Al-Ali, Nadje

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Nadje Sadig Al-Ali

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The Near and Middle East - Margot Badran: Feminists, Islam, and nation: gender and the making of modern Egypt. xi, 352 pp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. $35.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereThe Near and Middle East Margot Badran: Feminists, Islam, and nation: gender and the making of modern Egypt. xi, 352 pp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. $35.Nadje Sadig Al­AliBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 60 / Issue 02 / June 1997, pp 363 ­ 364DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00036624, Published online: 05 February 2009Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X00036624How to cite this article:Nadje Sadig Al­Ali (1997). Review of Margot Badran 'Feminists, Islam, and nation: gender and the making of modern Egypt' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 60, pp 363­364 doi:10.1017/S0041977X00036624Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 29 Oct 2012REVIEWS 363surrounding countryside. The British adminis-tration and the Zionists initiated a number ofprojects that attracted Arab workers, bothskilled and unskilled, Haifa becoming a havenof employment for Palestinians and workersfrom neighbouring Arab regions.In the final section of her book Seikalydescribes the consequences of these two factors:firstly, fears engendered by massive Jewishimmigration, and secondly, the concentrationof very large numbers of Palestinians in thetown, many of them from peasant backgroundsand economically depressed, both in producingthe rebellion of 1936—39 and in giving it thespecific character which it possessed in north-ern Palestine.The approach adopted by Seikaly is toexamine four main aspects of the transforma-tion of the Arab community of Haifa. In partone she discusses the physical and demographiccharacter of Haifa in 1918, including thecommunity's composition, the town's size andthe distribution of quarters. Part 2 analyses thedemographic transformation of Haifa's popula-tion and the movement of the various sectorsof the community from certain areas to others,demonstrating how Zionist control of areasencircling the town, especially the old tradi-tional Arab quarters, was gradually established.Part 3 deals with economic change: industry,which became a Jewish monopoly, and com-merce, where the Arabs gradually lost theirsupremacy, and the position of labour. ThusSeikaly sets the scene for part 4 of her book,which is an account of the political developmentof Haifa's Arab community, culminating in theradicalization which produced the armed rebel-lion of Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam in northernPalestine in 1934-35, which in turn ushered inthe country-wide strike and revolt of 1936-39.The inexorable change in the balance ofpower between Haifa's Arab and its Jewishcommunities and the means by which this wasbrought about are scrupulously delineated bySeikaly and the book is a model of meticuloushistorical research. Her work moreover con-tains much of contemporary political relevance.Her description of the appeal of the militantIslamism of Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam toHaifa's dispossessed has obvious contemporaryparallels, both in Palestine and elsewhere.Furthermore, her description of the patternevident in Haifa's experience, whereby the townwas physically encircled, economically seg-mented and its Arab community diminished,politically suppressed and socially fragmented,was not only repeated in many Palestiniantowns, but is, as Walid Khalidi remarks in hisforeword, paradigmatic in throwing light onthe plight of east Jerusalem today.STEPHANIE CRONINMARGOT BADRAN: Feminists, Islam, andnation: gender and the making ofmodern Egypt, xi, 352 pp. Prince-ton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1995. $35.This recent study dealing with the rise andevolution of the Egyptian feminist movementfrom the late nineteenth to the middle of thetwentieth century offers a detailed, in-depthaccount of both ' organized feminist activism'and 'everyday feminist consciousness'. Usinga wide range of sources (oral histories, women'smemoirs, correspondence, the publications andspeeches of feminists, journalistic articles andessays, etc.) Badran sets out to describe howthe movement saw itself, as well as to providethe background of broad economic, politicaland social developments against whichEgyptian feminist activism emerged.Badran's impressive and important contribu-tion to contemporary scholarship and feministpolitics is most successful in refuting theargument that feminism in Egypt was a Westernderivative or an alien intrusion (p. 20). Herperceptive study points to the overlapping,contradictions and complexities of the dis-courses and activism labelled Islamic modern-ism, secular nationalism and internationalfeminism that developed within the frame ofanti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle.Throughout the book, Badran provides ampleevidence that early Muslim women activists didnot see a contradiction between their feministand religious identity (p. 11), that they wereoften more radically nationalist than Egyptianmale politicians (p. 87), and that as Egyptian'national feminists' they were in conflict withBritish and French 'imperial feminists' (p. 21).The rise of feminist consciousness (part 1) ispresented in the context of nineteenth-centurytransformations in Egypt such a s ' urban haremculture', modernization, women's education,secularization and an emerging women's press.The struggle to claim a public arena, outsidethe confines of the home, in the realms ofeducation, work and politics, as well aswomen's involvement in the struggle for inde-pendence against the British colonial occupa-tion characterize the period of an emergingorganized feminist movement (part 2). In thelast part of the book, Badran describes theinstitutionalization of pan-Arab feminism,which developed as a reaction to disappoint-ments and tensions in relation to Western-dominated international feminism and in solid-arity with the Palestine cause.Badran's fluid and broad analytical categoryof 'feminisms' (p. 19) enables the author toemphasize that diversification in ideology andpolitical consciousness were already character-istic of the early movement, typically associatedwith Huda Sha'arawi and the Egyptian FeministUnion. The depiction of public articulations offeminist demands, e.g. women's access to theeducational system and the work-force, theright to vote, reforms of the personal statuscode, parallel with feminists' participation incampaigns and demonstrations during thenationalist independence struggle, supportsBadran's contention that the movement wasnot mainly philanthropic in character as it hasoften been claimed.By giving Nabawiyah Musa, the first womanto obtain a secondary school certificate, and ofmodest middle-class origin, equal weight inshaping the feminist movement as HudaSha'rawi, Badran also attempts to challengethe commonly held view (see Soha Abdel-Kader, Egyptian women in a changing society1899-1987, Boulder, CO, 1987; Leila Ahmed,364 REVIEWSWomen and gender in Islam, New Haven, 1992;and the works of Cynthia Nelson) that in itsbeginnings the movement consisted of upper-class women alone. However, her claim thatthe movement had already transcended elitism,does not persuade. According to Badran herself,the 11 founding members of the EFU weremainly from wealthy landowning families,raised within harem culture (p. 96).More importantly, one cannot help butnotice that Badran's broad analytical categoryactually conceals two types of feminisms, whichappear to be linked to class affiliations. Mainlyupper-class women are mentioned with regardto the 'official' feminism of the organizedmovement (EFU), while ' everyday feminism',e.g. journalism, the promotion of women'seducation and work, etc. was predominantlycarried out by middle-class women. Withoutwanting to diminish the significance of women'severyday struggle to widen their social roles—which is certainly no less 'feminist' thanparticipation in political campaigns and inter-national feminist conferences—I believe thatBadran runs the risk of concealing classdivisions and romanticizing the unifying capa-city of gender.Furthermore, given her set time frame, onewonders why Badran decided to neglect activ-ists and organizations outside the EgyptianFeminist Union, such as Doriah Shafiq's Bintal-Nil or Zeinab Al-Ghazali's Muslim Women'sSociety, for example. Badran's work is strongeston the early history of the EFU, as the rathersketchy and superficial concluding chaptersdealing with the turn towards pan-Arab femin-ism show.Overall, Badran's work not only increasesour knowledge of the emergence of' feminisms'in Egypt and the underlying political andeconomic transformations but also providesthe necessary historical background for anunderstanding of the contemporary debatesand battles of Egyptian feminists who continueto fight on many fronts at the same time.NADJE SADIG AL-ALIKATHLEEN M. MOORE: Al-mughtaribun:American law and the transforma-tion of Muslim life in the UnitedStates, xiv, 211pp. Albany NY:State University of New York Press,1995. $16.95.Al-mughtaribun, the Arabic word for emigrants,is derived from the root gharaba, which carriesconnotations not only of being far from one'shomeland but also of Arabs facing the challengeof adapting to the Western way of life. In thisvery informative and well-researched book, theauthor chronicles a variety of interactionsbetween Muslims in America and the UnitedStates legal system. Kathleen Moore's principalaim is to depict the gradual transformationwhich has occurred over time in the perceptions,self-identification and reactions of AmericanMuslims, now estimated at more than fourmillion, as they have experienced a greaterrange of contacts with the civil law.Muslims living in the West face a dilemma.Should they strive to maintain a separateIslamic community, isolated from mainstreamsociety, with a view to upholding their religioustraditions and values, on the grounds thatIslam is a comprehensive and inherently super-ior mode of existence applicable to a worldwidecommunity (ummaj! Or should they engagewith their surroundings, make some culturaladaptations to suit local conditions, claim therights generally accorded in liberal democraciesto religious minorities, and hope that this formof accommodation will enable them to retain aconsiderable measure of their Muslim identity?In the main, Muslim settlers in the US havefollowed the latter course of action, but theprocess is complex and one virtue of adoptinga legal perspective in analysing the forms ofengagement and interaction is that it tends tofocus on key issues and potentially deepconflicts.In very broad terms, Muslims (and membersof other religious and ethnic minorities) havethree choices in responding to the realities ofliving within a Western legal system, albeit thatthe choices are by no means mutually exclusive.The first is to accept the existing legal rulesand comply with them. The second is to utilizethe rules to achieve specifically Islamic purposesor objectives, i.e. manipulate the system toone's advantage. In many instances, Westernlaw is liberal and flexible and exists to facilitatepeople's wishes and plans, especially throughupholding religious freedom. Thirdly, attemptscan be made to reform the existing rules, e.g.by bringing test cases to alter previous judicialrulings and interpretations or by putting pres-sure on the legislative body for new statutoryprovisions.Aspects of each of these approaches areapparent from the areas which Mooreaddresses. Two early chapters focus on theapplication of immigration and citizenship lawsat the turn of this century. By this period USlaws had been heavily influenced by notions ofa hierarchy of races and cultures and certainrestrictions had been imposed to ensure thatonly people of good ' stock' were entitled tobecome citizens. Did this include Syrians, manyof whom could have been Muslims? Thegoverning 1790 Naturalization Act (as amendedin 1870) required applicants to be 'white' or'African'. The question of whether Syrianscould be naturalized as ' whites' ultimately fellto be decided on the basis of whether they'closely resembled their European neighbours'.An appellate judge eventually ruled that theycould. However, despite energetic efforts, SouthAsians failed to pass this test, on the groundthat, although they were Caucasians, they didnot fall within the 'popular' meaning of' white'. Their dark complexions rendered themunassimilable. In similar vein, the ImmigrationAct 1891 barred the entry of polygamists andin one case, a Muslim was refused admissionon the ground that ' he was a representative ofa religious group that practised polygamy'. Hewon his appeal, but was only allowed entry onthe condition that he did not 'preach poly-gamy'. It is clear from these laws that manyMuslims were not regarded at that time asacceptable members of American political soci-ety, but the cases show them striving hard to

Review of "Feminists, Islam and Nation" by Margot Badran

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Review of "Feminists, Islam and Nation" by Margot Badran

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