EUME
2013/ 2014

Sarah Eltantawi

The Reformist Muslim Brotherhood in Power in Egypt: Implications for the Rhetoric of Religion in a New Age of Political Islam

Sarah Eltantawi holds a PhD in the Study of Religion (Islamic Studies) from Harvard University (2012), an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, and a BA in Rhetoric and English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Eltantawi has held fellowships at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies (2011-2012), Brandeis University (2013), and the University of California, Berkeley (2013). Her book manuscript is an in-depth study of the notorious case of Amina Lawal, a peasant woman from Northern Nigeria sentenced to death by stoning in 2002 (and later acquitted in an Islamic court). She shows how the legal processes and outcomes of this case are a product of material concerns such as poverty, corruption, gender norms, and Nigeria’s contemporary position in the larger political economy.

The Reformist Muslim Brotherhood in Power in Egypt: Implications for the Rhetoric of Religion in a New Age of Political Islam

As a EUME Fellow, Eltantawi is researching her new project, which critically examines the “political theology” of the Muslim Brotherhood in contemporary Egypt. She is interested in how the Brotherhood's relationship to Islam and Islamic law and theology is shifting as they have ascended from an underground, oppositional group to mainstream power.