Amira Mittermaier
Biographic Data
| ID | 77861 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amira Mittermaier |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amira |
| FAMILY NAME | Mittermaier |
| SIGNATURE | MITTERMAIER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0723-7361 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 273 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
God Knows Best
The Arabic phrase Allāhu a‘lam —“God knows best”—is used frequently in everyday Muslim speech and to conclude seemingly assertive statements or fatwas. At its heart lies the recognition that God is the All‐Knowing, whereas humans know next to nothing. Reflecting on this recognition, this essay discusses Sufi refusals of the ethnographic project and describes practices connected to the idea that only God truly knows. The latter range from the isti…
Debate, Disagreement, Disdain: New Directions in the Anthropology of Islam
Reckoning with God
This special section reflects upon how divine-human relations are shaped by the socioeconomic and political circumstances in which they are cultivated. The four articles treat God not as a rigidly defined, unchanging being borne of ageless scripture and theology, but a figure who emerges during people's self-reflection and through their interactions with others in specific settings. The articles explore how human engagements with the divine manif…
Caring for Cats in Cairo: Urban Grammars of Compassion
At first sight, Cairo is a cruel and harsh city, marked by extreme inequality and offering few resources for the poor. Like other metropolises, Cairo can easily numb its residents to the suffering of others. But it is also a city in which quiet, barely noticeable acts of compassion occur every day. In this essay, I focus on forms of care and compassion that are oriented towards cats. I weave together the stories of Amina, an upper‐middle‐class wo…
The Uneven Landscapes of Censorship
In November 2020, as part of Operation Luxor, the home of Austrian Islamophobia scholar Farid Hafez was raided. In December 2023, I was made to withdraw from an almost-complete hiring process at the University of Vienna due to implicit antisemitism accusations. This article compares the two cases to highlight Austria's uneven landscapes of censorship. In the German-speaking world and beyond, equalizing "anti-racism" or "anti-discrimination" frame…
Religious Afterlives of a Revolution
When do revolutions end? How do revolutions live on in embodied affects, relationships, and horizons of aspiration? This article describes the remaking of religion among upper-middle-class Egyptians who participated in the 2011 uprising. It traces a widespread turn to Sufism, yoga, and meditation, along with the search for a personal connection to God. My interlocutors' spiritual bricolage could easily be read as an effect of political defeat, ne…
Toward an Ethnography of God
In recent years, anthropologists and theologians have been engaging in conversation with one another. Building on, and branching out from, that conversation, this article calls for a careful ethnographic engagement with not just "God talk" (the literal meaning of theology) but also with the figure of God itself. Such a shift can take us from theology as an abstract, scholarly, discursive realm to the messy and often-unpredictable ways in which Go…
Expanding the conversation: On Theology and Anthropology
Around Andreas Bandak's Exemplary Life: Modelling Sainthood in Christian Syria
Exemplarity is one of those startlingly interesting ideas that deserves to be up there with 'power' as a foundational concept for the social sciences. Exemplarity is memory, learning, and mimesis; it is self-recognition in the Other, and therefore key to theory of mind. One of the curious things about exemplarity is how pervasively we encounter it in its multiple, material, and ideational forms; as copies, repetitions, iterations, duplications, m…
The weight of the future
In this "hundreds" honoring Kathleen Stewart, I reflect on how a turn to affect can attune us to the emergent, to unfinished worlds, to futures as they throw themselves together, to things slipping in and out of existence, and to what lies nascent in the atmosphere. In darker moments, such as the aftermath of revolutions, the weight of the future can become unbearable
Knot of the Soul: Madness, Psychoanalysis, Islam By Stefania Pandolfo
Non-compassionate care: A view from an Islamic charity organization
Beyond the Human Horizon
Amid a moment of crisis, how might the anthropology of religion shift its focus from ethics to politics? This 2021 Rappaport Lecture, delivered at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Biennial Meeting on 15 May 2021, begins by highlighting three ways in which our field has taken on politics in recent years: by troubling the distinction between ethics and politics, by thinking religion together with pressing political issues, and by …
Islamic Charity as (Non)Political in Contemporary Egypt
Whereas some Muslim-majority countries have centralized alms economies, in others Islamic charity unfolds informally. In Egypt, pious giving occurs on the margins of the state but lies at the heart of society. Egyptians’ daily charitable practices may therefore be read as political in the broad sense proposed by Hannah Arendt: efforts by ordinary citizens to shape the conditions of their collective existence. Although this Arendtian framework hel…
Afterword: The Elsewhere beyond Religious Concerns
We are all connected to multiple Elsewheres: the place(s) where we grew up, the place we would rather be, the places that haunt us, the places where the dead dwell, the sites of empire. Geographical Elsewheres can be a source of fear. In the wake of Europe's so-called migrant crisis and border-crossing pandemic viruses, a moral and racist panic feeds off the supposed collapse of those 'other places' into 'our society'. But other places can also b…
Saints and Politics
Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times
Giving to God examines the everyday practices of Islamic giving in post-revolutionary Egypt. From foods prepared in Sufi soup kitchens, to meals distributed by pious volunteers in slums, to almsgiving, these acts are ultimately about giving to God by giving to the poor. Surprisingly, many who practice such giving say that they do not care about the poor, instead framing their actions within a unique non-compassionate ethics of giving. At first, t…
Portrait: Saba Mahmood (In Memoriam)
A Portrait in Scenes by Amira MittermaierFor Saba by Susan HardingRecollections of a Friendship by Michael Lambek
The unknown in the Egyptian uprising: Towards an anthropology of al-Ghayb
Muslim Prayer on Picture Postcards of French Algeria, 1900-1960
From 1900 to 1960 French soldiers and visitors to North Africa sent home striking postcards showing Muslims in prayer. As inscribed objects they linked separated family and friends, and were collected, compiled and stored. Based on 2500 of these cards offered on an Internet auction site, this study examines the senders, the receivers, and the attitudes to the prayers in the messages. The latter range from indifference, apprehension, and ridicule …
Auld lang syne
Next article FreeAuld lang syneMichael Lambek and Amira MittermaierMichael LambekUniversity of Toronto Search for more articles by this author and Amira MittermaierUniversity of Toronto Search for more articles by this author University of TorontoUniversity of TorontoPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAt the close of the ye…
The dark, the joyful, and the parodic
Next article FreeThe dark, the joyful, and the parodicMichael Lambek and Amira MittermaierMichael LambekUniversity of Toronto Search for more articles by this author and Amira MittermaierUniversity of Toronto Search for more articles by this author University of TorontoUniversity of TorontoPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMor…
Dreams and the Miraculous
L'Angélus dans la boîte à lettres
En France, la popularité des cartes postales inspirées de L'Angélus de Jean-François Millet coïncide avec les débats publics qui ont accompagné la promulgation de la loi Combes de 1905. À partir des centaines de cartes accessibles sur le site internet de vente aux enchères Delcampe, les auteurs étudient les messages portés par les cartes, recensent le sexe des correspondants (majoritairement des femmes), et comparent les nombreuses images qui rej…
How to do things with examples: Sufis, dreams, and anthropology
In this paper I explore how members of a Sufi community in Egypt use dream-stories as examples to evoke an otherwise invisible realm, and how I, in turn, use their stories ethnographically. My Sufi interlocutors use examples to invite others into the realm of the imagination, to draw listeners into the shaykh's spiritual aura, and to offer a model for emulation that sometimes triggers similar experiences in others. Their approach to examples pose…
Dreams from Elsewhere: Muslim subjectivities beyond the trope of self-cultivation
Drawing on dream stories from a Sufi community in Egypt, this article probes the limits of the paradigm of self-cultivation which has come to be widely employed in the anthropology of Islam. While the concept of self-cultivation has complicated the equation of agency and resistance, its emphasis on intentionality and deliberate action obscures other modes of religiosity that centre neither on acting within nor on acting against but on being acted…
Beyond compassion: Islamic voluntarism in Egypt
Resala, Egypt's largest volunteer-driven charity organization, engages in a range of activities, from distributing food in slums to visiting orphanages. Although its volunteers may appear to participate in a global moral economy of compassion, many of them articulate an Islamic voluntarism that contrasts with what they see as a Christian approach to suffering and with the more secular motivations of so much civic and humanitarian work today. Focu…
Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma
Aīsh, huriyya, 'adāla igtimā'iyya ("bread, freedom, social justice") were key demands of Egyptian protesters in early 2011. Whereas the call for bread evokes immediate need, social justice is often associated with structural transformations and a better tomorrow. In light of this temporal tension, this article calls for a critical rethinking of an orientation toward the future by dwelling on the ethical and political potentials inherent to tradit…
Beyond the Human Horizon
Amid a moment of crisis, how might the anthropology of religion shift its focus from ethics to politics? This 2021 Rappaport Lecture, delivered at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Biennial Meeting on 15 May 2021, begins by highlighting three ways in which our field has taken on politics in recent years: by troubling the distinction between ethics and politics, by thinking religion together with pressing political issues, and by …
Death and Martyrdom in the Arab Uprisings: An Introduction
Death lies at the beginning of the Arab uprisings and continues to haunt them. Most narratives about the 'Arab Spring' begin with Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself on fire. Egyptian protesters in turn referred to Khaled Said, a young man from Alexandria whom the police had beaten to death. This special issue places death at the centre of its engagement with the Arab uprisings, counterrevolutions, and their aftermaths. It …
The unknown in the Egyptian uprising: Towards an anthropology of al-Ghayb
Invisible Armies: Reflections on Egyptian Dreams of War
In January 2011, people around the world turned their attention to Cairo's Tahrir Square. The news network al-Jazeera quickly became a window onto the square and surrounding streets, and news reporters became eyewitnesses to historical events. Aware of the media spectacle unfolding around them, Egyptian protesters over the following weeks held up signs in Arabic and English and, maybe unknowingly, staged highly photogenic scenes, for instance whe…
The Book of Visions: Dreams, Poetry, and Prophecy in Contemporary Egypt
Shaykh al-Qusi is a charismatic spiritual leader in Cairo whose followers have been recording their dream visions and waking visions in a handwritten collection since 1997. Drawing on the shaykh's dream-inspired poetry and his followers' vision narratives, I describe the ways in which this community of believers understands the relationship between authorship and authority, as well as between imagination ( al-khayamacr;l ) and tradition. Dreams a…
How to do things with examples: Sufis, dreams, and anthropology
In this paper I explore how members of a Sufi community in Egypt use dream-stories as examples to evoke an otherwise invisible realm, and how I, in turn, use their stories ethnographically. My Sufi interlocutors use examples to invite others into the realm of the imagination, to draw listeners into the shaykh's spiritual aura, and to offer a model for emulation that sometimes triggers similar experiences in others. Their approach to examples pose…
Toward an Ethnography of God
In recent years, anthropologists and theologians have been engaging in conversation with one another. Building on, and branching out from, that conversation, this article calls for a careful ethnographic engagement with not just "God talk" (the literal meaning of theology) but also with the figure of God itself. Such a shift can take us from theology as an abstract, scholarly, discursive realm to the messy and often-unpredictable ways in which Go…
Non-compassionate care: A view from an Islamic charity organization
Religious Afterlives of a Revolution
When do revolutions end? How do revolutions live on in embodied affects, relationships, and horizons of aspiration? This article describes the remaking of religion among upper-middle-class Egyptians who participated in the 2011 uprising. It traces a widespread turn to Sufism, yoga, and meditation, along with the search for a personal connection to God. My interlocutors' spiritual bricolage could easily be read as an effect of political defeat, ne…
Muslim Prayer on Picture Postcards of French Algeria, 1900-1960
From 1900 to 1960 French soldiers and visitors to North Africa sent home striking postcards showing Muslims in prayer. As inscribed objects they linked separated family and friends, and were collected, compiled and stored. Based on 2500 of these cards offered on an Internet auction site, this study examines the senders, the receivers, and the attitudes to the prayers in the messages. The latter range from indifference, apprehension, and ridicule …
L'Angélus dans la boîte à lettres
En France, la popularité des cartes postales inspirées de L'Angélus de Jean-François Millet coïncide avec les débats publics qui ont accompagné la promulgation de la loi Combes de 1905. À partir des centaines de cartes accessibles sur le site internet de vente aux enchères Delcampe, les auteurs étudient les messages portés par les cartes, recensent le sexe des correspondants (majoritairement des femmes), et comparent les nombreuses images qui rej…
The Book of Visions: Dreams, Poetry, and Prophecy in Contemporary Egypt
Shaykh al-Qusi is a charismatic spiritual leader in Cairo whose followers have been recording their dream visions and waking visions in a handwritten collection since 1997. Drawing on the shaykh's dream-inspired poetry and his followers' vision narratives, I describe the ways in which this community of believers understands the relationship between authorship and authority, as well as between imagination ( al-khayamacr;l ) and tradition. Dreams a…
Chapter 2. (Re)Imagining Space: Dreams and Saint Shrines in Egypt
Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination
Dreams that Matter explores the social and material life of dreams in contemporary Cairo. Amira Mittermaier guides the reader through landscapes of the imagination that feature Muslim dream interpreters who draw on Freud, reformists who dismiss all forms of divination as superstition, a Sufi devotional group that keeps a diary of dreams related to its shaykh, and ordinary believers who speak of moving encounters with the Prophet Muhammad. In clos…
An Islam of her own: Reconsidering religion and secularism in women's Islamic movements by Hafez, Sherine
Dreams from Elsewhere: Muslim subjectivities beyond the trope of self-cultivation
Drawing on dream stories from a Sufi community in Egypt, this article probes the limits of the paradigm of self-cultivation which has come to be widely employed in the anthropology of Islam. While the concept of self-cultivation has complicated the equation of agency and resistance, its emphasis on intentionality and deliberate action obscures other modes of religiosity that centre neither on acting within nor on acting against but on being acted…
Invisible Armies: Reflections on Egyptian Dreams of War
In January 2011, people around the world turned their attention to Cairo's Tahrir Square. The news network al-Jazeera quickly became a window onto the square and surrounding streets, and news reporters became eyewitnesses to historical events. Aware of the media spectacle unfolding around them, Egyptian protesters over the following weeks held up signs in Arabic and English and, maybe unknowingly, staged highly photogenic scenes, for instance whe…
Trading with God: Islam, Calculation, Excess
Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma
Aīsh, huriyya, 'adāla igtimā'iyya ("bread, freedom, social justice") were key demands of Egyptian protesters in early 2011. Whereas the call for bread evokes immediate need, social justice is often associated with structural transformations and a better tomorrow. In light of this temporal tension, this article calls for a critical rethinking of an orientation toward the future by dwelling on the ethical and political potentials inherent to tradit…
Beyond compassion: Islamic voluntarism in Egypt
Resala, Egypt's largest volunteer-driven charity organization, engages in a range of activities, from distributing food in slums to visiting orphanages. Although its volunteers may appear to participate in a global moral economy of compassion, many of them articulate an Islamic voluntarism that contrasts with what they see as a Christian approach to suffering and with the more secular motivations of so much civic and humanitarian work today. Focu…
Dreams and the Miraculous
L'Angélus dans la boîte à lettres
En France, la popularité des cartes postales inspirées de L'Angélus de Jean-François Millet coïncide avec les débats publics qui ont accompagné la promulgation de la loi Combes de 1905. À partir des centaines de cartes accessibles sur le site internet de vente aux enchères Delcampe, les auteurs étudient les messages portés par les cartes, recensent le sexe des correspondants (majoritairement des femmes), et comparent les nombreuses images qui rej…
How to do things with examples: Sufis, dreams, and anthropology
In this paper I explore how members of a Sufi community in Egypt use dream-stories as examples to evoke an otherwise invisible realm, and how I, in turn, use their stories ethnographically. My Sufi interlocutors use examples to invite others into the realm of the imagination, to draw listeners into the shaykh's spiritual aura, and to offer a model for emulation that sometimes triggers similar experiences in others. Their approach to examples pose…
Death and Martyrdom in the Arab Uprisings: An Introduction
Death lies at the beginning of the Arab uprisings and continues to haunt them. Most narratives about the 'Arab Spring' begin with Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself on fire. Egyptian protesters in turn referred to Khaled Said, a young man from Alexandria whom the police had beaten to death. This special issue places death at the centre of its engagement with the Arab uprisings, counterrevolutions, and their aftermaths. It …
Auld lang syne
Next article FreeAuld lang syneMichael Lambek and Amira MittermaierMichael LambekUniversity of Toronto Search for more articles by this author and Amira MittermaierUniversity of Toronto Search for more articles by this author University of TorontoUniversity of TorontoPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAt the close of the ye…
The dark, the joyful, and the parodic
Next article FreeThe dark, the joyful, and the parodicMichael Lambek and Amira MittermaierMichael LambekUniversity of Toronto Search for more articles by this author and Amira MittermaierUniversity of Toronto Search for more articles by this author University of TorontoUniversity of TorontoPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMor…
The unknown in the Egyptian uprising: Towards an anthropology of al-Ghayb
Muslim Prayer on Picture Postcards of French Algeria, 1900-1960
From 1900 to 1960 French soldiers and visitors to North Africa sent home striking postcards showing Muslims in prayer. As inscribed objects they linked separated family and friends, and were collected, compiled and stored. Based on 2500 of these cards offered on an Internet auction site, this study examines the senders, the receivers, and the attitudes to the prayers in the messages. The latter range from indifference, apprehension, and ridicule …
Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times
Giving to God examines the everyday practices of Islamic giving in post-revolutionary Egypt. From foods prepared in Sufi soup kitchens, to meals distributed by pious volunteers in slums, to almsgiving, these acts are ultimately about giving to God by giving to the poor. Surprisingly, many who practice such giving say that they do not care about the poor, instead framing their actions within a unique non-compassionate ethics of giving. At first, t…
Portrait: Saba Mahmood (In Memoriam)
A Portrait in Scenes by Amira MittermaierFor Saba by Susan HardingRecollections of a Friendship by Michael Lambek
Islamic Charity as (Non)Political in Contemporary Egypt
Whereas some Muslim-majority countries have centralized alms economies, in others Islamic charity unfolds informally. In Egypt, pious giving occurs on the margins of the state but lies at the heart of society. Egyptians’ daily charitable practices may therefore be read as political in the broad sense proposed by Hannah Arendt: efforts by ordinary citizens to shape the conditions of their collective existence. Although this Arendtian framework hel…
Afterword: The Elsewhere beyond Religious Concerns
We are all connected to multiple Elsewheres: the place(s) where we grew up, the place we would rather be, the places that haunt us, the places where the dead dwell, the sites of empire. Geographical Elsewheres can be a source of fear. In the wake of Europe's so-called migrant crisis and border-crossing pandemic viruses, a moral and racist panic feeds off the supposed collapse of those 'other places' into 'our society'. But other places can also b…
Saints and Politics
Knot of the Soul: Madness, Psychoanalysis, Islam By Stefania Pandolfo
Non-compassionate care: A view from an Islamic charity organization
Beyond the Human Horizon
Amid a moment of crisis, how might the anthropology of religion shift its focus from ethics to politics? This 2021 Rappaport Lecture, delivered at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Biennial Meeting on 15 May 2021, begins by highlighting three ways in which our field has taken on politics in recent years: by troubling the distinction between ethics and politics, by thinking religion together with pressing political issues, and by …
Sociology (21 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Islamic Studies and History (16 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (15 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Art (12 works) · History (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Law (10 works)