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Global histories a student journal Contesting Imperial Feminisms: The Life of an Early Twentieth Century Egyptian Activist Bella Ruhl DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/GHSJ.2021.412 Source: Global Histories, Vol. 7, No. 1 (May 2021), pp. 112-135. ISSN: 2366-780X Copyright © 2021 Bella Ruhl License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenseS/by/4.0/ Publisher information: ‘Global Histories: A Student Journal’ is an open-access bi-annual journal founded in 2015 by students of the M.A. program Global History at Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. ‘Global Histories’ is published by an editorial board of Global History students in association with the Freie Universität Berlin. Freie Universität Berlin Global Histories: A Student Journal Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut Koserstraße 20 14195 Berlin Contact information: For more information, please consult our website www.globalhistories.com or contact the editor at: [email protected]. Contesting Imperial Feminisms: The Life of an Early Twentieth Century Egyptian Activist by BELLA RUHL 112 Global Histories: a student journal | VII - 1 - 2021 Bella Ruhl | Contesting Imperial Feminisms 113 studies. VII - 1 - 2021 | ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bella Ruhl is a historical researcher and a student in the MA Global Histories: a student journal gender and postcolonial history, material culture, and archival material culture, gender and postcolonial history, Global History at Freie Universität Berlin. Her interests include ABSTRACT Imperial Feminisms: The Life of an Early In “Contesting the argument I make Century Egyptian Activist,” Twentieth bound to that first-wave Egyptian feminism was inextricably nationalist discourses, and was both produced whole-cloth and adapted from European models by Egyptian activists in response to changing economic and political conditions. Using rights a women’s the life and political work of Huda Sha'arawi, activist and nationalist who lived during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I complicate the euro-centric view that feminism in Egypt was the result of western intervention and was uncritically adopted by colonized women. Instead I and her try to draw attention to the ways in which Sha'arawi comrades formulated a feminism predicated on decolonial liberation and indigenous values, while navigating the political realities of British colonialism and industrialized modernity. A microhistorical study with far-reaching implications, this rhetoric and actions, including her article analyzes Sha'arawi’s performative political unveiling, to gain a deeper understanding of the political contributions of early twentieth century Egyptian feminism. My objective is to return some agency to intersectional actors whose politics have been unjustly framed European) within the historiography as derivative of (white, feminist and (patriarchal) nationalist frameworks. s m s i I. INTRODUCTION oppressive gender-segregated n i culture of the Islamic Middle East m e F In support of her husband’s is a component of Orientalism—a l a i r declaration of retribution against system of representation that e p m the perpetrators of the September systematically depicts Eastern culture I g n 11 attacks in New York City, then- as hyper-sexualized, violent, and i t s 3 e First Lady of the United States Laura primitive. The particular gendered t n o Bush made a speech on live radio. malignment of the Arabic world C | Framing the invasion of Afghanistan established a tradition of justifying l h u as a protection of human rights, colonial interventions into the cultural R a l l she claimed that “[t]he fight against practices of Middle Eastern Muslims e 4 B terrorism is also a fight for the as a necessary humanitarian act. A rights and dignity of women.”1 The potent example lies in the fact that implication of this sentence, and the the British controller-general Lord perspective it articulates, have been Cromwell, who acted as the head analyzed in depth by Islamic feminist colonial agent in late nineteenth scholars in the intervening years. The century Egypt, “opposed feminism most notable example was an article in...England, [yet] espoused in published by the anthropologist and the colonial context a rhetoric of theorist Lila Abu-Lughod in 2002, feminism that attacked Egyptian men where she posed the question, for upholding practices that degraded “Do Muslim Women Really Need their women.”5 The effects of this Saving?”2 In her sharply articulated particular mobilization have had a analysis, Abu-Lughod situated Bush’s lasting negative impact on the social seemingly humanitarian rhetoric perception of women’s activism within a long history of feminist within the Middle East. As historian discourse mobilized towards imperial and theorist Leila Ahmed explains, domination in the Middle East. the use of feminism by colonizers to The idea that it is in the best enforce hegemonic cultural norms interest of Arab women to be rescued and undermine indigenous social by a white savior from the reputedly structures “has...imparted to feminism in non-Western societies the taint of having served as an instrument of 6 1 Laura Bush, “Radio Address by colonial domination.” Mrs. Bush,” The White House Radio Address Archives, November 17, 2001, https://georgewbush- 3 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New whitehouse.archives.gov/news/ York: Pantheon Books, 1978). releases/2001/11/20011117.html. 4 Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women 2 Lila Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?,” 785. Really Need Saving? Anthropological 5 Fadwa El Guindi, “Veiling Resistance,” Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Fashion Theory 3, no. 1 (1999): 67, Its Others,” American Anthropologist DOI: 10.2752/136270499779165626. 104, no. 3 (September 2002), https:// 6 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in www.jstor.org/stable/3567256. Islam (New Haven, CT: Yale University 114 Global Histories: a student journal | VII - 1 - 2021 B e l l Historically, it was not only framed women in terms of nationalist a R u white Westerners who engaged motherhood, rather than as equals to h l | with discourses that framed men. C o Eastern “backwardness” in gender Today a radical effort is n t e relations and societal organization being made among Middle Eastern s t i n in contrast to the “progressive” feminists to formulate an indigenous g I West. Middle Easterners with a stake articulation of women’s rights and m p e r in the hegemonic colonial project protections, grounded not in the i a l participated in this endeavour post-Enlightenment ideologies of F e m as well. The upper middle class Western Europe, but in the particular i n i s Egyptian social reformer Qasim cultural traditions and beliefs of the m Amin, for example, wrote a book southern and eastern Mediterranean s in 1899 entitled The Liberation and surrounding regions. Islamic of Women (Tahrir al mara’a) that Feminism, which seeks to translate, sparked controversy in Egypt over interrogate, and reinterpret the veiling practices and segregation. holy Islamic texts apart from the The book criticized Egyptian familial influence of patriarchal norms, is structures and, in particular, the one such intellectual initiative. Leila system of segregation as contributing Ahmed and other scholars of Middle to its economic “backwardness” Eastern women’s history, such as in comparison to Europe. In his Fatima Mernessi, have identified effort to Europeanize Arab culture, historical periods in which women Amin framed the veil as “a huge enjoyed relative autonomy and legal barrier between women and their protection.8 While there is no doubt elevation, and consequently a that patriarchy has played just as barrier between the nation and its dominant a role in social formation advancement.”7 Instead of seeking and the regulation of reproduction in women’s liberation for the sake the Middle East as in Europe, there of equality and opportunity for is an effort underway to define the women, he drew upon imperialist deconstruction or transformation modernization discourses, which classified civilizations according to a racialized hierarchy and a linear 8 For two examples, see Fatima model of development. Grounded Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens in the epistemologically violent of Islam, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland discourses of scientific rationality, (Minneapolis, MN: University of the earliest calls for women’s rights Minnesota Press, 1993); and Huda were fundamentally misogynistic and Lutfi, “Manners and Customs of Fourteenth-Century Cairene Women: Female Anarchy versus Male Sharʹi Order in Muslim Prescriptive Press, 1992), 167. Treatises,” in Women in Middle 7 Qasim Amin, Tahrir Al Mara’a. Eastern History, ed. Nikki Keddie and (1899) 45, cited in Guindi, “Veiling Beth Baron (New Haven, CT: Yale Resistance”, 61. University Press, 1991), 99-121. Global Histories: a student journal | VII - 1 - 2021 115 s m s i of these systems as a response feminist activism, strategies, and n i to actual locations, situations, and principles were one resource to m e F historical contexts, rather than as a which Middle Eastern women’s l a i r legacy of colonial intervention. rights activists looked for inspiration, e p m In the early twentieth century, they were also nonetheless I g n however, this approach was in its “committed to constructing an i t s e infancy. It was not until the 1980s that indigenous movement that would t n 11 o postcolonial theory and second-wave be both modern and authentic.” C | feminism combined to produce the Rapidly changing social and l h u discursive resources foundational economic conditions throughout the R a l l to its ascendancy. That is not to say nineteenth and twentieth centuries e B that all aspects of Middle Eastern autonomously raised questions and women’s rights activism before produced solutions rooted in local the late twentieth century were beliefs and values. intrinsically foreign, colonialist, and In order to gain a better formulated with little regard to the understanding of the ways in which actualities of women’s lives.
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