Al-Zahraa Hawza as institutionalized religion : Islam performed by women.

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore how the Islamic religion manifests itself as a tool for governing life for the women who study at al-Zahraa Hawza in Beirut. Through an ethnographic account based on fieldwork that I have conducted at the school’s campus, I address the question of what it means to govern one's life in the learning process at the Hawza, for women who are engaged in its activities. I argue that in this learning process, the Hawza as an educational institution assumes the role of a mediator between this worldly life and the hereafter for its members. In analyzing this role, I show that the Hawza represents a spatialization of what I call, after Naveeda Khan (2012), Muslim becoming . I argue that the members of the Hawza have their aspirations of self-betterment shaped through instruction at the school. And in their striving to reach these aspirations, they face moments of skepticism towards the means made available for this striving. Furthermore, I argue that the Hawza, as a place of religious argumentation and debate, fosters an impetus for ongoing striving. For doing that, I look at three main aspects of this institutionalization of religion represented by the Hawza: one is how the school’s curriculum is designed and what formulations are used to justify the attempt at transforming it from the traditional style of religious teaching to mirror modern day university curricula. Two is manners in which a student at the Hawza is advised-instructed to govern her life, particularly in her relationship with God, with kin, and with society. And three is a form of a specific positionality-identity that the Hawza assumes and expects its students to assume, in relationship to an other , whom it works with-against-in response to. I engage with concepts such as governmentality; Muslim striving, aspiration and skepticism; and identity formation and mediation.