Does revolutionary politics reconfigure Islamist women’s agency organizationally? The case of the Muslim Sisters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (1928-2013)

Abstract

For the first time in eighty years, one of the oldest and most important religious movements striving to establish an Islamic state, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt reached the apex of political power between 2011-2013, after decades of containment and sometimes repression. Against this backdrop this paper explores how the dramatic power reconfigurations associated with the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and its aftermath impacted on the agency of the Muslim Sisters belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood both internally within the organization and in terms of their public roles. The paper is based on empirical data collected between 2007-2012 and complemented with secondary literature both in Arabic and English. The paper aims to make a contribution to understanding the extent to which political empowerment of women and men in Islamist movements affects internal gender hierarchies through a historicized and contextualized approach.