Term paper
moly89
ReadingsandLecture-201812191.zipHuda Shaarawi_PanArab Feminism.pdf
Week 6_Lecture and PowerPoint_Colonialism.pptm
Colonialism and Post-Colonialism
Sources to give you more background information on Colonialism and Western Imperialism in the Middle East
Listen to these podcasts if you need a refresher or a start on how the Western powers, in particular France and Britain, colonized the Middle East.
European Imperialism in the Middle East Part 1 (press control +Click Link)
European Imperialism in the Middle East Part 2 (press control +Click Link)
Early 19th and 20th Century European Colonial Powers
From the start the discussion of women and reform was embedded in considerations of the relative advancement of European societies and the need for Muslim societies to catch up. 128
Catching up for Muslim women meant feminism in terms of how Western they looked and acted but not necessarily how educated and empowered they were. Muslim women were not given the same expectations as Western feminists. Muslim women were expected to abandon their cultural heritage for a superior Western heritage; whereas, Western women were never expected to give up their heritage.
Western Feminists do not call for the abandonment of the entire Western heritage and the wholesale adoption of some other culture as the only recourse for Western women; rather, they engage critically and constructively with that heritage in its own terms. Adopting another culture as a general remedy for a heritage of misogyny within a particular culture is not only absurd, it is impossible. 128
Women in Egypt 19th century colonialism focus:
It is a discourse on women and the veil in which another history is also inscribed, the history of colonial domination and the struggle against it and the class divisions around that struggle…A history affecting all Middle Eastern societies in one way or another and a discourse in which that history, those struggles, still live. 130
Colonial Feminism: Colonialists and missionaries used saving language in regards to Muslim women. A white man’s burden and the need for Muslim women to be saved from their own cultures and families. The idea that colonialism of Muslim lands was necessary to save Muslim women from backwardness which the colonists saw as the veil and the gendered roles of a Muslim society. Rather than instituting education and economic opportunities which these societies needed, they promoted a Western ideal of dress and culture.
Superiority of Europe legitimized domination of other societies…
Agents for British Rule: Qasim Amin
The calling for women’s liberation, the thoroughly patriarchal Amin, was in fact calling for the transformation of Muslim society along the lines of the Western model and for the substitution of the garb of Islamic style male dominions for that of Western style male dominion.
Islamic societies (Egypt in our readings) saw great divisions:
Divisions between those eager to adopt European ways and institutions, serving them as the means to personal and national advancement, and those anxious to preserve the Islamic and national heritage against the onslaught of the infidel West. 148
Divergent Voices
The following Egyptian and British actors played varying parts in colonial and post-colonial Egypt and in particular on Muslim women reform and advancement. Pay attention to these acting agents in your readings for this week during British occupation of Egypt 1882-1956.
Muhammad Abduh 1849-1905
Lord Cromer 1841-1917
Qasim Amin 1863-1908
Huda Al Sha’rawi 1879-1947 (Make sure to read her speech for this which you can find in this week’s readings)
Zeinab al-Ghazali 1917-2005
Malak Hifni Nassef 1886-1918
Doria Shafik 1908-1975
Important questions to consider from your readings:
What is colonial feminism?
How are British colonialism and Feminist discourses linked?
What is unsettling about the linkage between colonizer and feminist?
How were the Egyptians colonized mentally, culturally, socially?
How did British colonialism act as a spring board for Egyptian Muslim women feminism?
With what lens did the colonizers view Egyptians and Muslim women?
How is the veil used by the colonizer? How is the veil used by the anti-colonizer?
Who benefits from colonialism?
How is a woman liberated?
