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Women
in the country say their struggle for equal rights is universal, whether the
Islamists or military are in charge. D. Parvaz - 07 Feb 2012 |
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With
a tumultuous year behind it, With
conservative groups such as Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood
winning majority votes in the new government after decades of either
being banned from elections or relegated to the political
fringes, what will the role of women in this new US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also expressed concern that women
were being "largely excluded from the transition process and even
harassed in the street", and that "the best-organised political
parties supported few women candidates in the recent elections". Omaima
Abou Bakr, a professor at Shortly
after the revolution, Abou Bakr - a founding member of the Women and Memory
Forum, a Giza-based NGO fighting misperceptions of Arab women - said
that Islamists and moderates alike started asking for a change in
"Suzanne's laws"
- laws initiated by former first lady Suzanne Mubarak that give women rights
to initiate divorce, greater muscle in custody battles and more. These
calls came "under the pretext that these laws were corrupt because they
were created under [ousted President] Hosni Mubarak's regime," said
Abou Bakr. "[This is] a false politicisation of the laws and an excuse
to rescind certain women's rights - such things lead to the
cancellation of the women's quota in parliament." Women
have won only eight seats - less than two per cent
of the country's parliament, despite a law that guaranteed
64 seats to female candidates. But
while many worry about women being disenfranchised from political
participation under conservative religious leaders, the physical violence
against women in "This
violence, these virginity tests,
women having their veils snatched from them - the real threat of physical
violence is coming from the military police, whereas the threat coming the
Islamists is a quiet marginalisation," said Abou
Bakr. The revolution's real gains Sanaa
al-Banna, granddaughter of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim
Brotherhood, told Al Jazeera that "the revolution has been definitely
good for segments of Egyptian women who first voiced their grievances and
succeeded in mobilising thousands, and later on millions, of Egyptians around
primarily humane demands." However, while women "paid the price,
they shared little of the gain". Those
lost gains, she said, have - ironically - gone instead to Islamist
parties. "They
[the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists] lived in a cave when young ladies ...
were shouting against dictatorship in the streets, on Facebook and
Twitter," said al-Banna. "The
Egyptian woman has participated in both the initiation and continuation of
the revolutionary surge that pushed Islamist parties to power." Indeed,
there are clear signs of struggle when it comes to Egyptian women hoping to
find equal footing with men, and there have been gains - for instance, a
legal decision banning "virginity tests"
of female detainees in military prisons. "The
revolution has been good for women in the sense that we all know that
Egyptian women of all social classes participated, were out on the streets,
so it has been good - for Muslim or Christian or Copt - because we
rediscovered our capacity to participate in street uprisings and
politics," said 54-year-old Abou Bakr. It had been especially empowering
for the younger generation of Egyptian women, she added. Mozn
Hassan, an expert in constitutional reform and the head of Nazra Feminist
Studies, a Cairo-based NGO, doesn't think women will lose much in
the new government, but worries that they won't gain much either. "The
struggle will be, on a social level, the trial of all social conservatives to
make us lose [the progress] we have been struggling hard for years to
gain," she said. 'Everyone is guilty' Still, a rather bipolar narrative
persists - maintaining either that the revolution has been good to Egyptian
women, in terms of giving them the same place as men
in a budding Egyptian democracy - or that the dominant role of
Islamist parties in the parliament spells an imminent regression of
women's rights. Abou
Bakr sees this as a false dichotemy and one that has little relationship
with the daily lives of women in While
women's rights may be under threat, she doesn't see the shift in political
power to Islamist parties as being wholly responsible. "There
are going to be challenges, definitely, but this is the story of women
everywhere. This is the story of women in the Arab world, in the The
political marginalisation of women "has been in motion from the
beginning - even before the Islamists," said Abour Bakr. "From SCAF
[the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces], and from the government and from
everybody - what I'm saying is, everyone is guilty of excluding women or of
marginalising women's issues under the pretext that they were not a
priority." "The
question is not about women and men - the question is the country - today in "The
problem is not with the Islamists - the problem is with the mentality of men
in this society." she said, adding that changing perceptions of women
must come from the streets, not from the parliament. Muslim feminism Islamist politicians
(such as MP Azza al Garf, who Slate.com
compared with Tea Party supporter Michele Bachmann), scholars, and activists
such as Abou Bakr - who look at women's rights through an Islamic frame
of reference - say they are looked upon with some scepticism by Western
and secular feminists in general. "Secular
feminists have always been suspicious of Islamist politics - and maybe half
of that is right, because the gender ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood is
conservative and the Salafist gender ideology is influenced by Wahabi
gender ideology, so I can see why there is a justification for these
suspicions," said Abou Bakr, adding that it was not only within Islam
that women fight for equal rights, but also within Christianity and Judaism.
"[Islamic] Feminism doesn't have to be
the exact copy of Western feminism - it doesn't have to be a copy of the
feminist struggle in West." Hassan
also rejects a singular view of feminism, and points out even
within secular feminist thought, there are "radicals, liberal, Marxist
or cultural feminists". There
are similar nuances within Muslim feminism, she said. Female members of the
Muslim Brotherhood, for example, support women's rights as they see them
through the eyes of the group's ideology, as compared with both
more moderate religious feminists and more conservative Salafist activists. "Muslim
Brotherhood women are cadres working hard to implement their views and
they have their political journey and their struggle; they are not supportive
[of] some women's rights, as they see them [as being] against
Islam," said Hassan. "Salafi
women are still in the beginning of their political journey [with] no
expectations where they will go, but they personally think that they will be
developed, and will have women like Zeinab al Ghazali [the founder of Egypt's
Muslim Women's Association in 1935, and a close associate of the Muslim
Brotherhood] asking for more rights for women within their ideology." Whereas
many Muslim feminists, such as Abou Bakr, might quote Islam's notion of
justice and equality as a basis for seeking equal rights, others prone to a
more conservative approach to Islamic scriptures will take a more literal
interpretation of the sources to determine women's rights - a
conciliation of two concepts many secular feminists see as contradictory. "I
don't think Sharia and feminism - meaning women should be allowed to do
what men do - are not compatible," said Yomna Ahmed, a 17-year-old
supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and
Justice Party. "Sharia
law enhances women's rights. Before Sharia law, women didn't have equal
rights ... their fathers were allowed to bury them alive," said Ahmed,
who considers herself both an Islamist and feminist. "Sharia
is about freedom - everything about Sharia is freedom - you are free by your
own volition, by your own free will, to believe." Of
course, there's no shortage of views that oppose Ahmed's - notably, that of
writer Intissar Abdel Moneim, who in her The Memoirs of a Former Sister: My Story with the Muslim
Brotherhood enumerates the ways she feels the movement oppresses women,
such as on the issue of polygamy (an issue that reportedly divides opinion
within the Muslim Brotherhood itself). The
Muslim Brotherhood filed a complaint against the author in January, accusing her of
"libel and slander". Although
al-Banna points out that Islamist parties represent a wide range of views on
women, she is circumspect about the extent to which they want women to
participate. She
points out that women tend to be "restricted to tactical and executive
functions; they only head women and family sections and influence party
policies and strategies to the extent that they concern these two sections". "Unfortunately
women’s participation in the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi parties is in
some sections - [such as] foreign relations - female participants are
empowered, again, to the extent they serve the movement’s ‘image’ in the outside world,"
said al-Banna, who taglines her emails with a quote from the Persian poet
Rumi ("Be not content with stories of those who went before you.
Go forth and create your own story"). The polemic of the 'Blue Bra' Despite
the feeling that gains have been made, there's still room for doubt that
things have changed - or will really change - in a country where more than 80
per cent of the female population reports being sexually harassed. "This
is unacceptable by all means - Sharia law doesn't accept this, and human
rights don't accept it," said Ahmed, who also considers
herself a feminist. "Women
can't be harassed on the streets. I'm sure there are already laws - but we
have to strengthen them, to work in the civil society, to prohibit
this." A
spate of attacks on women - some high-profile, such as blogger and
activist Mona Eltahaway-
and some anonymous, such as the lady in the blue bra -
have drawn international attention to
"It
is important to differentiate between sexual harassment and sexual assaults,
especially when it comes from authority," said Hassan. "Sexual
harassment on the streets and in work places is a widespread phenomena in And
this aggression, it must be noted, came largely from the secular military
police, not the Islamists. After
the infamous assault of
the woman wearing the blue bra (under her abaya) at the hands of
the Egyptian military police, there were a number of
marches expressing outrage at the way the woman was brutally exposed and
beaten on the streets of Cairo. There
was also maelstrom of commentary bashing the woman in question - saying that
she wasn't modest enough in her attire and should not have been marching on
the streets along with men in the first place. "Myself,
my colleagues, researchers - we have been writing about this, that this
Orientalist view of Arab women and Muslim women has to stop. Muslim and Arab
women are not an exception and their struggle - our struggle - is part of the
struggle of women everywhere, in all traditions," said Abou
Bakr. While
she concedes that the work to shift the way Sharia views women has been
largely scholarly, the move from academia to activism is beginning. "There
will always be resistance and struggle on the part of women - we will
always resent being pictured as being victims all the time,"
said Abou Bakr. "Mish ma'ool ['it's
not comprehensible'] - we can't be." |