Book Panel on Mona Oraby's Devotion to the Administrative State: Religion and Social Order in Egypt (2024)

“Regulation does not inhibit freedom,” writes Mona Oraby in Devotion to the Administrative State (2024). “To be free, religiously, is to be contained within a group.” This insurgent idea orients Oraby’s powerful ethnography of marginal religious groups in Egypt. Devotion to the Administrative State is a work of interdisciplinary practice and anthropological insight that inspires thinking about community anew and presses us to organize our conference assembly more directly toward community recognition and engagement. This roundtable seeks to host a discussion that includes all attendees through common discussion on secularism, belonging, and freedom.