Editorial

Abstract

Shirin Saeidi’s “A Passionate Pursuit of Justice: Towards an Ethics of Islamic Feminist Research Practice” is a well-researched and thought-provoking piece on the question of how a scholar investigating lived practices (of Islam, in this case) may fruitfully deploy feminist theoretical perspectives; in particular, “how a feminist committed to breaking down hierarchies between research participants and herself can carefully study ambiguous activism.” By “ambiguous activism” the author seems to mean the practices of groups or forms of life toward which the author feels morally ambivalent. Her essay is a judicious combination of literature review of feminist theorization, methodological reflection, and self-reflection in the context of her object of study. Her object of study is Iran’s Hezbollah, a conservative cultural movement backed by the mullahs and in this respect, quite unlike other Islamist movements in the Middle East; a movement, Saeidi notes, which may be regarded as both “oppressive, but also suppressed.” While enjoying powerful backing by the Supreme Leader (still the king-maker in Iran) it struggles within civil society against secularization and individualistic religiosity introduced by neoliberalism ...