Fragile bodies and Sensuous Spirits : performing womenly virtues in a contemporary Egyptian brotherhood

Abstract

It was 2006 when I first arrived in Cairo as a guest of an Italian couple who had converted to the Burhaniyya, which is an Egyptian-Sudanese brotherhood present in Europe since the nineteen-eighties. I had carried out nine months of fieldwork on this movement’s Italian branch for my master’s thesis. Asia and Abdul Rahim, which are my Italian hosts’ Islamic names, introduced me to the Cairene branch of the brotherhood so that I could start my new fieldwork for my PhD and, from their point of view, begin my path towards Islam. This outcome indeed seemed quite likely, from their point of view, given that many of the Italians, who had first approached the Burhaniyya for research and study reasons, had then converted to Islam. Preserving this hope for my conversion, for a long time during the course of my fieldwork in Egypt my interlocutors treated me as a possible convert and for this reason entrusted me to the cares of Heba, a Burhani sister in her forties who was renowned for her virtue, for her commitment and her good service to the Burhaniyya.