Hanan El-Halawany
Pittsburgh University
In this paper I am advocating the first section of Sangari’s (1999) definition that “feminist agency consists of the organized initiatives of women and men committed to gender justice within an egalitarian framework: this definition excluded women committed to a right-wing politics with its accompanying set of permissions to ‘other’ women and men from different religions” while I dispute her exclusion of any activist with a religious or even ideological agenda from the feminist list. To sustain my argument I review different Egyptian feminist discourses that took place in late 19th and through 20th century Egypt. In the course of this discussion, I would like to rectify the misconception of classifying feminists with Islamic agenda as anti-feminist while commemorating those with Western ideology as the sincere feminists.
Sangari (1999) argues that “feminist agency consists of the organized initiatives of women and men committed to gender justice within an egalitarian framework: this definition excluded women committed to a right-wing politics with its accompanying set of permissions to ‘other’ women and men from different religions” (Sangari, 1999). In this paper I’m advocating the first section of Sangari’s definition while I dispute her exclusion of any activist with a religious or even ideological agenda from the feminist list. To sustain my argument I review differnt Egyptian feminist discourses that took place in late 19th and through 20th century Egypt. In the course of this discussion, I would like to rectify the misconception of classifying feminists with Islamic agenda as anti-feminist while commemorating those with Western ideology as the sincere feminists. In my argument veil- Islamic costume- represents the locus upon which both Western and Islamic feminists developed their projects of women’s emancipation in both the time of the British colonization and after independence. My argument will be elaborated within three discourses formulated the debate of women’s issues in Egypt at that time. These discourses are “Orientalism” (Said, 1978), “Nationalisms” (Amin, 1995) (Chatterjee, 1990), and Modern Islamists (Nasif, 1910). Within these different discourses tradition and modernity, harems and freedom, veiling and unveiling become the familiar terms by which feminist discourse in Islamic countries in general and in Egypt in specific is constructed (Abu-Lughod, 2001). From a broader point of view, Badran (1995) attributes the evolvement of different feminist discourses in Egypt to “the awareness of constraints placed upon women because of their gender and attempts to remove these constraints and to evolve a more equitable gender system involving new [gender roles] for women and new relations between men and women” (Badran, 1995, p.91).
Orientalism and Egyptian feminism
Nineteenth century Egypt witnessed the rise of modern state, expanding capitalism, fuller incorporation into European dominated world market system, secularization, technological innovation, and urbanization. These forces changed the lives of Egyptians across lines of class and gender. Egypt also witnessed a change in social conditions, as the decline of the harem and other cultural consequences associated with the expansion of capitalism and Egypt emergence into the modern globe (Badran, 1995). These new social and cultural conditions shaped the intellectual realm as the ideological battle between the Islamic reformers or “modernist” and the conservative thinkers blew up. Around the mid 19th century women’s issues called for special attention and discussion. Religious modern thinkers, who were after all the society’s most prominent intellectuals, first posed the problem as a matter of interpretation of religious law. For instance Rifa’a Al-Tahtawi discussed the problems of women and society primarily as one of shedding new light on the meaning of the religious law. In late 19th century Mohamed Abduh furthered Refa’a al-Tahtawi’s reformist trend and argued that women’s oppression at that time stemmed from the moral disintegration of Muslim society and called for a revitalization of Islam that included coming to term with the inner meaning of Islam. Upon that, for instance, he called for the abolishment of polygamy. For Abduh and other Islamic reformers women’s liberation found its justification as a precondition for the evolvement of a moral modern society (Nashat, 1999).
By the second half of the 19th century women’s voices came to be heard. Elite educated women joined the debate with strong arguments for the end of female seclusion and the expansion of educational opportunities for women. In this context many scholars mention A’isha Taymor in their discussion of the evolutionary change in women’s status in 19th century Egypt, while all have highlighted the same set of biographical facts, they have constructed different narratives on interpreting its significance to women’s status at that time. She was a prominent poet and a member of the Turkish-Egyptian upper class who worked also as a part time interpreter for the royal family. Some modernist feminists attribute Aisha Taymor’s openness to the Khediwi’s efforts to tie Egypt to the modern European world. In response to these efforts many upper and middle class families were interested in educating their daughters and hired European and local tutors for this purpose (Hatem, 1998).
At that time A’isha challenged the prevailing assumptions that women with employment risk losing their femininity and becoming masculine. As a young elite married woman and a mother who also had literary skills, she undermined many of the old understandings of why women took on some non-domestic activities. However, A’isha wrote poetry for pleasure and in exchange for public recognition only (Hatem, 1998).
Upon that, Cole (1981) describes Egyptian feminism in late nineteenth century Egypt as a reflection of indigenous transformations related to the differential impact of Egypt’s integration into the world market on the upper-middle and lower-middle classes. He argued that feminism was more ideologically suited to the needs of the upper-middle classes, as it served to bolster the transition from the lavish aristocratic lifestyle of the Turkish elite to the more rationalized ideal of the European bourgeoisie- an ideal fit for the new agrarian capitalist class (Cole, 1981).
Among the strongest advocates of the Western and European discourse of feminism is Qasim Amin, an Egyptian lawyer and jurist who devoted two books to the issue of women’s liberation, Tahrir al-Mar’a (The emancipation of women, 1899) and Al-Mar’a Al-jedida (The New Woman, 1900). He is frequently identified as the first Egyptian and Arab feminist (Al-Ali, 2000). He is known for advocating women’s liberation through education, the removal of the veil, and the end of women’s seclusion emphasizing the importance of civilizing women. The rational within which Amin grounded his argument for changing women’s position in the Egyptian society was his assumption of the inherent superiority of Western civilization and the inherit backwardness of Muslim societies. His debates about women’s liberation marked the first battle in which veil came to comprehend significations far broader than merely the position of women. Its connotations encompassed issues of class and culture- the widening gab between the different classes in society and the interconnected conflict between the culture of the colonizers and that of the colonized (Ahmed, 1992).
Ahmed (1992) and Baron (1994) reexamine Amin’s writings and point out that Qasim Amin’s support for women’s liberation arose from his wholehearted embrace of a Western model of development and his desire to emulate the Western gender system. They suggest that many of Amin’s ideas actually reproduce colonial thinking about women’s status in Muslim societies and contend that his book, Tahrir Al-Mar’a, mainly calls for the substitution of Islamic-style male dominated patriarchy by Western-style of male dominance.
In this historical period the British developed their theories of races, cultures, and social evolution according to middle-class Victorian England, beliefs and practices that represented the model of ultimate civilization. Within this value system the Victorian version of womanhood was highly recommended and praised as the ideal measure of a civilized woman. Upon that the colonial feminist discourse of Islam centered on women interpreting veil and segregation as oppressing customs, which also perceived to be the reasons for the general and comprehensive backwardness of Islamic societies. In this sense veiling, the most visible marker of Islamic societies, became the symbol of both the oppression of women and the backwardness of Islam, and hence became the open target of colonial attack on Muslim societies. From this perspective the British deployed Western feminism against Islamic culture in service of colonialism, claiming that the abandonment of native culture and the adoption of the Western norms were posed as the solution for women’s oppression only in colonized or dominated societies (Ahmed, 1992). These are some of what Said (1978) calls the dogmas of Orientalism, and they are the very terms that feminist scholars like Ong (1994) deploy to describe the intersection between the colonial discourse and the feminist representation of non-Western women.
Edward Said (1978) defines the conceptual framework within which Qasim Amin and other advocates of the British definition of civilization and being civilized as “Orientalism” (p.1). Said states that the concept ‘Orient’ was almost a European invention that they used to talk about their colonies in the East-North Africa, Middle East, and Far East. Upon that he defines Orientalism as a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in the European Western experience. Said also stresses that the Orient is an integral part of European material and ideological civilization and culture. He articulates “Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Western in a whole series of possible relations with the Orient without ever losing its relative upper hand” (p.2).
Abu-Lughod (2001) comments on Said’s book “Orientalism” stating that the way in which the Orient has been represented in Europe, through an imaginative geography that divides East and West, confirms the Western superiority and justifies European domination of those negatively portrayed regions known as East. However, Abu-Lughod is also aware that Orientalism, as Said formulates, is not meant to be a work of feminist scholarship or theory. Yet she claims that it has engendered feminist scholarship and debate in Middle East studies; as it opens up the possibility for others to go further than Said in exploring the gender and sexuality of Orientalist discourse itself. Also Orientalism presents a strong rationale for other historical and anthropological researchers who seek to go beyond stereotypes of the Muslim or Middle Eastern woman and gender relations in general.
In the context of the analysis of the East/West dialect, veil has been represented as a loaded symbolic marker of cultural identity and women’s status in Muslim world. From this viewpoint, Abu-Lughod (1998) advocates the argument that colonialism utilized Western feminism to promote the culture of the colonizers and undermine native culture in non-Western societies to serve their colonial ambition. From the Western vantage point, women in the Middle East are often pitied as the victims of an especially oppressive culture, generally equated with Islam. Women are also depicted as bound to the harem, downtrodden and constrained; the ultimate symbol of their oppression and their consent to inferiority is the veil. Yet, this picture cannot be reconciled with the assertive behavior and influential position of women in many Middle Eastern settings at that time. In Cairo, for instance, many women managed the household budget, conducted important marriage arrangements, and coordinated extensive socioeconomic networks. They were more than deferential partners, playing effective roles in their homes and wider community and practicing informal powers (Macleod, 1992; Baron, 1994).
On the other hand, Kandiyoti (1996) worries about the impact of Said’s Orientalism. She argues that the field of Middle East gender studies has been negatively affected by the arguments of Orientalism in three ways: first social analysis has been devalued in favor of analysis of representations; second the dichotomy of East and West focuses attention too much on the West and not enough on the internal heterogeneity of Middle Eastern societies; and, finally, it has also deflected attention away from “local institutions and cultural processes that are implicated in the production of gender hierarchies and in forms of subordination based on gender” (p. 18). Instead, Kandiyoti argues for the necessity of internal critique of gendered power in Middle Eastern societies.
Evolving from Kadiyoti’s argument, I notice that the discussion of women’s issues in Egypt in the twentieth century incorporates elements from the nineteenth century debate about seclusion and the proper level of women’s participation in society outside the home with its connotations with the European ideology, while also incorporating elements from the nationalist ideology that started to rise calling for independence.
Nationalism and Egyptian feminist movements
In respond to that, for many Egyptian women in early twentieth century, it was the national situation that became intolerable and national identity that was threatened during this period from the British colonization. Therefore the question of gender inequality was postponed or considered divisive, and the national issues were seen as the priority. This was the case even among women activists who maintained that women could not achieve rights when men do not have them. Yet women utilized their entry to the public domain through the nationalist door, to push at the boundaries that confined them and to begin to challenge cultural, social, and political norms. Through collective action, women transgressed these norms, and managed to critique gender relations through their involvement with nationalism (Fleischmann, 1999).
This discourse echoes Chatterjee’s (1990) analysis of the Bengaline Nationalist’s discussion of women’s issues. Chatterjee grounds his analysis on creating a dichotomy between material/spiritual that represents the separation between Western/authentic. He claims that the dichotomy between the outer and the inner is that the material domain exists in the outside world affecting and conditioning individuals’ lives, whereas, the spiritual domain lies within and represents the true genuine aspect of individuals’ lives. This dichotomy echoes the home/outside world one. While the material domain is dominated by European concepts and virtues, the spiritual domain retains its authenticity and genuine through reserving and perpetuating religious and indigenous culture norms. Nationalists reinforce the dichotomy between material/spiritual, public/private to cultivate the material techniques of modern western civilization while retaining and strengthening the authentic essence of the national culture. In this dichotomy women are held responsible for maintaining and retaining culture where men are responsible for the modern western public arena (Chatterjee, 1990).
Within this framework nationalism is perceived as the leading idiom through which issues pertaining to women’s position in society are articulated. Kandiyoti (1996) argues that there have been persistent tensions between the modernist trends in nationalism, which favored an expansion of women’s citizenship rights and social equity, and the authentic nationalists who are concerned about the dilution and contamination of cultural values and authentic identity. Therefore, women’s stake in nationalism has been both complex and contradictory. On the one hand, nationalist movements invite women to participate more fully in collective life by interpreting them as ‘national’ actors: mothers, educators, workers and even fighters. On the other hand, they reaffirm the boundaries of culturally acceptable feminine conduct and exert pressure on women to articulate their gender interests within the terms set by nationalist discourse (Kandiyoti, 1996).
In regard to the Egyptian nationalist discourse, most scholars mark the evolvement of the first Egyptian feminist movements in the 20th century with women’s participation in 1919 revolution. In 1919 women from all backgrounds participated in street demonstrations protesting the arrest of nationalist leaders by the British. Many of those women were killed at the hands of British soldiers (Nashat, 1999). From this time on, the Egyptian feminist movement fastened on legal reform early on as central to the feminist agenda. In addition to their struggle for political rights and educational opportunities for women, the upper-and middle-class women of the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU), led by Huda Sha’rawi, lobbied for reform of personal status laws, especially those governing divorce and polygamy in the 1920s and 1930s (Badran, 1995). They claimed that they situated their argument within the framework of Islamic modernism for reforms that would preserve the intent of the law and remove what had come to be legalized oppression of women, including the institution of restrictions on marriage age, polygamy, and divorce, and reforms of child custody and inheritance law (Nashat, 1999). Although many of their campaigns to open new educational and work opportunities to women did bear fruit in the interwar period, the issue of legal reform proved particularly thorny, and it took some fifty years for the changes they advocated to be introduced into Egypt (Badran, 1993).
Huda Sh’rawi’s feminism is politically nationalistic; it opposed British domination in the sense that the liberal intellectuals of her class and the upper-middle classes oppose it, rather than opposing the British and everything Western as extremely expressed by other groups and parties from popular classes. Broadly, this means that Sh’rawi’s feminism supported the gradual reform towards total political emancipation from the British control and toward the adoption of Western political institutions and a secular understanding of the state. Culturally and in her feminism, she contested the act of veiling, that was rapidly vanishing among women of the upper class, which means that her feminist discourse is also informed by a Western affiliation and a westernizing outlook and western ways she perceived to be more advanced and more civilized than native ways (Ahmed, 1992). In 1923 the leaders of the EFU, upon their return form an international women’s suffrage conference, removed their veils in the Cairo train station to dramatize their projection of this form of seclusion (Badran, 1995).
However, El-Saadawi (1993) comments on this Egyptian Feminist Union describing it as an upper class organization that represents the interests of women from the elite and knows nothing about the condition of working class women. El-Saadawi’s opinion resembles Sangari’s (1999) argument,
“Early nationalist historiography present the public and private as mutually exclusive rather than jointly formed, but only elite women from the upper and upper-middle classes who managed to emerge into the public arena. This ignores the contributions of the majority of women in the working class who labored outside home for a long time. (p. 368)
On the other realm, Zeinab Al-Ghazali and Malak Hifni Nassef reacted against Sh’rawi’s feminism and turned away from it, seeking to forge a feminist path- or a path of female subjectivity and affirmation- within the terms of indigenous culture and Islam.
Veiling with modern Islamic discourse of Egyptian feminism
Malak Hifni Nassef opposed to unveiling and her opposition was not grounded on the usual conservative reasons: she neither believed that religion dictated anything specific on the matter of veil nor that women who veiled were more modest than women who did not; for her modesty was not determine by the presence or absence of a veil. But she based her discussion of veil on observation and experiences of variety of Egyptian women. Therefore, she pointed out that women were accustomed to veiling and should not be suddenly ordered to unveil. Moreover, She articulated that women who took the decision to unveil were actually women from upper class who were preoccupied with Western fashion, and were not motivated in their decision by a desire for liberty or persuaded to pursuit knowledge (Baron, 1994; Nasif, 1910).
While advocates of Western feminism as Qasim Amin and Huda Sh’rawi situated their argument within the European liberal discourse that posited Islam as a reason for women’s oppression and the backwardness of Muslim nations. Malak Hifni Nassif devoted her feminist project to defend Islam and to criticize the blind emulation of the west. She conceptualized her argument on the statement that Islam is compatible to modernity (Al-Ali, 2000). Within this framework she advocated women’s education, which she perceived as a way to improve the whole nation (Ahmed, 1992). For Nasif, girls who were not offered the opportunity of proper schooling were unjustly deprived from their basic rights. At the same time, Nasif feared that many of the benefits that would be obtained from the education of the girls and could be usefully applied to the home, would be corrupted by a poor home environment. Therefore, she called for a dual reform of both the home and female education. Nasif aimed at making women useful and productive members in the nation as wives and mothers. However, while Nasif was known for her advocacy of the Western approach in child rearing, her proposal for girl’s education included teaching girls proper religion and teaching household management at both the practical and the intellectual levels (Shakry, 1998).
In review of AL-Nisa’iyyate, the femenist, articles published by Malak Hifni Nasif, scholars highlight the importance of educational reform in Egypt, especially in the light of the changing social conditions, but they were also worried about the increased Westernization of education that Nassif advocated. However, the strength of Nasif’s approach lay in its foundation in religion and practical experience and its concern for the benefit of the Egyptian women (Shakry, 1998).
The 1940s brought a new emphasis on the responsibility of educated women to reach out to their sisters in Egypt: the Daughters of the Nile Union, founded by Doriya Shafiq in 1948, placed great emphasis on the teaching of literacy and hygiene to poor women, whereas the Egyptian Feminist Union came to incorporate a left wing that focused on the organization and concerns of working-class women (Badra, 1993).
In 1950s and 1960s the revolutionary government that replaced monarchy and gained independence gave women the right to vote and new opportunities to receive decent education, health care and equal occupational opportunities as men. The evolvement of state political organizations meant the end of EFU and all other organized feminist groups (Badran, 1993). Women could only organize under the wing of the state-controlled Arab Socialist Union (Nashat, 1999), which lead to a major transformation in women’s movements and feminist discourse in Egypt.
Under the Socialist regime in the 60s Egypt witnessed an increase in women’s incorporation into the labor market as a result of the expansion women’s education, yet the majority of the workingwomen choose to be veiled. Scholars interpreted this to be limiting of women’s role in public life, and women were marginalized in all social, economic, and political organizations (Karmi, 1993).
However, this move toward veiling in the 60s must also be located within particular contexts of class. In Egypt wearing veil marked class as it evolved from an urban, largely middle-class protest movement into a much broader phenomenon where working women of lower-middle classes adopted this dress, as did some rural village girls who found it a respectable way to distinguish themselves from other, less-educated rural women who wear traditional dress that is equally modest but tarred by its association with the limitations of village life (Tucker, 1999).
In other words, I can say that Muslim women deployed veil to represent themselves as autonomous social agents which brings me to the last part of my discussion.
Veiling and women’s self representation
Muslim women according to the Qor’an should cover themselves modestly. The Qor’an itself discuss veiling in general terms and does not establish the limits and details of women’s covering. The assumption that a woman’s garment should cover all but her face and hands and be loose fitting enough to conceal her figure is only an interpretation of the Qor’an. From the point of view of Islam, the function of clothing in general for both men and women is not to display the body, but to conceal it and to reduce sexual enticement (Milani, 1992).
Islam demands that its followers live modest and protected lives. It has also instructed the believers to separate out their private domain, and the women who live therein from the world. A curtain of modesty, veil, parts both the women themselves and their spaces, and protects them from the immodest gaze of men. Those who see Islam as a centrally oppressive ideology to women also denounce the veil, since it is only women who are protected by it or required to wear it. But the supporters of Islam argue that, far from being a symbol of oppression, the veil is liberating and empowering. The revivalists stress the advantages gained by covering the body of women and thus preventing them from becoming objectified as sex symbols. They stress that by wearing the veil women reclaim the right to become people, rather than being just sex objects. The veil bestows honor, dignity and respect to women, eradicating pornography and blatant violence directed at women and offers them protection (Afshar, 1993).
In Egypt the wearing of veil secured women’s participation in the public domain while affirming their consent to the Islamic social and ethical costumes (Tucker, 1999). With the adoption of veil Egyptian women proclaim that their place is not home, but on the contrary, a veil legitimizes their presence outside it, which affirms women’s autonomy (Ahmed, 1992).
Finally I like to synthesize my argument stating that through out the different Egyptian feminist discourses of women’s status in late 19th and through out the 20th century the veil has emerged as a symbol of rejecting the West. However, and ironically, it is the feminist Western discourse of domination that determined the meaning of veil in Egyptian feminists discourses and set the terms of its emergence as a symbol of resistance. Furthermore, the notion of returning to the origin, Islam, and to authenticity, indigenous culture, is also a response to the discourse of colonialism and the colonial attempts to undermine Islam and Arab culture and replace them with Western practices and beliefs. On the individual level veil symbolizes women’s autonomy as it secures their emergence into the masculine domain while retaining their Islamic identity.
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Reference citation:
El-Halawany, H. (2002 Fourth Quarter). Women’s Education in the different Egyptian feminist discourses of veil in late 19th and through the 20th century. In Focus Journal, Open Forum, Retrieved Month day, year, from https://www.escotet.org/wp_escotet_org/infocus/forum/halawany.htm