Feminist Movements are Exploited by the Tyrants and Live under the Cloak of Authoritarian Regimes
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In the 18th century Mary Wollstonecraft wrote on the liberation of women, demanding the rights of women contained in the promises of the French Revolution that had been obtained by men but not by women. The term "feminism" was suggested for the first time in 1880 by French Hubertine Auclert, who demanded women's liberation and giving them their rights as promised by the French Revolution in her magazine La Citoyenne. She, like other women from the upper class, criticized male domination and power, from which the women of the time experienced nothing but contempt, marginalization and improper care. Like many Western terms and ideas that have been imported into the Arab countries, this term was imported into Egypt in the early twenties of the last century under the name of feminism and then spread to other areas. The import of the idea of feminism did not provoke any differences, nor was it evaluated on the basis of the Ummah's Aqeedah and its civilization. Not even the specificity of the Western reality was taken into account and the variance in viewpoint between Islam and Western culture, because Western culture was suggested as universal for humankind, providing ways to progress and prosperity.
Feminism looks at women's history from a purely Western perspective. Hence the history of the West and its oppression of women - portraying them as the sources of evil and vice - were declared the history of all mankind, measuring even those countries against them, whose location on the map they did not know, much less understanding anything about their culture. As usual, the West marginalized any legacy other than its legacy and any culture other than its culture (cultures were not evaluated in terms of the most correct and appropriate, rather in terms of imposing identity and civilization on the colonies). Thereby feminism made Western anti-women heritage the legacy of all women, linking everything prior to the women's liberation era to slavery of women and everything post modernity to women's liberation. They made this liberation one of the most important attributes of human progress and a scale for the advancement of peoples.
At the time feminism was formed and started playing an important role in Europe and North America, the members of the feminist movement sought to provide justification for an attack on the Muslim communities and arrogance over the peoples of the third world. They also sought to underline European superiority by chumming up with the ruling class or expressing a disrespectful view, loyal and vindicatory to the idea of capitalism. Feminism championed colonialism to the extent that it became a symbol and synonym of it, exploited just as Orientalism and Christian missions were. From the very first moment, the magazine La Citoyenne paid greatest attention to portray France as a civilization older and more prestigious than the underdeveloped, uncivilized peoples, and that France should guide them and they should follow its example. This was due to the conviction of theories of racial superiority and Western leadership over the barbaric people, as well as other racist ideas that accompanied colonialism and prevailed in the 19th century. This view was not exclusive to the advocates of women's liberation in France. Rather it was the general outlook that affected the culture of the colonial powers and empires, which claimed that the sun never set over them.
Feminism did not seek to elevate the status of colonialized women, nor did it view them as owners of rights, because the perception of the colonialized peoples' inferiority was prevalent. This was not limited to the women in colonies, but stretched out to the poor women of the working class, about whom no one cared in aristocratic circles in the 19th century. The efforts of women's liberation focused on the women of the aristocracy and did not carry real demands for the generality of people.
Indeed, feminist literature is full of examples of shameful thought that glorifies the colonizer and commends his great blessings. Even worse than that, some Arab feminist writings place Western women as role models to be emulated by Arab women. These movements glorify colonialism and claim the liberation of women from its chains!!!
The relationship between colonialism, tyranny and feminism is an ancient yet renewed relationship, and perhaps the most prominent advocate of feminism in the 19th century in the Levant was Lord Cromer, who wreaked havoc in Egypt during the quarter of a century he spent as Britain's High Commissioner. Cromer stood out with his arrogant, orientalist outlook that viewed Islam with a critical eye, especially with regards to women and Islam's viewpoint of them. He believed that the West was preferable over Islam and its people, and promoted the argument that the Islamic view of women and the adoption of the veil as well as the separation between the sexes were the main obstacles to tie Egypt in with the developed countries. He believed that the women's liberation and the exoneration from Islam were the ways to establish an intellectual elevation for the people of Egypt. The best proof of this viewpoint was the famous statement that will be linked to his name forever: "The Egyptians will never succeed as long as this book (the Qur'an) remains in their hands." He insulted the Deen of the Muslimah, belittled her culture and then claimed to liberate her from the shackles of the unjust Eastern man. He insulted Islam and demonized the Egyptian, practicing what has become known as "colonial feminism", carrying the banner of liberation and empowerment of women, while the real purpose was to present his own culture as superior. Thereby he stabilized his colonization, exploiting women and using them as tools for it.
We see recurrent patterns in the resonant speeches of Cromer and George W. Bush Junior's invitation to liberate Afghan women by killing their relatives, smashing their houses over the inhabitants and destroying the country, as well as in the speeches of Tony Blair that were full of feminism and women's empowerment, solely to find Britain's outlet to the sun from anew and not to lose track with America. In fact, none of them was a feminist in his outlook. Lord Cromer left the cloak of freedoms and women's liberation on the ship that carried him to his country to fight British women with his fossilized ideas and unjust culture, becoming one of the most important opponents of the British women's right to vote, because he did not view women to be qualified for it! While Bush and Blair did not provide anything worthy of mentioning for women in their countries, their enthusiasm for women's liberation did not exceed the limits of foreign policy concerning Muslim countries!
In addition to the explicit cooperation between the despotic states, colonialism and feminist movements, the recent gibberish on the issues of conflict and competition between the sexes distracted the views from those suffering from the injustice of manmade systems, engaging in the conflict between the sexes and entering into the philosophical mazes that do not allude to reality, but complicate it. This launch of feminism did not transcend being a distraction and diversion from the talk about the core issue which is the liberation of the country and its people from colonialism and the revelation of colonial plans. It was nothing but a justification for colonialism in all of its forms. By focusing on the revolution for the liberation of women from men, we lose sight of the real revolution against external colonialism.
Well-known French writer Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex in 1949, announced "that the person is not born a woman, but rather becomes a woman". She did not recognize any differences between men and women, nor did she acknowledge any "biological, psychological or economic attribute that requires the identification of a person as a female in society." She considered the reality of the woman as a female to be imposed on her via material and moral pressures. This idea and other ideas in viewing the woman's reality of injustice, as well as the political struggle to attain her rights from an innovative, non-political angle grew. From then on social struggle became one of the most important pillars of the change in the status of women, and the injustice done to women was reduced to male power.
This struggle has included an overheated conflict between femininity and masculinity in language, culture and thought, where women wrestled to prove themselves and overcome the symbol of male tyranny wherever it could be found. Social struggle became one of the most important pillars in changing the status of women. The French writer did not see any contradiction between this focus on social struggle and her own repeated call for a total revolution: "The only way for women is a revolution, and not to succumb or surrender or escape."
The struggle of feminist movements is limited to one frame and confined to the relationship between men and women, while any limited revolution, trapped in a certain cage is contrary to the idea of radical change of reality. It is a revolution for the sake of a revolution, a safe revolution that does not incite any fear, as it does not affect governance nor does it threaten the balance of things. To take it even further, this is perhaps the only form of a revolution loyal to the regimes. How could it not be, when it emerged from their cloak and supported them throughout history? The irony is that while feminists are hostile to men, the feminist movement was led by males and sponsored for political purposes in the critical stages -the examples are too numerous to be listed here - whether in the West or after the movement was imported from the Western countries.
Those male politicians stood in a row with women for pragmatic reasons, not because they were the most caring. In spite of the clarity of the political purposes, no woman had a choice but to keep up with the politicians to get their rights. Feminist movements in the Arab countries give the best examples of "state feminism", where the repressive regimes pretend to champion women and give them rights. If we have a closer look at the relationship of governments with these feminist movements, we see that authoritarian governments turn a blind eye to the suspicious financing of those women's organization, leaving it to the Western countries to plan for them, pretending to support women's issues. In the meanwhile, the status of women in their countries goes from bad to worse, and this has a main purpose: Those authoritarian governments want to be seen as reformers, in total contrary to their repressive, authoritarian realities. Secular Turkey and Tunisia are the best examples of state feminism, where feminist movements succumb to the gifts of the oppressive ruler, to whom they owe for granting them their rights and protecting women from the supposed male enemy. They receive some formal gains in exchange for their silence over the tyrant rule and the waste of legitimate rights. Whereas some repressive countries succeeded in containing women's issues and creating the image of the leader's closeness to some of the women. In fact they did not do justice to women nor granted them their rights, such as the symbolic representation of women in the Saudi Shura Council, or begging the Saudi regime to allow women to drive cars.
The feminist movements in the Muslim countries are dependent, vulnerable and disabled movements that rely on repressive, corrupt regimes, because their revolutions are incomplete and missed out on the real target in what they call a struggle. It is noteworthy that the groups involved in this framework are often from the upper class, that do not lose anything over their pursuit of the mirage of Western culture and favoritism of the corrupt regime under the pretext of protecting women's rights.
The woman has not reaped any noteworthy rights, and what she attained was given to her with the stroke of a pen, just as it can be taken away from her again by the stroke of a pen. Feminism has not achieved anything but discord, conflict and deviation from the path, in order to keep the oppressive ruler in safety to subdue the people and achieve his greater objective of "divide and conquer".
Mustafa Kamal, Ben Ali, his predecessors and others only aimed at the demolition of the connection between Muslims and their Islam, therefore focusing on the social system and the alienation of women in the context of "state feminism". Some of them were from those most hostile against women, as was the case with Kamal, the destroyer of the Khilafah "Caliphate", who plagued the vulnerable women, made the Kurdish women taste adversity, and constricted Muslim women. Then he disappeared behind the guise of women's liberation and modernization of society, whereas his ex-wife Latifah Hanim exposed his life of immorality, corruption and violence that he hid behind his elegant European outfit. He was nothing but an artificial Pharaoh, trying to alienate Muslim women and destruct the family, to gain control over Turkey and erase the impact of the Khilafah "Caliphate" from memory.
Perhaps the most striking example for the wide gap between the requirements and concerns of Muslim women and women's movements is the Egyptian example, embodied in the National Counsel for Women, a counsel which was formed by the military council through appointment in February 2012. On its head they placed an ambassador well known in the corridors of the United Nations and famous for her positions adverse to the social order of Islam, as well as her insistence on the literal implementation of the CEDAW Agreement in order to polish the image of Egypt internationally. Through the years, the National Council for Women was but another face of the regime that the people of Egypt came to oust in the revolution of January 25th. The Counsel's statements confirm, especially after June 30th, the attempt to legitimize the coup regime, i.e. the attempt to create an appearance for this state as supporting the rights of women, to beautify its ugly face and hide its other crimes from murder, torture and insult to the women of Egypt. We find Ambassador Mervat Tallawy praising the role of the Interior Ministry in maintaining security and resistance to sexual violence. She claims that Egyptian women object terrorism and that the reign of Dr. Mohamed Morsi was the "worst in the history of Egyptian women", without addressing the demands and aspirations of Egyptian women. Egypt's women took the streets to overthrow the regime while the National Women's Counsel still praises the regime. This counsel was founded under the patronage of the regime, took shelter in the shadow of the first lady, and walked alone on the Western path, while witnessing an unruly Islamic awakening in the streets of Egypt. The Counsel holds conferences and seminars which seek to Westernize Egyptian women voluntarily or coercively, addressing the West and flirting with it, while noisily claiming to be the legitimate representative of the women of Egypt, and anyone objecting it being hostile to women. The Counsel claims to represent women, while every Muslim woman observes their conferences and fuss, wondering:
"Who are you, in God's name?"
This compliance with the oppressive ruling system includes women's organizations and numerous other bodies, and the governments contain their demands without providing real services to them. What is the woman's need today for movements that serve governments instead of serving women, hiding the injustice and oppression of tyrants and working on tinkering the reality rather than trying to bring about real, radical change? What is their need for movements that represent the interests of the government, instead of representing women as members of society that have interests, grievances and political, economic and social rights? Those prancing feminist movements do not move a finger on issues important to women, if it is contrary to the government and its policies, as happened recently with the suspension of the political work of women, of which they scream day and night that they want to achieve it for women! They have remained silent about the sexual harassment experienced by Islamically committed female activists that wear the Hijab. They have never spoken a word of protest against the unjust sentence against girls who practiced their right and therefore faced repression, imprisonment and intimidation! Or is it that the feminist movement discriminates on grounds of sentiment and origin, not viewing the practicing Muslim women as deserving of what other women deserve?!
Here we wonder: Are Egyptian women harmed by the feminist movements' disregard towards them after this blessed awakening? The feminist movements represented the authoritarian regimes for centuries and denied the changes and the new reality in which we live. They still cry over the ruins, wishing the bedeviled days of mixing, adornment, rarely seeing a Hijab and Western prevalence would return. The problem of women's movements today is that they witness the end of our pledge to colonialism, which they have come to know and got used to. The fear the upcoming Islam out of ignorance, as colonialism surrounded them with imaginary barriers and walls. The revolutionary, angry feminism that swept the West and gave things a new twist, did not go beyond the surface in the Muslim countries and has been unable to persuade the woman, rather it has been reeling between the laps of colonialism and authoritarian regimes. Its catastrophic failure became apparent during the revolutions, known as the Arab Spring. The cameras of international media were unable to avoid the images of hundreds of thousands of veiled women in Egypt, who went out to overthrow the rule of the tyrant Hosni Mubarak. The West was unable to portray the women wearing the Niqab as oppressed and overwhelmed. The women of Yemen proudly don their Niqabs and decorate with it the squares of Yemen, without a whimper from the length of stay in the streets. The ranks of women did not mix with the ranks of men, but the two separate rows stood in the same place for the same goal, united in determination and resolution.
These scenes struck the hearts of those who spent their lives fighting the Islamic dress, segregation of men from and women and early marriage, like thunderbolts. Some specialists even announced this and started reviewing the traditional feminist outlook on Muslim women and their realities. Among them are even those who wrote books in this regard, writers and professors at the most prestigious universities in the West, such as Leila Ahmed, Lila Abu-Lughod and others. The Islamic dress will cease to be a source of weakness one day. Rather it is a source of strength, worn by Muslim women with confidence and insistence because it is an ordinance of their Creator and Maker. As for the Niqab and America's invasion of Afghanistan to save women from it: They have failed to strip it away from Afghan women, which even became more insistent on it.
Western feminism did not find any vogue worth of mentioning in the Muslim countries, it did not convince Muslims with its highly skeptic tone, dismissive of all evidence. It did not convince women in Muslim countries that hate for the compassionate father, the supportive brother, the husband as their partner or the devoted son is the exit from and the solution to women's political and economic problems. Muslims did not accept the blatant hostility to religion and all things related to religion. Even the ones promoting this approach became isolated and no one paid attention to them, except for a few journalists looking for an interesting story. Tomboys or women hostile against men remain unsold goods in Muslim countries, opposed by women before men with ridicule and censure.
The little that these movements achieved was by way of institutions and humanitarian organizations that focused on service programs, concealing their real purposes or blurring them with the passage of time. If we wanted to assess the role played by Western feminism in Muslim countries, we find that the result is not worth mentioning: The percentage of illiteracy among women in Egypt is shameful, and the poverty rate there is just as humiliating, perhaps the only accomplishment was to contribute to the increased rates of spinsterhood, divorce and family disintegration. The feminist movement in Muslim countries is not a movement of the street dragging everyone behind it, as is the case in the West. Rather it is weak in spite of promotion and support by the tyrant. It started and remained as an elitist movement among women who were connected to and dazed by Western culture (talking here about the women's movements, not about charities or women's associations). The feminist debates about the differences between men and women, were looked at by the Muslim woman as mere intellectual sophistry of no use.
Muslim women were not convinced except of Islam, because it addresses the needs of humans and harmonizes with human nature. Islam did not leave women in a ceaseless state of anxiety and confusion between the requirements and pressures of society and between femininity and her desire to achieve her ambition as a mother. Islam did not leave her in a state of confusion, because the Almighty Creator gave both women and men a role and responsibility. Each seeks to play its role to the fullest, and women's rights are a gift from Allah Almighty, she does not have to call for them, nor does she struggle to attain them. There are special provisions for women and special provisions for men, each according to their role and their nature. Woman in the heart of Islam seeks to compete with men to gain the approval of Allah Almighty and to win Paradise, she does not think of anything but what brings her closer to Allah, and not to miss His recompense or to be deprived of the opportunity to obtain the reward of Allah.
This great Islam is the healing cure to the suffering of women. Islam alone is capable of ensuring her rights, because they are the rights of the Shariah of due performance. Complacency of these rights amounts to a waste of this life and the afterlife. The struggle of Muslim women today is with the old and new colonialism, the colonial plunder of wealth, usurpation of the land, insult of the holy sites and contamination of the community's culture and identity, and still corruption is raging in our lands through the colonial cronies and associates.
This is a conflict of the Ummah as a whole and it is not a pragmatic struggle for positions and representation of groups at the expense of the loss of the Ummah. Rather it is a struggle that needs the unification of the Ummah, men and women, in order to treat the malicious roots that have extended around us and which hinder the progress of the Ummah towards its true purpose. The curing of these corrupt roots requires to expose its reality to the Ummah and to propose the correct cure. This is not possible except through the divine ideology given by the Merciful Lord to His slaves. Islam alone heals the wounds of the Ummah and will change what surrounds it for the better. This is the only way to salvation from the oppression of man and their manmade systems, which has brought misery and confinement to women before anybody else. This conflict needs a clear vision in order to differentiate between the one trying to beautify the image of the pharaoh and dividing people to weaken them, giving Pharaoh power over them. The era of Pharaohs has come to an end, today we are on the brinks of wise governance, which will restore the Ummah's status.
إِنَّ فِرْعَوْنَ عَلَا فِي الْأَرْضِ وَجَعَلَ أَهْلَهَا شِيَعًا يَسْتَضْعِفُ طَائِفَةً مِّنْهُمْ يُذَبِّحُ أَبْنَاءَهُمْ وَيَسْتَحْيِي نِسَاءَهُمْ ۚ إِنَّهُ كَانَ مِنَ الْمُفْسِدِينَ * وَنُرِيدُ أَن نَّمُنَّ عَلَى الَّذِينَ اسْتُضْعِفُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ وَنَجْعَلَهُمْ أَئِمَّةً وَنَجْعَلَهُمُ الْوَارِثِينَ * وَنُمَكِّنَ لَهُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ وَنُرِيَ فِرْعَوْنَ وَهَامَانَ وَجُنُودَهُمَا مِنْهُم مَّا كَانُوا يَحْذَرُونَ
"Indeed, Pharaoh exalted himself in the land and made its people into factions, oppressing a sector among them, slaughtering their [newborn] sons and keeping their females alive. Indeed, he was of the corrupters. And We wanted to confer favor upon those who were oppressed in the land and make them leaders and make them inheritors. And establish them in the land and show Pharaoh and [his minister] Haman and their soldiers through them that which they had feared." [Al-Qasas: 4-6]
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Umm Yahya Bint Muhammad
