Read in the Name of Your Lord

Nermeen Mouftah is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration and Translation Acronyms Prologue: Girl in a School Uniform Part I: Faith in Reading Introduction: God's First Command 1. Religious Reading in an Unlettered Nation Part II: The Word of God for All 2. The Quran and Bible as Method 3. Scripturalism among Nonliterate Women Part III: The Virtues of Basic Literacy 4. Making Mothers Read 5. Workers Writing Toward Dignity Postscript Bibliography Index

"Mouftah's careful ethnographic examination of adult literacy programs in Egypt acts as an intersection from which the reader can turn one way or another to explore everything from debates about Qur'anic hermeneutics and contemporary theories of development, to gender and language ideologies, the false promises of neoliberalism, and the cruel optimism of revolutionary hope."-Gregory Starrett, author of Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt "In addition to tracing the social life of literacy campaign in Egypt, this book provocatively questions the privileging of literacy in the first place. Mouftah gives spaces to ways of knowing that rely on other modes of experiencing text. This pivot animates the very subjects who are objects of reform campaigns and in this Mouftah reverses the gaze and calls into question the readers' underlying assumptions."-Shenila Khoja-Moolji, author of Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia