Azam Kamguian:
I intervene in this debate as an activist and author engaged in questions affecting women in the Middle East. Today I will examine the hostility of Islam to women's rights in the economic and social context of the region, and I will also evoke the impact of Sharia law and the movement of political Islam on the rights of women as citizens, their civic freedoms and their individual freedom. I will finish by explaining what our current tasks are. The position of women in the Middle East has raised great interest in recent times. What data is available concerning the subordination of women in this region? What role play Islamic ideology and practices in the oppression of women in the Middle East and in other societies dominated by Islam ?
Article posted online 1May 2017
Few people claim that the status of women in the Middle East can be understood without referring to Islam. Although the legal-religious systems of each local state are not all identical, women are everywhere second-class citizens. But the position of women in the region cannot be understood without a detailed analysis of the economic and political context in which they live, and the multisecular influence of Islam. There are several currents in the debate concerning the status of women in the Middle East. Some deny that the vast majority of women in this region are more oppressed than those of other countries. Others consider that this oppression exists well, but that it is extrinsic to Islam and to the Koran who, according to them, defend the equality of genres, equality which would have been sabotaged by the Arab patriarchal system and external influences.
Among intellectuals and academics, any attempt to criticize Islam and the Islamic oppression of women is, according to them, "orientalism". Faced with the challenges of the West, the reaction of Islam has taken different forms, but in the final analysis all aim to demonstrate the alleged “progressive” nature of the Koran, the hadiths and Sharia law. And this, either by denying the lower status of women in the societies of the Middle East either by attributing it to pre-Islamic traditions and to the influence of the current movements of political Islam. Many feminist and university intellectuals excuse Islam by affirming that wearing the veil, the genital mutilation and the brutal oppression of women are not limited to medieval societies. Some say that women who make up in the West are just as oppressed as those who in the East bear the hijab, but that it is a post-modern, neo-colonial oppression.
According to them, women have lower status in all religions and this situation is therefore not specific to Islam. But their comparison does not stand up because, in the West, secularism and secular states have considerably restricted the power of control of Christianity on the lives of women. This type of reasoning can be illustrated by a quote from Nawal El Saadawi: "I have noticed that many people, including professors of religion and Islamic studies take a verse from the Koran and claim that God allowed men to beat women. They do not compare this verse to others. They do not compare the Koran to the Bible. If they did, they would see that the Bible oppresses women more. »
According to Nawal El Saadawi, women in the Middle East are not oppressed because they live under the domination of Islam, or because they belong to the East, but because of a patriarchal and class system that has dominated the world for thousands of years. According to her, the struggle for the civic freedoms of women, for their individual freedom and for secularism does not make sense. In this type of discourse, the concept of patriarchy only serves to conceal the role of Islam in the oppression of women. All aspects of the oppression of women in the Middle East are, wrongly, attributed only to "patriarchy". It is obvious that the economic system and political oppression play a role in the oppression of women. But if Islam has no effect on the status of women, why is the position of women worse in the Middle East than in any other region of the world ?
Islamic resistance against women's rights
Historically, Islam has opposed women's rights, secularism, modernism and humanist values. Fundamental differences appeared between the Muslim East and the Non -Muslim West in the 19th and 20th centuries. Economic and social changes, as well as the impact of Western culture, gave birth to forces within societies in the Middle East, forces which slowly modified the condition of women. Since the beginning of the 19th century, in several essential areas, the results of the process aroused by Western influence have been generally positive. Social institutions and mechanisms of control and confinement of women, as well as their exclusion from the main areas of activity, have been gradually dismantled.
At the start, this process did not produce legal changes, but rather phenomena such as women's access to education. Western economic penetration in the Middle East and the dissemination of Western political thought in the societies of the Middle East did not shake the Islamic law and its reactionary and oppressive social institutions for women. The changes in Islamic law concerning women have aroused considerable resistance. The laws on women occupy a decisive place in the Koran. In addition, certain changes favorable to women have been interpreted by the nationalist and Islamic forces as the sign of a definitive invasion of the last sphere that they could control in the face of the aggression of the "infidels", now that the West had gotten their hands on political sovereignty and on the economy of their countries. When the French arrived in Egypt with Napoleon, the wearing of the veil increased in reaction to the French occupation. The Islamists considered modern values such as women's rights as a conspiracy of the West which accompanied and served its economic and political offensive. Their cultural reaction was to turn to their own traditions.
In the fight to improve the condition of women, the first names associated with these fights are often men, but from the start of women were involved. At that time, women's rights, particularly the question of the veil, emerged as a central subject in the national political debate. For the first time in the history of Islam, questions like veil, polygamy, divorce and sexual segregation were discussed openly in the Middle East. Public and independent activity for women's rights developed in the 20th century. Modernization generally improves the position of women. Although the success of reforms was linked to economic and social changes, immediate problems were often ideological, mainly the attitude to adopt in the face of the sacrosanct Islamic law.
But social and economic reality led women in the Middle East to intervene more and more in the public sphere, and this was largely positive for women, in particular during the historical periods of national independence, secularization and economic modernization in Turkey and Tunisia.
Those who want to establish legal reforms in countries where the law is not egalitarian for women wish above all to restrict the facilities for divorce, polygamy and the age of marriage, often through Islamic previous and by obliging men to justify divorce or polygamy before the courts. These changes are called Islamic and Islamic courts generally retain a certain power. Family laws, the cornerstone of the Islamic oppression of women, were and are fiercely defended by Muslim religious and political leaders in the Middle East. That these laws are still practically intact underlines the existence of extremely powerful traditional and Islamic forces in societies of the Middle East. Reformist interpretations, those which underline "the egalitarian spirit of the Koran" and want to reshape sharia by reinterpreting the Koran, these interpretations are mainly born under the influence of economic and social changes driven by the impact of the West.
Political Islam
Political Islam is a fundamental force which has imposed serious feedback concerning the rights of women in the region, in recent decades. Political Islam is a movement born in opposition to secular and progressive movements for liberation and equality, against intellectual and cultural progress, and against the oppressed which fight for justice, freedom and equality in the region. During the 1970s, political Islam strengthened and widened. In the 1980s, this movement was supported and nourished by the Western governments which used it during the conflicts and tensions of the Cold War, but also to fight the progressive movements of the region. Political Islam opposes the freedom and civil rights of women, the freedom of cultural and personal expression; He imposes brutal laws and traditions, not to mention murders, beheadings and genocides. In Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan under the Taliban, Islamic regimes have transformed these countries and particularly the houses of women into prisons, where their confinement, their exclusion from many professional and educational activities, and their brutal treatment have acquired the force of law. In addition, the misogynistic discourse they spread to the public sphere implicitly supported male violence against women.
Women, second class citizens
Currently women are second -class citizens in the region: their full legal identity is denied by depriving them of rights, privileges and security from which citizens should all benefit. Unjust laws, discriminatory constitutions and spirits full of prejudice do not recognize women as citizens equal and violate their rights. The "nationals", citizens, are in principle people born in a country or who have been naturalized. They benefit from all the rights and privileges granted to a free individual and must also be protected by the State. However, women are entitled to full citizenship in any country in the Middle East or North Africa; They are second -class citizens everywhere. In many cases, state laws and rules strengthen gender inequality and exclusion of rights reserved for "nationals". The State strengthens the tribal-family control of Islam on women, and makes them even more dependent on these institutions. Unlike the West, where the individual is the basic unit of society, the family is the basis of Arab societies. This means that the state is careful to protect the family first, rather than protecting its members. Women's rights therefore only concern their roles of women and wife. State discrimination against women in the family is expressed in unjust family codes that deny women egalitarian access to divorce and custody of children.
Throughout the region, if an Arab woman chooses to marry a foreigner, the latter will not benefit from the nationality of his wife. In addition, only fathers (never mothers) can spend their citizenship to their children. In many cases, when a woman becomes widow, divorce or has been abandoned, or if her husband is not a national of the country, her children are not entitled to nationality, and are therefore excluded from their rights as a citizen. These rights include access to education and health system, land ownership and inheritance. On the other hand, men can extend their nationality to their wives and children. This legal inequality not only denies their civil rights to women, but it denies children their fundamental rights as human beings.
If the law is designed to protect women only with regard to their role in the family, it cannot therefore protect those who need to be protected from their families. By not protecting women from violence, against ill -treatment, rape, marital rape and "honor" crimes, the State is unable to offer the protection available to a full citizen. In fact, by ignoring questions like those of male violence, and always inflicting benign punishment for those who brutalize women, the State strengthens the exclusion of women from their citizen rights.
The laws on sharia -based family often require women whom they obtain the permission of a male member of their family to undertake activities that they should have the right to engage freely. This increases the dependence of women vis-à-vis male members of the family, in the economic, social and legal fields. For example, in many Arab countries, women must obtain permission from their father, husband or brother to obtain a passport, travel abroad, create a company, receive a bank loan, open an account, or get married.
What claims to advance ?
Given the intrinsic hostility of Islam vis-à-vis gender equality and women's rights and vis-à-vis their role in society, how can we improve their condition? Hunting political Islam is the primary condition for improving women's status in the Middle East. The social system is based on Islamic misogyny and reaches, and women in the Middle East will not regret its disappearance. The 21st century must see the disappearance of political Islam. This process, I believe, will be triggered in Iran. Extraordinary signs of hope and change continue to be issued by Iranian women, on the spot as in exile. In Iran, women launched the first and most effective challenges against the Islamic regime by courageously calling into question the right of Islamic authorities to define their lives. The liberation of women in the Middle East is based on secularism and the creation of egalitarian political systems in the region. Secularism has been and continues to be the elementary condition of the liberation of women in the Middle East. We have to fight for :
Finally I would like to briefly mention the question of the reform and modernization of Islam. Is this a valid objective? Why should we modernize Islam? If someone told me that he wants to humanize and modernize slavery, fascism or patriarchy, I would answer him that we must rather get rid of it. For these "modernizers", if Islam allowed women to go study with a dress going to the knees, or to become a judge on condition of being silent on his sexuality, then Islam would be "modernized". The objectives of those who want to modernize Islam are much more limited than mine. We deserve a completely different modernism. Trying to modernize or reform Islam will only prolong the secular oppression and subordination of women in societies dominated by Islam. Rather than modernizing Islam, it must be "put in a cage", just as humanity has cage Christianity two centuries ago. Islam must be subject to secularism and the secular state.
Azam Kamguian
(This text is inspired by a speech delivered during a conference organized from April 11 to 13, 2003 in Washington by the Council for a secular humanism on the theme "A nation without God ? »)
(Translated by neither homeland nor borders)
Free Inquiry Volume 23, No. 4 - Fall 2003
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