SYMPOSIA: The Graduate Student Journal of the Centre Spring 2009 for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto vol. 1, no. 1 Pedagogies of Piety: Shi’i Children’s Books, Ethics and the Emergence of the Pious Subject Edith Szanto Centre for the Study of Religion University of Toronto [email protected] It was the last day of summer- the age of three, one should teach school at one of the dozen or so Shi‘i toddlers how to say ‗lā illāha ill allah,‘ Muslim seminaries in Syria. Female (‗there is no God but God,‘) and seven teachers dressed in black abayas were months later, how to say ‗Muhammadun running around hurriedly setting up a rasūl-Allah,‘ (‗Muhammad is God‘s little party which was going to include a Messenger‘). At the age of five, one speech, small gifts and a three-story should teach children the difference vanilla cake. I was chatting with my between left and right, as this is crucial classmate Fatima, a mid-twenties single for table manners, bathroom-hygiene from Baghdad, when the party finally and prayer. Next, children need to be started. After the girls from the first level, shown how to perform the individual who all below the age of nine, had units of daily prayer, and when they discordantly sung a religious hymn or reach six, they should be taught how to two, Um Hussayn the theology teacher pray. Just before reaching the age of and back-up mullaya also led a couple nine, daughters must be instructed on of chants as a prelude to the Islamic law how to ritually wash, so that they may instructor‘s sermon. "You can‘t expect start praying regularly when they turn your kids to pray when they get older nine. "First and foremost, however, a girl and you can‘t expect your girls to feel must be committed to the ahl al-bayt. It obliged to wear their hijāb unless you is easier for mothers if daughters pray have taught them to adhere to the ahl and wear hijāb for the sake of the ahl al- al-bayt, the Prophet‘s family and his bayt. Of course, you have to teach them 2 descendants!"1 She explained that at early!" Note on transliteration: For the sake of non- Introduction specialist readers, diacritical marks have been restricted to a minimum throughout the Shi‘i children‘s books constitute one article. Most Arabo-Islamic terms are possible technique parents may use to defined in a short glossary at the end. teach their children pious behaviour 1 from an early age. These can be For Twelver Shi‘i Muslims the ahl al-bayt bought, for instance, in bookstores near designates the family of the Prophet the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab, the beginning with his daughter Fatima, her husband Imam ‗Ali and their (male) granddaughter of the Prophet, just 12 descendants. Imam ‗Ali is considered to be km South of Damascus. Though the the first of twelve Imams and he is followed by his sons, Hassan and Hussayn. The line the End of Time. Together, Fatima, the of Imams continues through the third Imam Prophet and the Twelve Imams are Hussayn in a succession of nine male collectively referred to as the Fourteen descendants. The last is the Hidden Imam Infallibles, as they are considered to have or the Mahdi who entered into Occultation been divinely protected from error. ca. 940 CE and is expected to return near 2 Fieldnotes, Monday, 11 August 2008. Symposia, Spring 2009, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 62 - 78. © The Author 2009. Published by University of Toronto. All rights reserved. Symposia 2009 Szanto, Pedagogies of Piety vol. 1, no. 1 Syrian Twelver Shi‘i community is rather attributed to the Prophet, which small, Shi‘i bookstores serve a wide encourage Muslims to seek knowledge.3 readership. Customers include Shi‘is In the eleventh century, the famous from Lebanon, Iraq, summer- theologian al-Ghazali wrote an entire vacationers from the Eastern Arabian treatise on the etiquette of teachers and Gulf, Arab expatriates on religious students in his magnum opus. The pilgrimages – and the occasional fourteenth century historian Ibn Khaldun researcher. For this study, I have included a chapter on pedagogy in his examined a selection of Shi‘i children‘s Muqaddimah. In reaction to colonialism, books I bought in Sayyida Zaynab. The numerous Muslims intellectuals such as selection includes an Arabic primer set, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and several series on the lives of the ahl al- Muhammad ‗Abdu struggled to reform bayt in both English and Arabic, an Islamic learning as the key to progress, Arabic series on the Mahdi, four prayer modernization and independence. More and legal manuals and four booklets on recently, Islamic schools have become "Spiritual Governance." Except for the the subject of heated debates even in primer series, which will be this article‘s Western media, where they have been first object of investigation, the books blamed for producing extremists groups are intended for roughly eight to thirteen such as the Taliban. Rather than year old children. The selection is focusing on the books‘ reception, socio- roughly representative of children‘s political effects and other potential books for sale at Sayyida Zaynab, most Austinian misfirings, however, this of which are imported from Lebanon, article examines Shi‘i children‘s books Iran or Iraq, as Syria produces few Shi‘i with regard to how they attempt to instil books. The books were all published in religious values. the last decade and most include glossy, colourful pictures which makes According to Baqir Sharif al-Qarashi, them a bit pricey, limiting their a contemporary Shi‘i intellectual and accessibility and their readership (and pedagogue whose book I acquired in by implication this study) to those one of the bookstores where I bought families who can afford them. The books children‘s books, ‗Western‘ education are sold as either complete series of has ignored religion and thus, has failed thinner booklets or as hard-back to bring about ‗true‘ progress.4 He points compilations containing similar out that while scientific progress has collections of shorter sections. Each helped humankind reach new heights, it series is organized around a central has also aided the proliferation of war theme such as ritual, doctrine, or the and mass destruction.5 In order to bring lives of the ahl al-bayt. As these are about peace, prosperity and ‗true‘ often repeated, readers re-encounter progress, children‘s education must the same basic stories from a variety of incorporate moral, ethical or religious perspectives. training – all of which are interchangeable terms for al-Qarashi Though the mass consumption of and will consequently not be strictly books specifically dedicated to children‘s religious education is a 3 Qarashi, Baqir Sharif al-. The Educational relatively recent phenomenon as it System in Islam. Trans. Badr Shahim. Qum, requires means, literacy and leisure- Iran: Ansariyan Publications, 2006, 89-93. 4 Ibid., 74. time, there has been a long-standing 5 tradition within Islamic thought and Ibid., 3-4. literature emphasizing religious education. There are numerous sayings 63 Symposia 2009 Szanto, Pedagogies of Piety vol. 1, no. 1 differentiated here either.6 Both al- sedimentation of piety? And how are we Qarashi and Shi‘i children‘s books (at to understand agency in this context? least implicitly) agree that the immediate solution is to be sought within the It should be noted that the use of the context of the family where children term ‗subject‘ and its various derivatives should be taught religious beliefs and (e.g. ‗intersubjective‘) is not meant to pious behaviour.7 The following analysis carry heavy philosophical baggage, but takes seriously the concern for a proper rather highlight how selves are pious formation and therefore examines constituted as subjects through how Shi‘i children‘s literature spells out encounters with others and disciplinary and intervenes in Shi‘i children‘s regimes, such as religious children‘s formation, especially within familial books. I draw on but also depart from settings. As mentioned above, an Butler‘s language and theory of subject evaluation of the books‘ actual impact is formation, not in order to arrive at a beyond the scope of this article, yet I thorough theory of ‗Shi‘i subjectivity‘ think it nevertheless ought to be of which would require reading more into academic interest to think about the the books than is actually there, but intimate ways in which contemporary rather in order to draw attention to religious imaginaries structure and critical convergences that speak back to transmit ethical ways of being-in-the- our own assumptions about ethics and world. pious subjectivity. For this reason, the following analysis begins with a Theoretical Considerations discussion of how Shi‘i children‘s books construct pious behaviour as an apt As part of a larger discourse on Shi‘i response to others. It thereby reverses piety and pious formation, Shi‘i Butler‘s account according to which the children‘s books demonstrate a subject is formed through encounters particular vision of how to become pious with others who impinge upon the and in this sense they are prescriptive emerging subject, which further implies rather than normative. However, as that the subject is neither autonomous pedagogical tools, Shi‘i children‘s books nor fully determined from the outside. also have disciplinary functions. For Butler, this means that the subject‘s Drawing on Judith Butler‘s philosophical capacity to act ethically cannot be insights, this article examines the books‘ grounded in autonomy but must instead disciplinary and productive aspects and be based in