A short form essay by Alejandro Escobedo
The woman question has long occupied a central place in the Western discourse on the Middle East. From the Age of Exploration to the War on Terror, the woman question, a preoccupation with the state of women in the Middle East as old as the earliest imaginations of the Orient, has been as much a part of the Middle East as the desert itself. While historically the woman question served Westerners well in the justification of colonialism and intervention, it became a much more powerful tool for Arab Renaissance authors like Qasim Amin and Bahithat al-Badiya. Set against the early twentieth century British occupation of Egypt, their texts look to the woman question in response to the inability of a traditionalist Islamic social framework to combat the gradual erosion of Arab identity in the face of foreign encroachment. For them, the elevation of the state of women in Egypt was a bulwark against the wholesale transplantation of Europe and the dissolution of Arab culture.
Composed at the turn of the nineteenth century to develop an argument for Egyptian women’s rights independent of the Qur’an, Qasim Amin’s The New Woman argues for the value of republican motherhood in an age of European domination. At odds with the ideas of Islamic Modernists, Qasim Amin’s rhetoric looks to “the Western woman” as a guide to modernization in the Middle East, attributing “the progress of [Western] society” to her education and freedom.1 While many hailed Qasim Amin as an early feminist, it isn’t by the Western woman’s intellect or skill that Amin believes she elevates her nation; rather, it is by “[bringing] to society a man brought up to be of benefit to…his country” that Amin believes a woman is useful.2 Hence, it is “[modernized] patriarchy” and national welfare that Amin advocates for rather than female self-determination in the Arab world.3 While Amin unpopularly attributes the emancipation of women fully to Western civilization and discredits its conception to Arab influence, he dismisses the criticism of Islamic Modernists that looking to the West as a model is a betrayal of Islam and the East. If Western advocacy for women’s rights truly were a scheme meant for “the destruction of Islam,” Amin says, Europe would have left the East alone, for nothing could be more harmful to Egypt than Islamic traditionalism.4 Such sentiments point to the dual opposition to Islamic dogma and wholesale Westernization shared by Arab Renaissance writers of the time. The duality of Amin’s admiration of the West and his caution toward its increasing encroachment is particularly interesting. Despite his admiration, Amin does not wish to see Egypt come under Western rule. Rather, he wishes for the Egyptian people to “catch up” and share the “independence, self-determination, and other prerogatives” enjoyed in the West.5
In response to male arguments against the education of women, Bahithat al-Badiya writes her address to the Umma Party, demonstrating—much like Qasim Amin—that modernization and national autonomy necessitate the enfranchisement of women. Prefacing her main arguments, al-Badiya reminds her audience that “antagonism between the sexes is something to be regretted,” framing Westerners and their Egyptian sympathizers, rather than men, as the true enemies of Islamic modernization.6 Despite their vast ideological differences, Amin and al-Badiya share these tones of nationalism in both their texts, speaking to the focus on Arab unity so often stressed by Arab Renaissance writers of the time. Much of the first half of al-Badiya’s lecture focuses on demonstrating the artificiality of divisions of labor and explaining the irony of the male argument that women’s education leads to male unemployment, since it was “men who pushed women out of work” in ancient times.7 In addition to the Qur’an, al-Badiya points to the Pharaonic past—a technique popular among female Arab Renaissance writers—in arguing that freedom for women is an innately Arab concept, rather than a Western import. The second half of her lecture outlines the potential manifestations of modernization in Egypt, with a special focus on the importance of “good upbringing” to social change.8 In fact, it is this stress on upbringing that unites otherwise divergent writers like Amin and al-Badiya, who argue that any meaningful reform “is a result of [the] virtues…[and] moral qualities…acquired through upbringing, that is to say, through women.”9 This argument points to Amin and al-Badiya’s understanding of women’s rights and modernization as a product of social and educational, rather than political, reform. In this vein, al-Badiya insists against unveiling on the basis that “men [and society are not] ready for it,” again pointing to modernization as a matter of social repositioning.10 As the Western woman is to Qasim Amin, so the Turkish woman is to Bahithat al-Badiya, who praises her as the “example of decorum and modesty,” equally modern and pious.11 Through a summary of legislative proposals, al-Badiya encapsulates her vision of modernization as one marked by adherence to Sharia law, greater religious and secular education for girls, moral education in the home, and Arabification.12
While both Qasim Amin and Bahithat al-Badiya advocate for the advancement of women’s rights, their arguments are underlied by a broader advocacy for a strengthened Egypt, free from foreign influence. It is in the vision and implementation of self-determination, however, that the two authors differ, with Amin looking to the replication of Western institutions and al-Badiya to girls’ education and Arabification. In this vein, Amin credits the West with the conception of women’s rights whereas al-Badiya looks to Arab history for indigenous conceptual origins. Equally distinct is each author’s reliance on evidence from the Qur’an, with al-Badiya drawing most of her rhetorical support from scripture and Amin none at all. Interestingly and perhaps ironically, the importance of individual virtue to the nation, as expressed by Amin and al-Badiya, is a famously Western idea: Livy cited moral decline as a reason for the fall of the Roman Republic in his historical work Ab Urbe Condita; and the emperor Augustus sought to cement the strength and identity of the empire through a moralizing campaign. Such irony is furthered by al-Badiya’s characterization of rural, presumably Bedouin, villages as places “where civilization has not arrived,” a characteristically Western idea of modernity and urbanity that contradicts the anti-Western, Arab-centric attitude expressed in the rest of al-Badiya’s lecture.13
Despite the ideological affiliations that divided them—Amin, a Western admirer, and al-Badiya, a pronounced Islamic Modernist—the works of the two authors are united by a common interest in the liberation and self-determination of Egypt. While Amin seeks only to elevate the nation and its men in the global order, al-Badiya seeks to elevate the station of “[women] in the eyes of men” and achieve modernity under an Islamic framework for Egypt.14 Amin and al-Badiya mutually advocate for women’s rights, but to different ends. The unities and disparities between the texts of Amin and al-Badiya speak to the complex overlaps between nationalist, feminist, and modernist voices of the Arab Renaissance and point to the sophistication of Egypt’s early intelligentsia, a clearer sign than any of its faculty for independence.
Notes
Qasim Amin, “The Current State of Thought on Women in Egypt” in Sources in the History of the Middle East, Akram Fouad Khater (2nd ed., Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2004), 61-65.
Ibid., 62.
Ibid., 61.
Ibid., 63.
Ibid., 62.
Bahithat Al-Badiya, “A Lecture in the Club of the Umma Party, 1909” in Sources in the History of the Middle East, Akram Fouad Khater (2nd ed., Wadsworth, Cengage Learning,2004), 74-83.
Ibid., 76.
Ibid., 78.
Amin, “Women in Egypt,” 62.
Al-Badiya, “Umma Party, 1909,” 79.
Ibid., 80.
Ibid., 83.
Ibid., 76.
Ibid., 82.
Bibliography
Al-Badiya, Bahithat. “A Lecture in the Club of the Umma Party, 1909,” Sources in the History of the Middle East. Akram Fouad Khater, Boston, Massachusetts: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2nd ed. 2004.
Amin, Qasim. “The Current State of Thought on Women in Egypt,” Sources in the History of the Middle East. Akram Fouad Khater, Boston, Massachusetts: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2nd ed. 2004.