ABSTRACT
Ideas from media studies and women’s piety movements have informed this paper. Previous studies of the Islamic revivalist movements in the Lebanon (Lara Deeb 2006), Egypt (Leila Ahmed 2011; Saba Mahmood 2005), Turkey (Catharina Raudvere 2002), Mali (Dorothea Schulz 2006 2011), Niger (Adeline Masquelier 2009), and the European countries (Masooda Bano & Hilary Kalmbach 2011) examine different ways in which women conceptualize, live, and negotiate their religious identities. These scholars analyzed the embodied and discursive practices of piety that illuminate female understandings of the self, modernity, empowerment, and the concepts of the public and the private. By looking at Dr Rufayda’s preaching and social activities, this study contributes to the discussion of the Islamic revivalist movement in its female, everyday life-based and Sufi-oriented form that is both introspective (i.e., focused on personal improvement) and socially embedded (i.e., publically performed and upheld by social networks).
