Does Political Islam Impede Gender‐Based Mobilization? The Case of Egypt

Abstract

Does political Islam impede gender‐based mobilization? An affirmative answer to this question is held by many scholars and feminist activists alike. From the Taliban in Afghanistan to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the various political Islamist organizations spreading throughout the South are often cited as anti‐gender mobilization, if not anti‐women altogether. The widespread and exponential support of political Islamism in the South, coupled with the decline of non‐religious‐based women's movements, warrants an examination of this assumed correlation. Using Egypt as a primary site of investigation, this paper argues that this correlation is spurious, if not ideologically biased and ahistorical. Looking at a recent initiative for building a non‐religious‐based women's movement in Egypt – ‘Women for Democracy’ – as a microcosm, this article argues that the lack of such movements in the South should be understood through a historical–structural analysis of post‐colonial state–society relations, in addition to agency‐related factors of professed ‘feminists’ in these countries.

Key Words:

• women
• gender
• Egypt
• feminism
• movement
• political Islam

Notes

¹For a more details on these movements see: Nicola Pratt, Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007); Rabab El‐Mahdi, ‘Enough! Egypt's Quest for Democracy’, Comparative Political Studies, 42:8 (2009), 1011–1039; and Joel Beinin, ‘Workers’ struggles under “socialism” and neoliberalism’, in Rabab El‐Mahdi and Philip Marfleet (eds) Egypt: The Moment of Change (London: Zed Press, 2009), pp. 77–101.

²In this I use the broad definition of social movements, as coined by Tilly: ‘an organized, sustained, self‐conscious challenge to existing authorities’; Charles Tilly, ‘Social Movements and National Politics’, in C. Bright and S. Harding (eds) State‐making and Social Movements: Essays in History and Theory (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1984), pp. 297–317, at 304.

³Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992); Lila Abu Lughod (ed.) Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Lila Abu‐Lughod, ‘Do Muslim Women Really need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others’, American Anthropologist, 104:3 (2002), pp. 783–790; Chandra Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, Feminist Review, 30: Autumn (1988), pp. 61–88; and Chandra Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).

⁴For more details on Islamist feminism in theory and practice see Asma Barlas, Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002); Amina Wadud, Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); V. Moghadam, ‘Islamic Feminism and Its Discontents: Toward a Resolution of the Debate’, Signs, 27:4 (2002), pp. 1135–1171; and Margot Badran, Feminism Beyond East and West: New Gender Talk and Practice in Global Islam (New York: Global Media Publications, 2007).

⁵Ella Shohat, ‘Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge’, Social Text, 72, 20:3 (2002), pp. 67–78 at 71.

⁶Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders, op. cit., p. 46.

⁷I emphasize this as the beginning of organization, to distinguish it from preceding stages of feminist struggle and consciousness marked by the writings – and subsequent debates – of individual women and men such as Qassim Amin, Malak Hefni Nassif and even Hoda Sharawi herself.

⁸Margot Badran, Feminism, Islam, and the Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 3.

⁹For example, as recently as February 2010, the general assembly of the State Council (one of the highest judicial and legal bodies in Egypt established in 1946) voted to ban the appointment of female judges. Moreover, a demonstration to protest this decision called by a number of women NGOs attracted less than 50 attendees.

¹¹Hala Shukrallah, ‘The Impact of the Islamic Movement in Egypt’, Feminist Review, 47 (1994), pp. 15–32 at 26.

¹⁰Nemat Guenena and Nadia Wassef, Unfulfilled Promises: Women's Rights in Egypt (New York: Population Council, 1999), p. 1.

¹²Mervat Hatem, ‘Toward the Development of Post‐Islamist and Post‐Nationalist Feminist Discourses in the Middle East’, in Judith Tucker (ed.) Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 29–48 at 31–32.

¹³See Pratt, op. cit.; and Nazih Ayubi, Over‐Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (New York: I.B. Tauris, 1995).

¹⁴See Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Abu‐Lughod, ‘Do Muslim Women Really need Saving?’, op. cit.

¹⁵Mahmoud, op. cit.

¹⁶Valentine Moghadam, ‘Engendering Citizenship, Feminizing Civil Society: The Case of the Middle East and North Africa’, Women & Politics, 25:1/2 (2003), pp. 63–87 at 80.

¹⁷Nadje Al‐Ali, ‘Gender and Civil Society in the Middle East’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 5:2 (2003), pp. 216–232 at 228. See also Frances Hasso, ‘Feminist Generations? The Long‐Term Impact of Social Movement Involvement on Palestinian Women's Lives’, The American Journal of Sociology, 107:3 (2001), pp. 586–611.

¹⁸Heba Raouf, personal interview by author, 5 November 2007.

¹⁹The demonstration was called for by the Kifaya pro‐democracy movement, in protest of the referendum scheduled on that day. The referendum and proposed constitutional amendment of article 76 – allowing for multi‐candidate Presidential elections – were seen as cosmetic and irrelevant in the context of continued repressive laws and practices.

²⁰Indicative of the reaction that this episode created, Kifaya's candle‐lit vigil to protest the assault was the biggest gathering of Kifaya throughout its peak 2004–2005 activities.

²¹Aida Seif El‐Dawla, personal interview by the author, 30 December 2007.

²³Ibid.

²²Women For Democracy, Founding Statement, Cairo: 29 June 2005, unpublished.

²⁴David Snow and Robert Benford, ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization’, in Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi and Sidney Tarrow (eds) From Structure to Action: Social Movement Participation Across Cultures (Greenwich, NY: JAI Press, 1988), pp. 197–217 at 198.

²⁵Arlene MacLeod, ‘Hegemonic Relations and Gender Resistance: The New Veiling as Accommodating Protest in Cairo’, Signs, 17:3 (1992), pp. 533–557 at 553.

²⁸Aida Seif El‐Dawla, op. cit.

²⁶Hala Shukrallah, personal interview by author, Cairo, 18 November 2007.

²⁷Heba Raouf, personal interview by author, Cairo, 3 November 2007.

²⁹M. Zald, ‘Culture, Ideology, and Strategic Framing’, in D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy and M. Zald (eds) Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 261–274 at 261.

³⁰Denis Kandiyoti, Women, Islam and the State (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992); Partha Chaterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

³¹Chandra Mohanty, ‘US Empire and the Project of Women's Studies: Stories of Citizenship, Complicity and Dissent’, Gender, Place and Culture, 13:1 (2006), pp. 7–20.

³²Abu Lughod, Remaking Women, op. cit., p. 14.

³³Elora Halim Chowdhury, ‘Global Feminism: Feminist Theory's Cul‐de‐sac’, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self Knowledge, IV Special Issue (Summer 2006), pp. 291–302 at 291.

³⁴For an excellent critique see Abu Lughod, ‘Do Muslim Women Really need Saving?’, op. cit.

³⁵For an example of this literature see Moghadam, ‘Engendering Citizenship, Feminizing Civil Society’, op. cit.; and Lisa Baldez, ‘Women's Movements and Democratic Transition in Brazil, Chile, East Germany and Poland’, Comparative Politics, 35:3 (2003), pp. 253–272.

³⁶Heba Raouf, personal interview by author, 4 November 2007.

³⁷Shukrallah, op. cit.

³⁸Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders, op. cit., p. 110.

³⁹Marnia Lazreg, ‘Development: Feminist Theory's Cul‐de‐sac’, in Kriemild Saunders (ed.) Feminist Post‐Development Thought: Rethinking Modernity, Post‐colonialism, and Representation (London: Zed Press, 2002).

⁴⁰Shukrallah, op. cit.

⁴¹Ibid.

⁴²See Moghadam, ‘Engendering Citizenship, Feminizing Civil Society’, op. cit.; and Baldez, op. cit.

⁴³Seif El‐Dawla, op. cit.

⁴⁴Nadje Al‐Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: the Egyptian Women's Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Al‐Ali, ‘Gender and Civil Society in the Middle East’, op. cit.

⁴⁵Shukrallah, op. cit.

⁴⁶The council is affiliated directly to the President's Office and is headed by his wife. It subcontracts and funds a lot of women NGOs as well as using NGO professionals as consultants.

⁴⁷Seif El‐Dawla, op. cit.

⁴⁸Anonymous, personal interview by author, Cairo, 12 January 2008.

⁴⁹J. McCarthy, ‘Constraints and Opportunities in Adopting, Adapting, and Inventing’, in D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy and M. Zald (eds) Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 141–151 at 148.

⁵⁰Al‐Ali, ‘Gender and Civil Society in the Middle East’, op. cit., p. 222.

⁵¹It is not a coincidence that the founding of the first women organization (EFU) took place in the aftermath of the 1919 revolution and by women of the Wafd Party which was leading the anti‐colonial struggle at the time.

⁵²Raouf, 5 November 2008, op. cit.

⁵³Moghadam, ‘Engendering Citizenship, Feminizing Civil Society’, op. cit., p. 71.

⁵⁴A clear example of this range of opinions within Islamist organizations is the Muslim Brotherhood. For example, while their tentative party platform announced in 2006 declared that women should not run for Presidential candidacy, influential figures within the organization such as Essan Al‐Erian and Aboul Monem Abou Al‐Fotouh openly opposed this position.

⁵⁵Abu Lughod, ‘Do Muslim Women Really need Saving?’, op. cit p. 788.

⁵⁶Moghadam, ‘Engendering Citizenship, Feminizing Civil Society’, op. cit., p. 80.

⁵⁷Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 20.