An analysis of the growing visibility of nonreligion in Egypt.

Egypt's 2011 Uprising, while often perceived as a failed revolution, nonetheless nonetheless had durable social effects. Among these has been a rise in expressing atheism and agnosticism, especially among educated and affluent youth—the country’s future leaders.

An intimate ethnography, Nonreligious Lifeworlds in Egypt explores the intellectual and emotional transformations of atheists and agnostics inspired by the aspirational freedom-seeking of the Arab Spring. Rejecting both of Egypt’s dominant religious traditions, Islam and Coptic Christianity, nonreligious people are widely viewed as agents of moral outrage. Amid media-driven panics, their sanity is often questioned by their own families as they experiment with new ways of living and relating. Drawing from in-depth fieldwork, interviews, and social media analysis, Karin van Nieuwkerk reveals her interlocutors’ changing perspectives on sex and gender, eating and drinking, and life and death. Above all, she emphasizes the affective experiences of renouncing religion, marked by anxiety and regret—but also liberation and relief. With rigor and compassion, Van Nieuwkerk opens our minds to the arduous process of exchanging established norms for self-determination.

Karin van Nieuwkerk is an anthropologist and professor of contemporary Islam in Europe and the Middle East at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She is the editor of Moving In and Out of Islam and the author of “A Trade Like Any Other”: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt andPerforming Piety: Singers and Actors in Egypt’s Islamic Revival.

• Introduction
• Part I. Sensibilities and Polarization Around Nonreligion
  • Chapter 1. A Recent Spread of Atheism?
  • Chapter 2. The Revolution and Beyond
  • Chapter 3. What Are Nonreligion and Atheism in the Egyptian Context?
  • Chapter 4. Representing the “Other”
  • Chapter 5. Ambivalent Self-Identifications and Shifting (Non)religious Positions
• Part II. Affective Trajectories Toward Nonreligion
  • Chapter 6. Divine Love and Fear: Shifting Emotional Attachments to God
  • Chapter 7. Doubt, Confusion, and Anxiety
  • Chapter 8. Anger and Regret
  • Chapter 9. Letting Go of Religion and the Relief of Laughter
  • Chapter 10. Articulations of Individuality
  • Chapter 11. Emotional Responses of Significant Others
• Part III. Lived Nonreligion
  • Chapter 12. Tactics of Hiding and Revealing Nonreligion
  • Chapter 13. Embodying Nonreligion
  • Chapter 14. Sexuality and the Body
  • Chapter 15. “Mixed” Partnerships and Gender Relations
  • Chapter 16. Nonreligious Outlooks on Life: Ordinary Ethics, Life, and Death
  • Chapter 17. Lifeworlds
• Notes
• References
• Index