Booth, Marilyn, "The Islamic Politics of John Stuart Mill," lecture delivered at the University of Edinburgh, 19 January, 2012.

Professor Marilyn Booth presents her inaugural lecture entitled “The Islamic Politics of John Stuart Mill: Street literature, translation and gender activism in Egypt, circa 2002.”

Excerpt:

“The discourse on Islamic practices as a basis for politics in Egypt has been accompanied for at least a century by the production of manuals to guide believers in their daily lives, as gendered members of a community – as Muslim women and Muslim men.

This literature of conduct echoes and draws upon believers’ use of the Prophet’s sunna – his example in conduct and in words – to enact the proper and pious life. Such popularly aimed manuals, though, focus particularly on assigning specific gender roles and social spaces to women as the signifiers of family and national honour.”

This lecture considers the messages such conduct manuals propound, and juxtaposes these works with a recent translation in Arabic of John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women, exploring how this classic work of European thought becomes part of a contemporary production of the gendered Muslim subject.

This lecture was recorded on 19 January 2012 at the Auditorium lecture theatre, Business School, The University of Edinburgh.