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Article Excerpt
Abstract: Like the rest of the Muslim world, Egypt has experienced popular religious resurgence within the past decade. The most visible manifestation of this resurgence is the adoption of Islamic dress by Egyptian women from all backgrounds and walks of life. Through an examination of the religion columns of the newspaper Al-Ahram, general writings, and personal communications, this article takes a look at the general trends behind Muslim feminism. It argues that Egyptian Muslim feminism has three main elements: it is rooted in a clear demarcation between Middle Eastern and Islamic traditions on the one hand, and the West on the other, it has its roots in the Muslim faith, particularly the Quran, and it looks at the family rather than the individual as a unit. The article further contends that in readopting these key elements, Egyptian feminism is returning to the roots of its 19th-century inception, rather than departing from them as is commonly believed.
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Like others in many parts of the globe, Muslim women across the world today continue to question and analyze their position in society. In addition to the fact that their situation is shaped by the general constraints of their societies and traditions, Muslim women experience circumstances that are shared by many in the developing world: they live in societies where religion plays a pivotal role in day to day existence. As a result, their evaluation of their positions in their communities is intimately connected with their relationship with religion. And theirs is a religion that has experienced one of the most visible resurgences in recent history.
Recent Islamic revivalism has had a marked presence throughout the world. During the early twentieth century, much of the Muslim world was under European rule. With the coming of independence in the mid-1900s, Muslim countries turned to nationalism, with the hope that self-determination would bring their developing countries much-needed political, economic, and social advances. Expectations turned out to be unrealistic, leading to disappointment and disillusionment. Muslims wondered what had gone wrong with their proposed plans, and began to search for alternatives to nationalism. The easiest straw to grasp was that Muslim societies were not advancing because of their increasing secularization and their subsequent abandonment of Islamic ideals. After all, Muslim civilization had been at a high in the Middle Ages, when there was political unity under an Islamic Empire. Therefore, it was deduced, that through the wholehearted adoption of Islam these societies could reach another peak (Esposito, 1998, p. 160-2).
The most easily visible manifestation of this religious revivalism has been the adoption of Islamic dress. Women whose grandmothers had removed their veils, and whose mothers had prided themselves on their secularization and Westernization, began donning various styles of Islamic dress, wearing lengthy garments with long sleeves, covering their hair, and very occasionally even hiding their faces and hands. This trend has increased dramatically over the past twenty years so that today, the overwhelming majority of women in many Muslim countries have turned to this type of attire. The trend cuts across the lines of race, class, and socio-economic status, presenting a phenomenon that is strikingly universal across the Muslim world (Esposito, 1998, p. 160-2).
From a Western point of view, this shift marks a regression, a return from the modern to the archaic. Western feminists are often outraged on behalf of their Muslim sisters, citing the injustices that they have to endure in the face of the patriarchy forced upon them, which they have to helplessly and silently obey (Jawad, 1998, p. 41-2). Sometimes, this is indeed the case, but at other times, it is far from the truth. For while their Western--and usually secular--counterparts are crying out, Muslim women are constructing and reconstructing a new feminism that is all their own.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Egypt. "The first Arab country where women marched in political demonstrations (1919); the first where women took off the veil (1923), and the first to offer free public secular education to women (1924)," Egypt shocked the West by its seeming return to the Dark Ages (Fenton and Heffron, 1982, p. 111). We now see the granddaughters of those early feminists willingly returning to Islamic dress, often during their teens, twenties, or thirties. Sometimes they keep their Western-style clothes and just add a headscarf to match their jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts; at other times, they wear a full-length loose dress either in lieu of or over these clothes. Just a cursory glance at the Egyptian media reveals that these same women believe that it is Islam that gave women and...
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