Mulids, festivals in honor of Muslim ""friends of God,"" have been
part of Muslim religious and cultural life for close to a thousand
years. While many Egyptians see mulids as an expression of joy and
love for the Prophet Muhammad and his family, many others see them
as opposed to Islam, a sign of a backward mentality, a piece of
folklore at best. What is it about a mulid that makes it a threat
to Islam and modernity in the eyes of some, and an indication of
pious devotion in the eyes of others? What makes the celebration of
a saint's festival appear in such dramatically different contours?
The Perils of Joy offers a rich investigation, both historical and
ethnographic, of conflicting and transforming attitudes toward
festivals in contemporary Egypt. Schielke argues that mulids are
characterized by a utopian momentum of the extraordinary that
troubles the grand schemes of order and perfection that have become
hegemonic in Egypt since the twentieth century. Not an opposition
between state and civil society, nor a division between Islamists
and secularists, but rather the competition between different
perceptions of what makes up a complete life forms the central line
of conflict in the contestation of festive culture.
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