An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi'i Lebanon (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics)

Based on two years of ethnographic research in Beirut, this book demonstrates that Islam and modernity are not merely compatible, but actually go hand-in-hand. This portrayal of an Islamic community articulates how an alternative modernity may be constructed by Shi'I Muslims who consider themselves simultaneously deeply modern, cosmopolitan, and pious. In this depiction of a Shi'I Muslim community in Beirut, Deeb examines the ways that individual and collective expressions and understandings of piety have been debated, contested, and reformulated. Women take center stage in this process, a result of their visibility both within the community, and in relation to Western ideas that link the status of women to modernity.

• | Author: Lara Deeb
• | Publisher: Princeton University Press
• | Publication Date: March 19, 2006
• | Number of Pages: 288 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0691124213
• | ISBN-13: 9780691124216