Introduction
Chapter 1: Where Do Ideas Come from? An Education in Classical
Poetry
Chapter 2: Fixed Forms and the Play of Imagination: Everyday Ritual
Prayers
Chapter 3: What Are We up to When We Pray? Spontaneous
Conversations with God
Chapter 4: Movable Mosques: Prayer Books, Women, and Youth
Conclusion
Niloofar Haeri is Professor of Anthropology and the Program Chair for Islamic Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of Sacred Language, Ordinary People (2003), among other works.
"This is one of the best books on prayer in all of anthropology.
Niloofar Haeri shows that prayer is not an empty ritual, but that
it becomes a relationship that changes people-and allows the
secular reader to understand how poetry enables women to feel
spiritual presence. A beautifully written work."-Tanya Luhrmann,
Stanford University, author of When God Talks Back:
Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with
God
"Say What Your Longing Heart Desires is a work that deserves
to be widely read by all who are interested in understanding the
different approaches to 'authentic' religion that exist in the
Muslim world. A rich and detailed account, and a valuable
contribution to our knowledge of religious practice."-Talal Asad,
author of Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of
Power in Christianity and Islam
"Say What Your Longing Heart Desires establishes itself
immediately as an essential work in the anthropology of prayer and
a major contribution to the study of religious practice and
experience. A subtle and compelling work."-Robert A. Orsi,
Northwestern University, author of Between Heaven and Earth: The
Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study
Them
"Say What Your Longing Heart Desires will change common
perceptions about women's experiences in Iran. Niloofar Haeri
examines competing claims of Muslimhood and offers novel readings
of theological conversations on spirituality and religious
conviction in the Islamic Republic. An empirically rich and
theoretically nuanced book."-Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Princeton
University, author of Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after
the Enlightenment
"Niloofar Haeri's deeply researched and elegantly written book
brings readers into the most intimate and exigent spaces of a
religious world. Haeri examines the everyday prayer practices of
Iranian women as the basis for reflecting on the relationship
between prayer and poetry and on how ideas about religiosity
debated in classical Persian poetry inform the world of prayer.
Haeri's ethnographic study of Muslim women at prayer, a practice
that is at once deeply personal and utterly social, underscores the
diversity of Muslim religious practices and challenges conceptions
of what constitutes 'authentic' religion, complicating the
distinction between ritual and non-ritual forms of worship. This
beautiful book is a signal contribution to the study of women and
Islam, with implications for the study of religion itself."-Jury
for the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the
Study of Religion: Constructive-Reflective Studies
"Using beautiful, limpid prose, Haeri weaves together poetry,
religion, and ethnography to show how a group of middle-class,
educated Iranian women counter the state's version of Islam. They
regularly revisit and reconsider Islamic theology by drawing on the
vast body of mystic poetry that is so central to Iranian culture.
In the process, Haeri blurs lines thrown up between the secular and
the religious in recent scholarship and invites us to consider the
deeper, political, and public meaning of ritualistic religious
practices."-Committee for the Fatema Mernissi Book Award, sponsored
by the Middle East Studies Association
"As one of the best examples of works on 'lived Islam,' [Say
What Your Longing Heart Desires] showcases how much analysis,
critical thinking, and self-reflection is involved in the
construction and performance of 'religious' acts and will be
helpful to both students and experts in the fields of religion,
ritual, and literature."-Ahoo Najafian, International Journal of
Middle East Studies
"Students and teachers of comparative religion will appreciate this
fresh and unusual way to learn about how Iranians practice Islam...
Readers get the rare gift of hearing the women's words and reading
about events in their lives. As Haeri points out, we in the West
don't often get that intimacy with Muslims in general or Iranians
in particular."-Karie Firoozmand, Friends Journal
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