Lebanese Shia Women Temporality and Piety

Among Shia Muslims in Lebanon, piety has become a central marker of modernity. The author argues that, perhaps unexpectedly, it is women who are allotted the greater responsibility of representing modernity in all its dimensions, including the material. As part of their mandate to represent and facilitate their community’s progress, pious Shia women are encouraged to move into public roles and spaces. These processes demonstrate the coming together of the material and spiritual domains as well as the transformation and partial blurring of gender divides.