A Quiet Revolution (22 page)

I have described in this chapter the gist of the findings about the spread of veiling put forward by researchers whose focus lay in explor- ing and understanding women’s own consciousness and subjective ex- perience of veiling. In the following chapter I turn to the work of researchers whose primary interests lay in investigating and under- standing other dimensions of the Islamist and veiling trend, including militant ones, as well as, more broadly, the movement’s goals, strategies, and methods.

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Islamist Connections

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n contrast to the findings of researchers focused on exploring women’s motivations for veiling, quite a different set of factors emerges as of central importance to the spread of veiling in the works of researchers focused on studying the Islamist movement. While scholars exploring primarily women’s personal motivations for veiling—from El Guindi through Williams to Macleod and Zuhur— typically concluded, albeit often with some reservations, that the decision to veil was the result of women’s own choices, the findings of researchers studying the Islamist movement more broadly suggest rather that veiling spread because Islamist male leaders conceived of veiling as strategically

important to their movement.

The study of Islamism has of course given rise to a vast literature in our time. Among the studies that I follow out and piece together in this chapter are those of three scholars who cast important light on the sub- jects of Islamism, women, and the hijab in the two critical decades of the mid-
1970
s to the mid-
1990
s. Gilles Kepel’s important work
Muslim Ex- tremism in Egypt,
published in
1984
, was the first of these works to appear. Next was Ghada Talhami’s
Mobilization of Muslim Women in Egypt,
pub- lished in
1996
. Unlike Macleod and Zuhur, who approached their sub- ject through the lenses of women’s studies scholarship, focusing therefore primarily on women’s agency and consciousness, Talhami focused on

how Islamists mobilized women and conceptualized women’s roles in the movement, as well as how they conceptualized the issue of the veil and its role in the Islamist movement. A third work, Carrie Rosefsky Wickham’s
Mobilizing Islam,
published in
2002
, richly details by what means Islamism succeeded in disseminating its norms of belief, practice, and dress throughout society in just two decades. Wickham’s work does not focus on women, nor does the author approach her topic with a women’s studies lens. Nevertheless, she pays close attention to women’s as well as men’s mobilization by the Islamist movement and thus pro- vides important additional information about the Islamist movement and the veiling trend in this critical period.

These works were based on research conducted from the mid-
1970
s to the mid-
1990
s and thus capture different important moments over the course of those two transformative decades. Piecing together these researchers’ findings alongside those offered by the scholars focusing specifically on women allows a complex and more complete portrait to emerge as to the dynamic, complicated, and multidimensional process— political, social, and religious—that brought about the spread of Islam- ism and its emblem, the veil.

Kepel’s work, focused on Islamist developments in the seventies and early eighties, drew attention to the important role that Islamist organizations played in promoting the veil and Islamic dress on university campuses. He describes how the extreme overcrowding on public transport and in lecture halls prompted the publication of a number of articles in the proliferating Islamist journals of the day. Writers complained about the Islamically inappropriate gender-mixing occurring on campuses and called for the adoption of Islamic dress for women as a means of pro- tecting their dignity.
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In response to the overcrowding, Islamist organizations in
1977

began offering a bus service exclusively for women. The service was im- mediately in very high demand among women, and, in response, the Is- lamists made Islamic dress a requirement for women who wanted to use the service.

Similarly, also to address the problem of overcrowding and of mix- ing of the sexes (a mixing that one writer in
al-Da‘wa
described as a

“Western weapon of corruption designed to make us abandon our Is- lamic personality”), Islamist organizations introduced the requirement that men and women sit in different rows in lecture halls. Segregated seating, like the bus service, was very popular among women, who might find themselves in lecture halls where their neighbors were “virtually piled on top of them.”
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In addition, in response to the difficulty that students, and in par- ticular women, faced in buying clothing and keeping up with fashions (in times of lavish consumption for some and economic hardship for the majority), Islamist organizations began to offer Islamic dress for women at low or nominal cost.
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All of these measures for the most part significantly improved the quality of life for female students and were reportedly welcomed by them.
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Besides making life easier for women, these services and arrange- ments also of course helped disseminate Islamist notions and practices of correct dress and norms of gender segregation—notions that were foundational to the understanding of Islam that Islamists were promot- ing, and to the Islamic society that Islamists hoped to institute. To use Kepel’s perhaps somewhat overdramatic words, “One begins by declin- ing to sit next to a classmate of the opposite sex and then finds oneself, little by little, fighting for the establishment of the Muslim state.”
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Clearly Kepel’s findings cast a significantly different light on the veiling trend of the seventies that El Guindi and Williams had reported on and about which they had largely concluded, on the basis of the re- search they had conducted among women, that it was a trend signaling a new assertiveness among women and reflecting above all their own in- dependent decisions to don the hijab. Both scholars thought that, over- all, women were choosing to adopt hijab as a result of a personal decision rather than in response to external pressure or instigation.

I believe, however, that Kepel’s findings neither negate nor invali- date the conclusions of those earlier observers. Rather, we must view the findings as reports arrived at from different angles of observation and through accessing different types of information relevant to the inter- twined realities of the veiling trend and Islamism—both part of a vast and enormously complex, multidimensional, and worldwide movement.

Kepel’s studies also show how both women’s veiling and the mat- ter of women’s participation in the movement were topics that received careful attention from the male Islamist leadership. Both veiling and women’s activist involvement in Islamism, his findings show, were con- sidered strategically important to Islamism. In
1980
, for example, ‘Isam al-‘Aryan, a young doctor and well-known Islamist leader, published an article in
Al-Da‘wa
in which he listed women’s veiling as among the first and most important of four signs of the Islamist movement’s advances. Al-‘Aryan analyzes in his article the history and broad condition of contemporary Islam. He notes that Islam’s recent history can be de- scribed as having gone through three distinct stages. First came Islamic civilizational decline, a condition that culminated in Western colonial- ism and in the domination of Muslim lands by infidels. In the wake of colonialism came the era of nationalism and so-called independence, an era in which, in Egypt, people believed that they had won independence. But this had been a mistaken belief, as the infidels in fact had continued their control, though now they worked behind the scenes, their West- ern perspectives and ideas having “penetrated the minds of the people.” During this phase of history, Westernized scholars, including some of the country’s most distinguished intellectuals, such as Taha Husain (said al-‘Aryan), in effect were reproducing the colonial ideas they had im- bibed, telling their Muslim compatriots that the “reason for their back- wardness lies in religion,” and then urging them to institute a “separation between religious sciences and the new sciences.” Such advice led Mus- lims to misguidedly experiment with “Western-style democracy and

Communist socialism: the fruits have been bitter.”
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The third era was that of the Islamic Awakening, said al-‘Aryan. In this era the Muslim world’s “ten million” students, “from Casablanca to Jakarta,” as well as the workers would become now the “cadres of the fu- ture Islamic states.”

There were four important signs, al-‘Aryan continued, that would signal the ongoing advancement of the Islamist movement. The first of these, he said, would be women’s increased wearing of the veil. “When the number of women students wearing the veil rises, that is a sign of re- sistance to Western civilization and of the beginning of
iltizam
[pious commitment] towards Islam.” Other signs included men wearing un-

trimmed beards and djellabas, and people’s attendance at public prayers on the two great feast days.
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This last point referred to another aspect of the strategy Islamists were pursuing for drawing ever larger numbers of people into their movement: involving them in public prayers. People participating in such activities, no matter how “irregular their normal religious obser- vance,” would be infused, Islamists believed, with a new and reenergized religious commitment.

Islamist associations began to organize public prayers on university campuses and at venues beyond the university. In
1976
they began hold- ing huge gatherings in stadiums and major squares in Cairo and Alexan- dria, and soon also in cities throughout Egypt.
Al-Da‘wa
claimed that

their gatherings brought together as many forty thousand and one hun- dred thousand at specific venues in Cairo and Alexandria in
1976
and
1977
. Women as well as men were present, separated by an opaque screen. Sermons and lectures were delivered by star preachers of the Is- lamist movement, such as Yusef al-Qaradawi and Muhammad al-Ghaz- ali, who flew in for those events from their prestigious positions in Arab Gulf states.

Besides revitalizing people’s religious commitments, mass gather- ings also served to vividly signal to the government and to the larger so- ciety the substantial and growing reality of Islamist presence and strength. The growing commonness of the veil similarly served the same purpose: making visible to the dominant society the presence of people committed to an ethos and vision that was different from and indeed seemingly implicitly oppositional to that of mainstream society and the reigning political order.

Interviewed in
1988
on the subject of women and veiling, al-‘Aryan

observed that “we do not have to impose the higab in any case, women are adopting it of their own volition.” Women, he further explained, had an “active role to play in the Islamic movement.” He also said that the movement “must utilize the talents and skills of women in redesigning a society that requires the input and expertise of all its members.”
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Conducting her research in the
1990
s, Talhami explored the changes that had occurred among Islamists, beginning in the
1970
s, with regard to the

inclusion of women as activists in their movement, and with respect to their views and discussions of women’s roles.

Prior to the seventies the Muslim Brotherhood had not set out to recruit women nor to involve them in their programs. In conducting its activities on university campuses through the
1930
s and
1940
s the Broth- erhood had routinely targeted only males for recruitment into the stu-

dent cells that it organized on university campuses and at high schools. By the late thirties the Brotherhood controlled many such cells.
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Early in the
1930
s a project was set up for the establishment of a

Muslim Sisterhood, which envisaged providing religious education to women through programs dedicated to explaining the “duties and rights” of Muslim women and the “means of raising good Muslim chil- dren and keeping a Muslim home.”

In
1937
a Muslim Sisterhood was in fact established. It was this or-

ganization that al-Banna had sought to interest al-Ghazali to preside over, under his leadership. Made up essentially of the wives of Brothers, its first president was Labiba Ahmad, who was the editor of a journal, Al-Nahda al-Nisa’iyah (Women’s Renaissance), as well as president of her own women’s organization, Jam‘iyyat Nahdat al-Sayyidat al-Mis- riyat (Society of the Renaissance of Egyptian Ladies). The Muslim Sis- terhood did not participate in the Brotherhood’s political debates or its advocacy work. Among other things, it undertook some charitable work, providing, for instance, health-care education for women in villages.

The positions that the Sisterhood took often were not particularly supportive of women’s right to employment and education. When a ruckus arose at Cairo University because of the rising levels of male ha- rassment of female students, Ahmad’s journal published an appeal to the government to end coeducation because it “violated Islamic religious teachings.” In the same vein, Brotherhood cells on campuses at this time typically strongly opposed women’s right to education and work.
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This was of course far from the position that Islamists would take in the seventies when, in response to the perception that inappropriate gender-mixing was occurring, they set about finding solutions to enable women to continue their studies while also creating an acceptably seg- regated environment, both through women’s dress and separate seating. (Through the fifties and sixties, as we saw, Zainab al-Ghazali was a