South Beirut has recently become a vibrant leisure destination, with a plethora of cafés and restaurants catering to the young, fashionable, and pious. What effects do these establishments have on the moral norms, spatial practices, and urban experiences of this Lebanese community? Lara Deeb, associate professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Scripps College, and Mona Harb, associate professor of urban studies and politics at the American University of Beirut and the author of Le Hezbollah à Beyrouth, examine these questions in their new collaboration Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Morality and Geography in Shi’ite South Beirut. (Princeton University Press).
From the diverse voices of young Shi’ite Muslims searching for places to hang out, to the Hezbollah officials who want this media-savvy generation to be more politically involved, to the religious leaders worried Lebanese youth are losing their moral compasses, this insightful book provides a sophisticated and original look at this complex moral landscape through the cultural lens of historical café culture.
“Through the mapping of an emergent café culture that signals and feeds new desires for sociability and public leisure by ‘more or less pious’ youth, this engaging and nonjudgmental book guides us through the surprisingly complex moral rubrics and creative religious interpretations of a new generation in the Shi’a neighborhood of South Beirut,” says Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Do Muslim Women Need Saving? “In marvelous detail, we learn how young men and women, and those who seek their business, are re-configuring their neighborhood, social relations, and the whole city of Beirut, where class, sect, and geography are tightly interwoven.”
Deeb and Harb’s work highlights tensions and complexities exacerbated by the presence of multiple religious authorities, a fraught sectarian political context, and class mobility and leisure’s influence on Lebanese sociopolitical and urban situations since 2000. Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Morality and Geography in Shi’ite South Beirut is available as an ebook and in print through a variety of retailers.