and engaging manner. Following the example of his teacher, Aaron Stalnaker, and Stalnaker’s teacher, Lee Yearley, Sheikh continues the model in comparative religious ethics of placing two thinkers in relationship with one another so as to compare and contrast their approaches to ethics. (Yearley compares Mencius and Aquinas [1990]; Stalnaker compares Xunzi and Augustine of Hippo [2006]). This comparative approach offers the benefit of highlighting issues that might otherwise not be brought into relief. Also, scholars simply enjoy the thought experiment of bringing two formidable scholars into conversation with one another—the academic response to playing the parlor game “if you could invite any two historical figures to dinner, whom would you invite?”

Sheikh explains that the reason he chooses to compare Muhasibi and Nursi is because they offer approaches to ethical living that avoid the restrictions found in juridical and mystical accounts of morality. According to Muhasibi and Nursi, “the ideal Muslim subject is more than a person who can perfectly observe legal obligations and rituals; and also someone . . . more than a person who loses his ego-self and bears a mystical love for God” (2). Perhaps because Muhasibi and Nursi defy typical categories of Islamic scholarship, they have not been popular topics of previous extensive study. Sheikh’s book attempts to correct the dearth of scholarship on these significant thinkers and at the same time to expand ways of thinking about Islamic ethics. The latter is an especially exciting response both to the curricula by which students in colleges and universities learn about Islam and to portrayals of Islam in the popular media. Indeed, the two categories of Islamic law (“shariah”) and mysticism (“Sufism”) present overly simplistic descriptions of the ways in which Muslims actually think about and practice their religion. All too often, journalists raise the specter of shariah when describing some horrific murder, while apologists point to the poetry of Sufi masters as an example of “eastern” wisdom.

The first half of the book Sheikh dedicates to Muhasibi and the second to Nursi, with a concluding chapter on the relevance of these thinkers to today’s problems of divisiveness. This structure allows for ease of reading, but sacrifices some of the fruits of the comparative method. The difficulty for those engaged in comparative projects lies in structuring the narrative so that the comparative method is allowed to do its work for the author and for readers. The comparative method is strongest when approached thematically and presented as a conversation of sorts among thinkers or traditions about various topics of shared interest.

A narrative structure that compares themes addressed by the two thinkers would have especially enriched the book’s analyses of gender and moral subjectivity. In presenting Muhasibi and Nursi in large sections, rather than organizing the monograph topically with chapters focused on common themes such as sin, the afterlife, moral obligations, etc., Sheikh leaves readers to navigate such complex ideas between the two thinkers on their own. In Forging Muslim Subjects, a section that collectively examined the assumptions of gender in the writings of Muhasibi and Nursi would have more effectively enhanced our understanding of gender and moral subjectivity compared to the scattered mentions of the role of gender throughout the book.

In his introduction, Sheikh suggests some of the ways in which gender might influence one’s understanding of the formation of the Muslim moral subject. In response to the popularity in the last decade of works in religious studies that “focus on the body, embodied practices and living communities,” he advocates for scholarly approaches to ethics (13). The concern with emphases on physical, rather than intellectual, practice is that religion turns into, quoting Thomas A. Lewis, “reason’s other” (13). Along these lines, Sheikh criticizes the work of the late Saba Mahmood, whose observations about Muslim women’s participation in the piety movement among Cairene mosques raise a number of important questions about the assumptions that we, scholars in North America and western Europe, make regarding women’s moral agency, liberal values, and religious virtues. Sheikh claims that while Mahmood makes a persuasive case for these women’s religiosity, her case for these women as “moral subjects” is “not as clear” (20). Because Mahmood argues that the practice of virtue constitutes moral formation, rather than, presumably, an intellectual understanding of Islamic ethics, Sheikh’s comment perhaps unwittingly suggests that the women described in Mahmood’s Politics of Piety are not fully formed moral subjects.

The prioritizing of intellectual exercise over embodied practice in religious ethics is inseparable from the hierarchy of gender. The historical exclusion of Muslim women from scholarly training in religious and legal schools meant that women could not meaningfully participate in intellectual conversations about ethics. The upshot of the exclusion of women from the production of ethical knowledge should not be that women therefore are somehow lesser moral subjects, but rather that their ethics developed through alternative channels, including embodied practices. (I am reminded at this point of the multiple types of yogas found in Hindu ethical traditions, including devotional [bhakti] yoga, which differs from intellectual [jnana] yoga. Bhakti yoga is not considered to generate less merit than other forms of yoga; in fact, some would argue that devotional yoga is the “higher” of the yogas.)

To be clear, I am positive that Sheikh does not intend to suggest that women are less ethical or less than fully formed moral subjects due to their historical exclusion from scholarly communities. His concern for questions of justice is very obvious in the concluding chapter of his book. I do wonder, however, if Sheikh had woven into his analysis the historical context and likely assumptions that Muhasibi and Nursi made about girls and women, whether his analyses of topics such as sin, duty, and redemption would have been more nuanced. What would it mean, for example, for a girl or woman—as opposed to a boy or a man—”to feel deeply remorseful about their sinful past, a past that they ought now to see as filled with failures of fulfilling God’s rights” (37)? How would she, and why would she, feel remorseful? If one agrees that women are often culturally conditioned to feel guilt and shame for their bodies, desires, and behaviors, Muhasibi’s advice “to feel deeply remorseful” would further exacerbate women’s unwarranted negative feelings about themselves.

Sheikh highlights Nursi’s concern for children and the elderly in the section “Consolation for the Young and Infirm” (122), but leaves out the role that women have played as their bearers, nurses, and caregivers. This section begins with a reference to Alasdair MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals (1999), which criticizes the centrality throughout Western thought of the “young, healthy, adult male” and urges us to consider the philosophical implications of including children, women, and the disabled in our narratives (122). Unsurprisingly, MacIntyre acknowledges his profound indebtedness to feminist thought in reconsidering the assumption of the philosophical protagonist as male. (Although I agree with the assumption of maleness, I disagree that youth is always assumed. The old friends in Book X of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the wisdom of elders of the senate, and the instruction of experienced teachers make clear that men in old age have societal value.) While Sheikh addresses youth and health in this section, the male identity of the moral subject is not directly addressed.

The assumption of the male subject re-emerges in Sheikh’s analysis of Nursi’s advice to a man who feels burdened by his responsibilities for his wife, children, and elderly parents. Nursi recommends that he “should feel like a proverbial mother, suckling its [sic] young with milk that she did not create but the sharing of which with her hungry infant brings her, Nursi could have only supposed, greater joy and fulfillment than withholding it” (140). The romanticized image of nursing mothers used here by Nursi and stressed by Sheikh not only dismisses the burdens that women, and particularly nursing mothers, carry, but compounds the expectation that women give selflessly and joyfully of themselves. Indeed, the nursing mother is not allowed even to take credit for the milk her own body produces. While nursing can be gratifying, it can also be extremely painful, messy, and exhausting. It is not a “natural” practice for many mothers, who often struggle to breastfeed their children and then feel shame and guilt for their complicated feelings toward nursing their own babies.

In the section, “Nursi’s Gendered Moral Subjects,” Sheikh’s admiration for Nursi is challenged by his observation that “Nursi is no feminist thinker” (152). Sheikh begins with the claim that “Nursi does not make distinctions between men and women when it comes to their abilities and responsibilities as believing subjects” (151). Sheikh then, however, immediately follows with the statement that the “distinctions he does take up are those that are mentioned in the Quran” (151). Later, Sheikh admits that Nursi’s “ideal moral subject is gendered to a considerable extent,” yet Sheikh cannot conclude that Nursi thought that women were “morally or religiously” inferior to men “in any general sense” (italics mine, 153).

Nursi does in fact make distinctions about women’s abilities and responsibilities precisely because they are mentioned in the Qur’an. In discussing the Quranic injunction that daughters inherit half of what sons inherit, Sheikh takes a charitable reading of Nursi’s defense of the unfair inheritance laws with a “broader, cosmological view of the universe, a particular way of construing the purpose of asymmetry in the universe at all levels, a commitment to the justice and mercy of God and hence a commitment to finding justice, wisdom and mercy in Quranic injunctions about practical matters” (153). Meanwhile, girls are expected to retain the affection and compassion of their fathers and brothers despite receiving half of what boys receive; and fathers and brothers are expected to be affectionate and compassionate toward the girls in the family to compensate for their unequal inheritances. Sheikh points out that Nursi in his old age takes the position that a woman ought to eschew marriage and seek financial independence rather than marry an immoral, “Western” man for financial security, but we are left to wonder if he revisits his earlier exegesis of Quranic inheritance laws. Are women now expected to attain financial independence with only half of the inheritance their brothers are given?

Sheikh addresses in his conclusion the ways in which Muhasibi and Nursi might be read in light of the problems that plague contemporary society. He is concerned in particular with our extreme divisiveness and the seeming lack of compassion that might serve as a panacea to some of our society’s ailments. Muhasibi and Nursi, in conveying moral formation as a never-ending effort, encourage their students to not give in to intractable feelings of hopelessness and despair. There is wisdom to be found in focusing on the inner struggle toward an ethical life, but this struggle should not come at the expense of accepting injustices as part of a larger cosmological design. Sheikh notes that racism persists despite laws that address racial discrimination, and that moral “work” is obviously still needed on this front. One might add that misogyny also persists despite laws that address gender discrimination. How does one proceed, then, with the moral work here in light of the gendered inequalities found in religious beliefs and practices?

Works Cited

Stalnaker, Aaron. Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006.

Yearley, Lee. Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990.