The Revolution Within: Islamic Media and the Struggle for a New Egypt

In the last two decades, debates within the anthropology of Islam havebeen invigorated by ethnographies set in Egypt – from Saba Mahmood’sPolitics of Piety and Charles Hirschkind’s The Ethical Soundscape, toAmira Mittermaier’s Dreams that Matter and Samuli Schielke’s Egyptin the Future Tense. In conversation with these influential texts, anthropologistsstudying Muslims have delved into issues like the relationshipbetween interiority, exteriority, and ritual; the normative and analyticaldistinctions made between piety and impiety; the political valences ofpublic religiosity; and the entanglements of the religious and the secular.Yasmin Moll’s The Revolution Within explores all these questions andmore through an investigation of how Sunni Egyptian Muslims embodydiverse orientations towards piety and politics in their struggles to builda New Egypt.