Saba Mahmood wrote a fascinating illustration of Islamic Piety in the Middle East. What is unique about this story is that the conversation sounds an awful lot similar to conversations I have had with others struggling with their practices of devotion and worship towards God within the Christian tradition.
I post this in hopes to address that Pietism is a movement that adds the Christian in their worship towards God, but manifest within Islam there is a parallel movement that is going on seeking similar ends. I would hope to delve a bit more deeply to see if there is any historical connectedness of the two faith's interactions. In theory, I imagine there must be similar sources that stem from contemplative worship practices of Syrian Christians pre-dating Islam. Equally is there any connected between the contemplative practices that Eastern Christians would have practice and the influence upon the Christian Pietism movement of the 17th century.
"The complicated relationship between the performance of [obligatory prayer] and one's daily activities was revealed to me in a conversation with three women, all of whom regularly attended lessons in different mosques of their choice in Cairo. They were part of a small number of women whom I had come to regard as experienced in the cultivation of piety. My measure for coming to such a judgment was none other than the one used by the mosque participants: They not only carried out their religious duties diligently, but also attested to their faith by continuously doing good deeds and practicing virtues. As the following exchange makes clear, the women pursued the process of honing and nurturing the desire to pray through the performance of seemingly unrelated deeds during the day until that desire became a part of their conditions of being.
"The setting for this conversation was a mosque in downtown Cairo. Because all three of the women work as clerks in the local state bureaucracy in the same building, it was convenient for them to meet in the neighboring mosque in the late afternoons after work on a weekly basis. Their discussions sometimes attracted other women, who had come to the mosque to pray. In this instance, a young woman in her early twenties had been sitting and listening intently, when she suddenly interrupted the discussion to ask a question about one of the five basic prayers required of Muslims, a prayer known as al-fajr. This prayer is performed right after dawn breaks and before sunrise. Many Muslims I know consider it the most demanding and difficult of prayers because it is hard to leave the comfort of sleep to wash and pray and also because the period within which it must be performed is very short. This young woman expressed the difficulty she encountered in performing the task of getting up for the morning prayer and asked the group what she should do about it. Mona, a member of the group who is in her mid-thirties, turned to the young woman with a concerned expression on her face and asked, 'Do you mean to say that you are unable to get up for the morning prayer habitually and consistently?' The girl nodded in agreement. Bearing the same concerned expression on her face, Mona said, 'You mean to say that you forbid yourself the reward of the morning prayer? This surely is an indication of ghafla on your part?' The young woman looked somewhat perturbed and guilty but persisted and asked, 'What does ghafla mean?' Mona replied that it refers to what you do in the day: If your mind is mostly occupied with things that are not related to God, then you are in a state of ghafla (carelessness, negligence). According to Mona, such a condition of negligence results in inability to say the morning prayer.
"Looking puzzled, the young woman asked, 'What do you mean what I do in the day? What does my saying of the prayer have to do with what I do in the day?'
"Mona answered:
'It means what your day-to-day deeds are. For example, what do you look at in the day? Do you look at things that are prohibited to us by God, such as immodest images of women and men? What do you say to people in the day? Do you insult people when you get angry and use abusive language? How do you feel when you see someone doing an act of disobedience? Do you get sad? Does it hurt you when you see someone committing a sin or does it not affect you? These are the things that have an effect on your heart, and they hinder or impede your ability to get up and say the morning prayer. [The constant] guarding against disobedience and sins wakes you up for the morning prayer. [Obligatory prayer] is not just what you say with your mouth and what you do with your limbs. It is a state of your heart. So when you do things in a day for God and avoid other things because of Him, it means you're thinking about Him, and therefore it becomes easy for you to strive for Him against yourself and your desires. If you correct these issues, you will be able to rise up for the morning prayer as well.'
'It means what your day-to-day deeds are. For example, what do you look at in the day? Do you look at things that are prohibited to us by God, such as immodest images of women and men? What do you say to people in the day? Do you insult people when you get angry and use abusive language? How do you feel when you see someone doing an act of disobedience? Do you get sad? Does it hurt you when you see someone committing a sin or does it not affect you? These are the things that have an effect on your heart, and they hinder or impede your ability to get up and say the morning prayer. [The constant] guarding against disobedience and sins wakes you up for the morning prayer. [Obligatory prayer] is not just what you say with your mouth and what you do with your limbs. It is a state of your heart. So when you do things in a day for God and avoid other things because of Him, it means you're thinking about Him, and therefore it becomes easy for you to strive for Him against yourself and your desires. If you correct these issues, you will be able to rise up for the morning prayer as well.'
"Perhaps responding to the young woman's look of concentration, Mona asked her, 'What is it that annoys you the most in your life?' The young woman answered that her sister fought with her a lot, and this bothered her and made her angry most days.
"Mona replied:
'You, for example, can think of God when your sister fights with you and not fight back with her because He commands us to control our anger and be patient. For if you do get angry, you know that you will just gather more sins, but if you are quiet then you are beginning to organize your affairs on account of God and not in accord with your temperament. And then you will realize that your sister will lose the ability to make you angry, and you will become more desirous of God. You will begin to notice that if you say the morning prayer, it will also make your daily affairs easier, and if you don't pray it will make them hard.'
'You, for example, can think of God when your sister fights with you and not fight back with her because He commands us to control our anger and be patient. For if you do get angry, you know that you will just gather more sins, but if you are quiet then you are beginning to organize your affairs on account of God and not in accord with your temperament. And then you will realize that your sister will lose the ability to make you angry, and you will become more desirous of God. You will begin to notice that if you say the morning prayer, it will also make your daily affairs easier, and if you don't pray it will make them hard.'
"Mona looked at the young woman who had been listening attentively and asked: 'Do you get angry and upset when you don't say your morning prayer?' The young woman answered yes.
"Mona continued:
'But you don't get upset enough that you don't miss the next morning prayer. Performing the morning prayer should be like the things that you can't live without: for when you don't eat, or you don't clean your house, you get the feeling that you must do this. It is this feeling that I am talking about: there is something inside you that makes you want to pray and gets you up early in the morning to pray. And you're angry with yourself when you don't do this or fail to do this.'
'But you don't get upset enough that you don't miss the next morning prayer. Performing the morning prayer should be like the things that you can't live without: for when you don't eat, or you don't clean your house, you get the feeling that you must do this. It is this feeling that I am talking about: there is something inside you that makes you want to pray and gets you up early in the morning to pray. And you're angry with yourself when you don't do this or fail to do this.'
"The young woman looked on and listened, not saying much. At this point, we moved back to our previous discussion, and the young woman stayed with us until the end.
"The answer that Mona provided to this young woman is not a customary answer, such as invoking the fear of God's retribution for habitually failing to perform one's daily prayers. Mona's response reflects the sophistication and elaboration of someone who has spent considerable time and effort in familiarizing herself with an Islamic interpretive tradition of moral discipline. I would like to draw attention here to the economy of discipline at work in Mona's advice to the young woman, particularly the ways in which ordinary tasks in daily life are made to attach to the performance of consummate worship. Notably, when Mona links the ability to pray to the vigilance with which one conducts the practical chores of daily living, all mundane activities — like getting angry with one's sister, the things one hears and looks at, the way one speaks — become a place for securing and honing particular moral capacities. As is evident from the preceding discussion, the issue of punctuality clearly entails more than the simple use of an alarm clock: it encompasses an entire attitude one cultivates in order to create the desire to pray. Of significance is the fact that Mona does not assume that the desire to pray is natural, but that it must be created through a set of disciplinary acts. These include the effort to avoid seeing, hearing, and speaking about things that make faith weaker and instead engaging in those acts that strengthen the desire for, and the ability to enact, obedience to God's will. The repeated practice of orienting all acts toward securing God's pleasure is a cumulative process the net result of which, on one level, is the ability to pray regularly and, on another level, the creation of a pious self."
