Arab Feminist Research Articles

The evolution of feminist literature in the Arab world

In this article, we try to discuss the concept of the term “feminine literature” and the problems related to that in both Western and Arab worlds, with a historical overview of the evolution of Arab feminist literature from the pre-Islamic era to the present day. Besides that, we will relate to the difference between the writing of man and woman, as woman was distinguished by her own style as well as the issues she raises. However, despite the efforts, there has been a clear marginalization of woman’s writing, and there was no clear definition of the term.

Against All Odds: A Legacy of Appropriation, Contestation, and Negotiation of Arab Feminisms in Postcolonial States

Against All Odds: A Legacy of Appropriation, Contestation, and Negotiation of Arab Feminisms in Postcolonial States

Violent Intersectionalities and Experiences of Marked Arabness in Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home

This article proposes an alternative analytical model to examine the shifting devaluation of racialized, classed, and gendered lives in Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home. As the novel depicts powerful instances of nonnormative practices, it lends itself to new analytical approaches for understanding the relationship between power, normativity, and value in Arab American fiction. The intellectual and political frameworks that inform this reading of the novel draw on Arab and Arab American feminisms, women of color feminisms, and queer of color critique. This emphasis marks a shift from existing criticism in proposing to interpret the characters' experiences, not as struggles of identity and belonging but as tense processes of gendered and classed racialization, self-representation, and political determination. In doing so, the discussion moves toward a critique of coercive practices that render Arab and Arab American lives in the United States vulnerable to threats of violence/exploitation in the context of neoliberalism.

In Loving Memory

In Loving Memory

Arab, Asian, and Muslim Feminist Dissent

(2018). Arab, Asian, and Muslim Feminist Dissent. Amerasia Journal: Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 1-25.

Rula Quawas 1960–2017

On 25 July 2017, Jordan lost one of its great educators and feminists: Rula Quawas. Rula was an outstanding educator for generations of young Jordanian and Arab feminists. She took on challenges that no one else dared to approach in a conservative patriarchal society, knowing fully well that she might have to pay a dear personal price for each of these battles.

Keeping the Gates Open

Keeping the Gates Open

The Philosophical Foundations of Feminism (Presentation & Criticism) And the Impact of that on Islamic Feminism

Feminist movements are one of the most controversial movements, and these movements would not have been around had it not been for philosophical support. In general, their philosophy is based on postmodern philosophies, which are considered general knowledge of the overall pan of what is raised in feminist criticism. The importance of knowing these Western philosophical foundations of feminism comes to light when unveiling them from the joints of Arab feminist thought where it becomes clear to the critic that Arab feminist thought is only an echo of Western feminist thought.

Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence

Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence

“Women's Writing on Women's Writing”: Mayy Ziyada's Literary Biographies as Egyptian Feminist History

ABSTRACTThis paper looks as three literary biographies written by the Arab feminist writer Mayy Ziyada (1886–1941), published in Cairo at the beginning of the twentieth century: Bahithat al-Badiya (1920), Aisha Taymur (1926) and Warda al-Yaziji (1926). Ziyada is a pioneer Arab woman writer and feminist intellectual who wrote articles which were published in various newspapers issued in Egypt at the time, in addition to her several books of essays. The focus of this paper, however, will be directed to her three literary biographies of Egyptian pioneer feminist writers Malak Hifni Nassif (1886–1918), Aisha Taymur (1840–1902) and Warda al-Yaziji (1838–1924). I begin by exploring the multiple voices embedded in Ziyada's biographies followed by a discussion of the cultural discourses and feminist politics in the three texts. I then examine the construction of women's lives involved in life-writing, while in the last part of the paper I look at Ziyada's literary biographies within the paradigm of “women's writing on women”. The paper concludes with reflections on the three texts, in terms of literary biography as cultural memory and feminist history.

Aysha Abdurrahman. L'esegesi coranica al femminile in epoca moderna

The interpretation in a gender perspective of the Shari’a texts is a central issue for feminine and feminist theology in Islam. The roots of a ‘feminist ijtihad’ are in the first women’s rights movements that developed in the Arab countries at the end of the nineteenth century. They were closely related to the arabic nationalism and Colonial and post colonial dynamics. Aisha Abdurrahman (Bint Shati, 1913-1998) was a forerunner of Arab and Muslim feminism. His literary tafsir’s work laid the foundation for a historical interpretation of the Koran. Her modern literary approach did not break with classical exegesis, but its new perspective had a great influence on the feminist exegesis of the twentieth century. The article highlights the life and study path of Bint Shati and the characteristics of his method, considering the important influences on the contemporary feminist ijthad.

BETWEEN FEMINISM AND ISLAM:FATIMA MERNISSI AND HER LEGACY

Fatima Mernissi (1940 - 2015) was a feminist scholar and activist without equal in the Arab World. Her work was concerned with identifying and critiquing the different structures that intersect to oppress women, ranging from colonialism, Islam (or the patriarchal interpretation of Islam), to capitalist development. But what has most retained the attention of her admirers and critics alike is her work on Islam and women’s rights. The present paper focuses on this particular aspect of her work, distinguishing between two moments: a secularist feminist moment and an Islamic feminist moment. This feature makes Mernissi’s work particularly interesting in understanding the nature and development of feminism in the region as it epitomises the two main trends in Arab feminism. In exploring these two trends in Mernissi’s feminist trajectory, the paper explains both the major factors behind each feminist position as well as the major reactions each triggered. The paper particularly focuses on the strength of Islamic feminism and ends with a discussion of Mernissi’s legacy in Morocco.

Community Activism and Creative Practice in Australia: An Interview with Paula Abood

In this interview, Paula Abood discusses how her activist work in the community sector is intrinsically tied up with her creative practice. Describing herself as a secular Arab feminist, Abood’s public activism is deeply informed by Spivak’s important question “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Abood acknowledges that “speaking out” is a complicated political act, because it entails speaking on behalf of otherized women who are often silenced and marginalized within Australia. Alongside this interview, a sample of Abood’s creative work is included, which reflects both her theoretical interests and her activist work. Cover image: Jerome Pearce

Stance-Taking and the Language of Evaluation in the Media Discourse of the Arab Feminist Writer Lamia Swaylam: A Study in Systemic Functional Linguistics

Stance-Taking and the Language of Evaluation in the Media Discourse of the Arab Feminist Writer Lamia Swaylam: A Study in Systemic Functional Linguistics

Arab and Black Feminisms

This essay explores the conditions out of which a diasporic anti-imperialist Arab feminist group came into alignment with the Women of Color Resource Center. It focuses on the history and leaders of the Women of Color Resource Center and its roots in the 1960s and 1970s people of color and women of color based movements in the United States in order to map alliances among black feminist thought, radical women of color movements, and Palestinian de-colonization then and now.

Cutting across Imperial Feminisms toward Transnational Feminist Solidarities

Abstract Photography, not only by imperial men but also by imperial women, has played a significant role in portraying the Muslim woman as the apolitical exotic of orientalist fantasies. The legacy of colonial photography by European women travelers continues to haunt the media of the global North even today. Such imperial feminist discourse on women in Egypt was blatant in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's December 2011 announcement of the National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security at Georgetown University, as well as in the rhetoric of Laura Bush, Cherie Booth, and Condoleezza Rice on the War on Terror and Afghan and Iraqi women. In contrast, this article draws on the photographic counter-narratives, like “the girl in the blue bra,” that transnational feminists circulated through social media during the people's uprising in Egypt beginning in 2011 to evoke powerful images of women from the global south. It also examines the figure of the pan-Arab feminist Huda Shaarawi, who in 1919 organized the largest women's anti-British demonstration, and became in 1935 the vice president of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, and in 1945 the founding president of the Arab Feminist Union. Bringing these figures into conversation with Angela Davis's encounter with women in Egypt in her book Women, Culture, and Politics opens up new spaces for cross-border feminisms that cut across imperial legacies that continue to define relationships between women of the global North and the global South.

The question of gender and the culture of Arab feminist creativity by Miaa Abbas Emara as a model

ينقسم بحثنا سؤال الجنوسة على جزأين متكاملين، يتجه الأول منهما لقراءة الخطاب النقدي النسوي ومساءلة مفاهيمه الرئيسة خاصة/ الجندرية ومتابعة تطور هذا المصطلح وأثر النقد النسوي في ترسيخ الهوية الابداعية للمرأة وان الكتابة الانثوية مصطلح مقابل لكتابة الرجل في رغبة كبيرة لتهشيم النظام الأبوي المسيطر على جميع شؤون الحياة بما فيها حركة الابداع والكتابة.
 ويريد بحثنا في جزئه المتمم تفكيك ماهية الجنوسة منتقيا تجربة ابداعية عربية واخترنا لذلك تجربة الشاعرة العراقية لميعة عباس عمارة، الشاعرة الرائدة التي لم تأخذ تجربتها الابداعية على اتساعها وعذوبتها نصيباً تحليلياً أو نقدياً ملائماً لعقود من الابداع وأياً كان منهج هذا التحليل الذي نقصد، فالذي كتب عن لميعة قليل لايفي بنضج انتاجها الشعري، وتجربة لميعة في مانرى تستجيب لرؤيتنا وتحليلنا أمورا عدة منها ما ذكرنا من انها صاحبة قلم شعري خصب وناضج فضلاً عن انها مهيأة للتعامل مع أي برنامج نقدي يروم مقاربة منجزها وبسط آلته الاجرائية على خطوط أبنيتها الشعرية، كما انّ لميعة تكشف عن روح ابداع نسوي عربي نقي أُسوة بتجارب نسوية أخرى أفرزتها الشاعرة والأديبة العربية بعامة .
 فهل ثمة مفارقة بين ما بحثت عنه الين شوالتز – مثلاً – في تقديمها النقد النسوي وتنظيرها له وبين عجلة الابداع النسوي العراقي، وإنها رؤية في مطلق الأحوال، لأننا سنقدم قراءة نظرية مشفوعة باخرى تحليلية، إذ انّ من بدهيّات النقد النسوي انه منضو تحت قبة الحركة النسوية بعامة وانه بمقدوره الإفادة من كل نوع نقدي لكنه لاينضبط اجرائياً وليس ذلك من شؤونه.

El feminismo árabe y su lucha por los derechos de la mujer

En el presente articulo se efectua un analisis de las diversas etapas por las que ha transitado el feminismo arabe desde su aparicion, a finales del siglo XIX, hasta hoy. La lucha por el derecho a la educacion de las mujeres, al trabajo y a la igualdad juridica se articulo, durante una primera fase, en un discurso nacionalista y laico que defendia tanto la independencia nacional -en unos anos en los que el mundo arabe vivia aun bajo dominio colonial europeo- como la consecucion de una deseada modernidad social y politica. En la cuestion del velo -que mas alla de una obsesion occidental cierta, fue tambien un asunto muy debatido entre las propias mujeres-, la opcion preferente fue la de su eliminacion. Los innegables logros obtenidos no impidieron la continuacion de sus demandas de derechos politicos y de derogacion del derecho familiar basado en la sharia. Un sesgo significativo se produjo a partir de los anos 70 del siglo XX con el proceso de reislamizacion de las sociedades arabes. El asi llamado “feminismo islamico” emergio entonces como un discurso potente y muy visible, incluso en nuestro mundo occidental, que no ha logrado, sin embargo, eliminar el feminismo laico y combativo de ya larga historia.

Towards a Feminist Interpretation of Islam: Faith and Gender in the Work of Fatima Mernissi.

Most recently, religious identification has taken on political significance in post-colonial Arab Countries. Social, economic, military and political failures have galvanised, reactionary religious responses to western domination and globalization. This paper is concerned with Islamic/ Arab feminism, and seeks to analyze its contributions, with the focus on the work of one Arab feminist, Fatima Mernissi. By bringing in issues of faith, identities, colonialism and culture to feminism, she has made a substantial contribution to the enrichment of feminist thought. To analyse Fatima Mernissi’s thought I shall go through her sociological and feminist works. A Moroccan by birth, Mernissi’s primary concern has all along been with the position of women in the rapidly changing Muslim communities in the Arab world, in particular, Morocco.

Silence against Political Rape

Arab Spring movements in many Arab countries revealed a gap at the heart of Arab society and politics: the large-scale subalternity of Arab women in such movements. In this essay, I hypothesise that, with few exceptions, Arab women have always avoided participation in social and political activism because of their fear of political rape – raping women as punishment during political turmoil. The essay traces the history of political rape through different stages of Arab history. The examples are taken from history, literature and international reports and they mainly cover three countries: Syria, Egypt and Libya. These examples prove that vulnerable women’s horror at any possibility of their being sexually abused and then rejected by their families and society has always haunted them, preventing them from struggling or protesting. The essay concludes that subalternity is the only stance from which Arab women can encounter political rape. Then, the essay discusses the subalternity of Arab women in the light of the thought of the postcolonial critic Gayatri Spivak. This argument leads to the contention that the silence of Arab women vulnerable to political rape should not be considered passive and that feminist theories and actions cannot be successful in supporting subaltern Arab women without the ethical responsibility theorised by Spivak as the most appropriate approach to the subaltern female. This approach entails respecting subaltern Arab women’s culture and fears and avoiding any attempt to make them copies of the European feminist self. Subaltern Arab women who are afraid of being sexually abused have the right to protect their bodies and stick to their culture while still participating in public life. olA ABdAlkAFor DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE, FILM, AND THEATRE STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX silenCe AGAinst PolitiCAl rAPe: ArAB woMen’s sUBAlternitY DUrinG PolitiCAl strUGGles Corresponding author: Ola Abdalkafor, Email: oabdal@essex.ac.uk keywords rape, Arab feminism, Arab Spring, subalternity, Gayatri Spivak