Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East

Abstract

Increasingly, since the Sadat era in Egypt and especially resulting from hiseconomic policies (infitah), there has been a significant rise of Egyptianwomen who are putting on the "Islamic dress." Whereas women in theearly twentieth century were dramatically tearing off their veils andthrowing them into the Nile in order to desegregate society. Today,Egyptian women are very noticeably doing the opposite as a formof protest, while utilizing the same reasoning as before. The influx ofliterature about this so-called "Islamism" has been discussed in nearlyevery realm of the social sciences.In contrast to this phenomenon, Najde al-Ali's study on women'sactivity in Egypt is about a particular heterogeneous class of secularwomen, that she feels has been marginalized on the state level by the overarchingconcessions given to hegemonic "Islamist" policies. In effect, Alistates, "I had noticed the tendency to overlook secular constituencies inmuch of the recent scholarship dealing with Egypt, where the emphasis wason Islamist tendencies and activism."Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The EgyptianWomen's Movement, is a highly informative introductory and analyticalstudy of secular women's activities through the voice of a plethoraof Egyptian women's organizations. In the introduction Ali categorizeswomen's activism as being independent, associational and directed.Whereas independent organizations have a power base from within and aimto implement individual goals, associational and directed organizationscarry a more direct message outside the sphere of general women's issues.In the first chapter, Ali engages in a discussion about the relationship ofOrientalism and Occidentalism in post-colonial literature. The reader isintroduced to the idea that these conceptual frameworks have indeedlimited the indigenous authenticity of women's activism in Egypt byplacing them in one of two extremes, whether it be religious or secular.Immediately, Ali strives to make clear that certain values do not need to beauthenticated by any indigenous culture if they are "universal values".However, it is here where a significant weakness emerges, by notoutwardly recognizing the importance of the competitive universal valuesystems, including the "Islamist values", that are trying to find their spacein contemporary Egyptian political culture. Therefore, the message that is ...