Pious Power: Epistemology, Discourses and Practices of Female Intellectual Preachers in Saudi Arabia.

This study seeks to explore current female intellectual preachers in Saudi Arabia, known as al-dāʿiyāt al-muthaqqafāt. These women stand out from other female preachers in that they make use of their cultural, religious and intellectual capital to engage in the public sphere. Analysing their historical emergence, their fields of engagement and their epistemology, I seek to understand their presence in contemporary Saudi Arabia and what they can tell us about Islamist women’s engagement in religious, cultural, social and political domains. To include both the capacities of the subjects themselves and the structures within which they operate, I approach dāʿiyāt muthaqqafāt from a holistic perspective, guided by their own perception of Islamic culture as a comprehensive tradition. Contrary to the prevalent scholarly literature on female preachers, I argue that these women actively engage in spaces and discourses beyond female-related issues. Through the concepts of daʿwa (preaching) and thaqāfa (culture), I explore how historical, economic, social and political contexts have influenced the interpretation of their role in the society. Perceiving their presence as necessary for cultivating pious subjects, they have utilised daʿwa to extend their presence in the public sphere as preachers. Understanding Islam as a comprehensive religion that refuses any compartmentalization into a secularized notion of a “religious sphere”, thaqāfa has enabled their public intervention as intellectuals in issues beyond those specific to religion. Although dāʿiyāt muthaqqafāt construct their own emancipatory discourses and practices, many of their modalities of agency have been framed as a struggle against a perceived Western culture. Consequently, this study highlights how their trajectory is intimately intertwined with the perceived Western “otherness” that they seek to counter. In the process of mirroring themselves against the so-called West, they have ultimately allowed for a considerable degree of appropriation.