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Overviews
IV " Tradition, Invisibility and Repression,"An overview of articles in the Western historical Tradition
"The Polemics on the Modesty and Segregation of Women in Contemporary Egypt," by Valerie J. Hoffman Ladd. "Unveiling in Early Twentieth Century Egypt: Practical and Symbolic Considerations," by Beth Baron. "Problems in the Historiography of Women in the Middle East: The Case of Nineteenth Century Egypt," by Judith Tucker. "Decline in the Family Economy in Mid-Nineteenth Century Egypt," by Judith Tucker. "Nineteenth Century Arabic Writings on Women and Society: The Interim Role of the Masonic Press in Cairo," (Al-Lata'if, 1885-1895) by Byron D. Cannon. "A Survey of Trends in Social Sciences Research on Women in the Arab Region, 1960-1980" by Soha Abdel Kader. "Women and the Moral Order: Identity and Change," from Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East, by Amal Rassam. "Women as Patrons of Architecture in Turkey," By Ulku U. Bates., Women in the Muslim World, Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie, Harvard University Press, 1980. "The Revolutionary Gentlewomen in Egypt," by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot. Women in the Muslim World, Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie, Harvard University Press, 1980.
The literature on women in Islam from the historical perspective focuses on many of the aspects brought out in the anthropological tradition outlined above. Most of the articles rely on surveys of literature in Arabic and are therefore much more substantial and nuanced in their discussions. All the articles concentrate on 'women's rights' and especially on their legal status and personality. Only Valerie Hoffman Ladd's article presents commentary on social debate of the day from a non-legal point of view. Social history is usually viewed through the prism of the impact of European ideas on Muslim women ie. how such ideas were internalized, how such ideas were rejected, how they induced social change in terms of work outside the home and modification of traditional social practices. By and large, these studies are substantially informative but when the author attempts to impose a theoretical framework for analytical purposes, the data presented seems to become enmeshed in the baggage of Western conceptual frameworks. Valerie J. Hoffman-Ladd's article, "The Polemics on the Modesty and Segregation of Women in Contemporary Egypt," gives a fresh account of the well-traveled path on the practice of veiling verses un-veiling and its meaning in Egyptian society. She tries to show a number of different points of view within Egyptian literary circles on the subject and defines the debate along the terms she finds within the literature rather than in terms imposed from her own perspective. Rather than casting Muslim women's relationship to the West in a rejection/acceptance mode, she explains the reasons behind the deep ambivalence of Muslims to Western liberalism and focuses on the importance of the veil as a symbol of cultural authenticity to Muslims. Ladd describes the debate on veiling as one which involves an appeal to modernity which is in tension with the appeal to authenticity. Using both historical social history such as Qasim Amin's book on women, Ladd uses Qur'anic sources to give insight into the ideal Islamic principles to which both men and women aspire. This account also tends to de-mystify Islamically motivated practices, be they correctly or incorrectly interpreted. Such an article would give profound insights to the Western reader on the question of women without the interference of Western value distinctions. Beth Baron also looks at the practical and symbolic considerations of unveiling in Egypt. She discusses unveiling and the gradual erosion of seclusion and its meaning in a number of different contexts and situations. She sees the veil for its practical and symbolic value and does not seem particularly interested in its Islamic origins or influence. The influences on women wearing or not wearing hijab (hair covering) are described as based on class, social status, rural or urban location, and the desire to be more modern or more traditional-whatever the fashion of the day. Veiling trends are seen within the context of social, economic and political change. Baron argues that unveiling among the elites indicated that they were moving towards an appreciation of more modern values. Judith Tucker has written two articles on the subject of women in nineteenth century Egyptian historiography and on the Egyptian family economy in the same period. Tucker's is a Marxist critique of Orientalism and the political economy of the Egyptian peasant family. This work offers some very important interpretations of women's issues in the Islamic court system of the time. The problems and analysis which Tucker sees in the historiography of women are influenced by marxism in that they call for historians to look at the ways women influenced the organization of production and social interaction. She claims that the key to overcoming the class bias in the study of women which has typically favored the urban elites, is in a reading of legal and theological texts, use of anthropological and archaeological evidence, legal cases, folklore and oral history. Tucker conceives of the world of women studies in informal networks, popular culture and basic organization of production and reproduction. Sources, according to Tucker, must be examined for sex bias and she recommends the researcher must censure his/her own sex bias as well as any bias against patriarchal cultures. Implied in the discussion of sex bias is that there should be no distinction between the male and female. Eliminating such a 'bias' may be problematic to the study of women in any context, and certainly in the Islamic one. After surveying the ideas of a number of Arab writers supportive of the idea of women entering the labor force, for example, Tucker argues that the tenets of Arab socialist thought are extrinsic to the subject at hand. She claims that the mass of scholarly work drawn from the Egyptian situation neglects the specificity of Egyptian history. Tucker tends to view the influence of Islam as an ideology and her critique of Egyptian historiography claims that Islam, as a force in social life, is an 'unexamined conclusion.' Furthermore, Tucker states that, "A specifically "Islamic" definition of history and culture promoted an idealist epistemology in which much of Middle East history was perceived as the embodiment of the Islamic spirit, rather than the outcome of the complex interactions of material forces and ideological structures." The marxist paradigm is limited to justifying the study of women and the ways, "in which their activities and status reflect and affect the organization of production and social interaction in any given society." Therefore, Judith Tucker's analytical framework revolves around the following factors; 1) Women's access to property, 2) her position in the family unit, 3) participation in social production and 4) the prevailing ideological definition of women's roles. The studies undertaken by Tucker of various law cases throughout the 1800's provide informative and original data about the ability of women to petition their rights before Islamic judges. The cases show in many examples, how Islamic law favorably influenced the material situation of women enabling them to exercise their property and kinship rights. Her study on the peasant family under the influence of rural to urban migration, forced conscription and the capitalist reforms imposed under the regime of Mohammed Ali enlighten the reader as to the effects of economic changes on the family. Her study shows that because the peasant family was weakened by an encroaching state economic penetration, that the situation of women was made worse and the ability of the law courts to impose their rulings was impoverished and undermined by the vulnerability of the family to economic chaos. Tucker elaborates her findings in the records of Islamic law courts by explaining that traditional patterns of familial support were being eroded by state intervention and dislocation. Tucker concludes that the common assumption that women stood to gain with the impact of the West and the rise of modern society should be re-examined because her study of the cases brought to Islamic courts by women after the economic penetration of the West, indicate that the decline of the family as a semi-autonomous unit may well have contributed to a loss of status and security among the female population. This conclusion in and of itself challenges the assumption of Western scholars concerning the benefits of Westernization/modernization to women, at least on women in the historical context under study. It also suggests that the health of the family might be of great importance to the welfare of women. Another study, this time by Ulku Bates, indicates that the majority of scholars might be looking for indications of the role and influence of women in all the wrong places. Judith Tucker's study of legal case histories in Islamic jurisprudence shed some light how the system was able to respond to the needs of women. Ulku Bates looks at the legacy of Turkish architecture and challenges the assumption that women under Islamic rule in Turkey had little political influence and economic power. By taking the example of female patrons of architecture, the author claims that the evidence presented here can extend and enhance our understanding of the place of women in other Islamic societies and those ways in which they influence the social and political system. Bates assumes that architecture, because of its public nature, is a political statement about the society it reflects. When one considers the limited formal status of women in Islamic Seljuq and Ottoman Turkey, one is struck by the significant contribution of women to architecture in these periods in Islamic history. Because of the clear evidence of women's active participation in patronizing architecture in Turkey. The author argues that the architecture itself stands as a testament to the active assertion and influence of women in the formal political system. This is a study which attempts to offer a realistic way, through architecture, of looking at the public and political roles of women in Seljuq and Ottoman times. Much of the literature concentrates on the role of women in Arab nationalists movements in the nineteenth century. Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid discusses the activities of a small segment of Egyptian women during the period of British rule. Her main thesis is that upper class women, even in seclusion, were able to develop valuable and important skills to make a contribution to their society and the nationalist movement. The article suggests that they were motivated not by feminist but by Islamic values. According to Marsot, life in the domestic realm was neither idle nor empty. Women were active in trade, property management and business. According to Jabarti, women were the chief group of tax farmers of the time. They especially played a strong role in the functioning of religious endowments (Waqf) and through their tithing contributions (Zakat). In the harem, women learned to run complex established households many of which amounted to what we would call a small hotel today. They developed their skills as managers, accountants and logisticians. When they took an interest in a particular charity project, they became lobbyists and fund raisers to finance and fund them. Marsot describes the harem as a training ground for the 1919 demonstration in which women participated against British rule. After this event, women moved into the public sector, Coptics, Jews and Christians all worked together to form some of Egypt's most enduring social service organizations. The efforts of these women were welcome as the work was not paid and they were not competing with men for jobs. They were able to organize private resources which would have otherwise severely strained public funds. With time, according to the author, all work both paid and unpaid, became respectable thanks to this group of women. The article takes the examples of women like Huda Hanim Sha'rawi, Hidiya Hanim Barakat and Mary Kahill. These women built hospitals, clinics, child care facilities, orphanages and rehabilitation centers for war veterans. Marsot points out they did not seek public recognition or consider themselves as 'social or political activists,' but rather they identified themselves as, "doing what was right for those who had been blessed with wealth to do." Byron Cannon provides an interesting study on the historical significance of the Masonic press in Cairo on Arab writings on women and society. He traces the works of Arabic scholars concentrating on women and the intellectual exchanges eventually impacting upon the editorial policy of Al-Lata'if newspaper. He finds the origins of a pre-feminist movement in the articles of Al-Lata'if, these articles were written ten years before Qasim Amin's work. The editors of this newspapers stayed within the bounds of moral and ethical discourse on women in Middle East society and was thus, not innovative. Byron's findings might indicate that change for Middle Eastern women was not primarily motivated by Western influence. This article is useful in that it shows how the masonic press actively encouraged more participation of women in various aspects of public life. The data furnished by the historical studies of original texts is most helpful to the study of the situation of women in the Middle East. When the analysis is relatively free of Western based theoretical constructs, it lends a refreshing and stimulating quality to the presentation of the data. This seems to be a rare occurrence and an understanding of Islam and its influence only seems to come through when the author allows the material to speak for itself. In considering the state of the art in women studies in Islam, Soha Abdel Kader evaluates current writings on the subject in her article, "A Survey of Trends in Social Sciences Research on Women in the Arab Region, 1960-1980." She levels the following criticisms against those studying women in the Arab region: researchers tend to view women as a whole ignoring rural-urban differences, regional and ethnic differences and others, imported models and methodology tend to undermine the understanding of indigenous cultures, statistical data is often biased and theoretical definitions invariably involve value judgments, Western and Arab scholars alike tend to understand women on a continuum of 'least to most emancipated' but is there a universal ideal to which all women must aspire? While there is much debate over whether Islam lowers or raises the status of women, there is little discussion about the meaning and reality of Islam in the everyday lives of women. Regarding the West's obsession with practices like veiling, Kader observes, "while the elucidation of such unusual practices as veiling and cross-cousin marriage may possibly be interesting, it leaves vitally important areas of research virtually unexplored." In an article entitled, "Research in the Social Sciences on North African Women: Problems, Trends and Needs," Alya Baffoun makes a Marxist statement that the situation of women in North Africa is a result of her economic subordination and domination. She sees religion as an ideology where subordination is encoded through fatalism and a highly repressive sexual economy. The author laments the fact that proposals for the emancipation of women stem only from deliberate action of the state rather than demands from the rank and file. The influence of marxism is very strong in such accounts and this article could serve as a good example of how marxist ideology may structure a research paradigm on women. While the ideological thrust of such examples are obvious, the thrust in other articles is not so clear. Amal Rassam develops a theoretical framework and asks the researcher not to assume that because women are not visible in the public realm that they are consequently marginal to the whole system. This challenges the Western assumption of the public/private dichotomy. She advocates a power theory emphasizing 'the reciprocity of influence' through a shift in the research from social structure to social process. She asks that researchers look at the dialectic between public and private rather than at the private being subordinated to the public. Rassam's proposed approach is also marxist oriented as she suggests studying women within the framework of patriarchy in a dual approach looking at 1) the relations of reproduction and 2) the relations of production. She feels that women's status can only be understood in terms of three dimensions, 1) the social organization of power, 2) the ideological and institutional means of controlling women's sexuality and 3) the sexual division of labor in society. Rassam also recommends examining the moral authority invested in men and the 'cult of virginity.'
In surveying the state-of-the-art in the literature concerning women in Islam, one is struck by the presence of Western social science values in the attitudes towards the research and data extracted from the region. Many of the studies, if not most of them, appropriate a Marxist explanation for the status of women in society and see the future of research in the analysis of women in relation to the means of production by her wage labor. Her reproductive activities will continue to be viewed in the context of domination and control by the males in her household. Critique of Islam as an ideology and backdrop to almost every aspect of women's lives is also prevalent in the literature. The ability of Western social scientists to entertain purely religious motivation for certain practices and ways of life does not seem promising. The dilemmas of many western social science assumptions on gender equality, acknowledged in their 'own' literature by western scholars themselves, are never dealt with in the case of women in Islam. Western scholars critiquing the place and status of women in Islam present a confident front regarding the conclusions and assumptions they bring with them to their subject. The fact that western feminist thought is beginning to question the value of the male/female equality construct or that economics has not yet clearly shown how women should be integrated into economic development are not reflected in the Western literature on women in Islam. While Islam is concerned with the safeguarding of the family, Western feminist literature, perhaps because it is not entirely 'politically correct', has yet to take a serious look at how the breakdown of the traditional family has affected the lives of women in modern societies as well as society as a whole. The host of spiritual, social and economic problems brought on by modernity in the West do not seem to slow scholars in their haste and yearning to bring modernity to the Middle East - or at least to judge the region by the modernization/ female emancipation yard-stick. In any event, the question of Muslim women in the Middle East remains an illuminating and sensitive area of exploration into those outlooks and belief systems which distinguish Islam from the West and the West, from Islam. 
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