Is God for Revolution?: Affect, Youth, and Islam in Post-2011 Egypt

Based on interviews with upper-middle-class Egyptian Muslims, Is God for Revolution? explores the ways in which political participation in the 2011 Egyptian revolution--and the emotions that came with it--changed the landscape of religious discourse and practice. Before the revolution, the interviewees found themselves in structures of culturally agreed-upon forms of religiosity. They were raised during what scholars call the ＂Islamic Awakening＂ of the late twentieth century and heeded the advice of religious figures that circulated freely in mass media. Visible markers of piety, such as the veil for women and beards for men, became commonplace. This all changed in one charged moment. In the wake of the uprising, Nareman Amin shows, revolutionary feelings--notably hope, disappointment, doubt, shock and anger-transformed their understandings of what it means to identify as pious Muslims.

Is God for Revolution? is a book about social change in a time of political upheaval and uncertainty, specifically the relationship between affect, politics and Islam. It is a story about postrevolutionary agency, the emotional toll that this democratic experiment had on those who believed in the revolution and its ideals, and the transformative power of autonomy and emotion on young revolutionaries’ attitudes toward religious authorities and religious beliefs and practices.

Nareman Amin is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Islam at Michigan State University.