Reading and remembering Saba Mahmood: Islam, ethics, and the hermeneutics of tradition

Saba Mahmood's untimely passing on March 10, 2018 was a tragic loss for family, friends, and colleagues, as well as for cultural anthropologists inspired by her scholarship over the past two decades. Her influence has been no less far-reaching in contemporary Islamic and gender studies, as well as the anthropology of ethics. It is against the backdrop of her legacy that this essay seeks to pay homage to and critically reflect on Mahmood's scholarship. It focuses on and assesses Mahmood's contributions as an anthropologist of Islam, subjectivity, and ethics, paying particular attention to the debates that have emerged in the wake of her scholarship on the ethics of piety, the ambivalent nature of subjectivity, and the meanings of freedom and tradition. The assessment suggests that there is an unresolved tension between Mahmood's experience-near reflections on the ethical care of the pious self, on one hand, and her more sweeping critiques of freedom and the liberal project. The essay concludes with some thoughts on where the anthropology of Islam is moving with regard to ethics, plurality, and the ambivalence of subjectivity.