9.1 Introduction
Misunderstood, decontextualized, or assum absent, the rhetorical discourses on women’s rights in the Arab(ic)-Muslim world call for attention. To start, I revisit a moment when countering misrepresentations of and assumptions about Arab/Muslim women’s rights discourse becomes conspicuous and an exigence to write this chapter. At a conference in 2019, I was asked about the Arab Charter on Women’s Rights (ACWR) launched by the advisory Federal National Council of the United Arab Emirates, or al-Majlis al-Waṭanī al-Ittiḥādī (Arab Parliament, 2021). After naming the charter as a “surprising and unprecedented feat,” my interlocutor rapidly added, “how odd it is that this [Charter] moved forward?!” What’s communicated is that it is odd that the charter materialized, given the assumed nature and state of sharī‘a law in the Middle East.
Such a reading matches English media representations that identify the moment as a striking “one-and-done” moment of exceptional work in a narrative of continual progress sponsored by and modeled after the West. At the time, the charter was celebrated; images and press releases circulated, often linking the feat mainly and sometimes only to Western instruments of rights.Footnote 1
Citing international precedents especially when addressing international audiences is common practice. Unfortunately, this practice might be misread as a statement of absence of local and religious precedent, especially when such information is buried in media representations. Also not commonly known is that the charter was years in the making, resulted from years of the Arab Parliament’s multinational work, responded to feminist critiques of the invisibility of women in the Arab Charter on Human Rights (ACHR) (Arab League, 2004a, 2004b), and was preceded by centuries-old official and vernacular discourses on women’s rights. Many don’t know this history, and the ACWR doesn’t disclose its rich history. Unsurprisingly then, my interlocuter reiterated, “Isn’t this a huge legislative feat?!”
Since the conference encounter, addressing (mis)conceptions of Arabic-Islamic legal discourse and the long history of official and vernacular rhetorics on women’s rights continues to be pressing. A simple Google/Google Scholar search for the ACWR takes us neither to the text of the charter in English or Arabic, nor to feminists advocating for rights, nor to a fifteen-centuries-old history of rights and women’s rights in Islām. The search, however, repeatedly leads to the Arab League’s ACHR. Drafted in 1994 and revised and adopted in 2004, the ACHR is an important precedent and context for the ACWR.
The rhetoricity of the conference encounter and the Google search are conspicuous. Settling a search for women’s rights with the ACHR erases decades-long, complex debates about the far-reaching consequences of excluding/including women’s rights in long-awaited regional instruments like ACHR. Centering just ACHR and ACWR is a selective remembering and misrepresentation of women’s rights’ long and contentious history. I argue that the misrepresentation, selective forgetting/remembering, and decontextualized reading of official and vernacular discourses of women’s rights are telling and consequential, demanding scholarly attention.
9.2 Selective Memory and (Assumed) Contradiction of Terms
Though related to the limited visibility of Arabic-Islamic rhetorics in general (e.g., Diab, Reference Diab, Depalma, Lynch and Ringer2023), there is much more to this invisibility. Negative perceptions of women and women’s rights in the Arab/Muslim world hinder a nuanced assessment of legal instruments like ACWR and their precedential history. This is especially the case if we explore women’s rights only through the stereotypical and colonial prism of concerns about women who need to be saved because they can only be assumed “passive victims of religious patriarchy,” as Howe (Reference Howe and Howe2020, p. 1) puts it. Attempts to interrogate this orientalist frame typically trigger variants of the following question: “When we take a look at the history of Arabic-Islamic legal-political rhetoric, aren’t women ‘passive victims’?” These negative perceptions center a history of impediments that women face in the Middle East and North Africa region (e.g., limited or not enforced laws promoting women’s rights, backlash constraining and questioning women’s rights). Unfortunately, these impediments and perceptions are often assumed to be fait accompli and are selectively made more visible. In the mix, an undeniably rich discourse of rights, including women’s rights, remains invisible. It even seems hard to trace. This discourse comprises a legal–ethical rhetoric of rights (e.g., Diab, Reference Diab2018) and vernacular rhetorics of women’s rights with conspicuous religious roots. Selective remembering is perilous.
Furthering invisibility, such selective memory may result in an absence of guarantees to women’s rights and accountability measures for the violation of their rights. Empowering advocacy for women’s rights (discourses) hinges on knowledge of and access to the legislative record, cultural and historical precedents, and role models. What if such knowledge remains invisible and inaccessible? Why are the ACWR’s present and past contexts invisible or ignored? What and how can we know differently about official and/or vernacular women’s rights discourses in the Arab(ic)-Islamic traditions? Bringing attention to official and vernacular rhetorics of women’s rights and the Arab(ic)-Islamic legal-rhetorical tradition might surprise some or seem like a contradiction in terms to others; however, they often intersect and can help us answer these questions.
I demonstrate that we can know differently Arab(ic)-Islamic women’s rights discourses by undertaking a more nuanced study of multifaceted regional contexts, historical roots, formative texts, enthymemes, and topoi that underwrite this rights advocacy. Additionally, we can attend to ACWR and ACHR’s immediate present and formative past, including official and vernacular rhetorics of rights.
Scholars study vernacular rights discourses to highlight how articulations and “demands for rights … are inseparable from their particular cultures, histories and political contexts” (Dunford & Madhok, Reference Dunford and Madhok2015, p. 605). Scholars also distinguish between thin and thick discourses of rights. In his work on the “Moral Vernacular of Human Rights,” Hauser defines the thin moral vernacular of human rights discourse as a “form [of discourse] in which human rights are transformed from a discrete set of moral principles to a discourse, or human rights talk. It manifests human rights as open to interpretation and subject to continual revision. Human rights talk does not seek convergence on values but agreement on consequences for which there is accountability” (Hauser, Reference Hauser2008, p. 443), whereas the thick discourse is “the language used by victims of human rights abuses” (p. 442). I’ll draw on this definition frequently in the rest of the chapter.
In what follows, therefore, I shed light on persistent, even if rocky, regional Arab(ic)-Islamic tradition of women’s rights; a rich vernacular of women’s rights; and, more important, a long history of doctrinally driven legal-ethical teachings and rhetoric advocating against the violation of women’s rights and operationalizing accountability for such rights. More specifically, in what follows I first briefly chart the discourse of rights and women’s rights in Islām. I situate this rights discourse within a vision for a moral order, which is operationalized using an ethical-legal code. I demonstrate how this code is prescriptive, proscriptive, and constitutive (Section 9.3.1). Second, I use the condensed argument “ūṣīkum bil-nisā’ khaīran” (I advise you to observe women’s rights) to show the recognition of women as rights holders and the commensurate obligation to observe their rights (Section 9.3.2). Third, I identify misconceptions of women’s rights (Section 9.3.3). I end the chapter by shedding light briefly on illustrative moments of persistent advocacy for women’s rights which manifest a rich blend of official and vernacular rhetorics (Section 9.4). All are invisible precedents of the 2019 ACWR.
9.3 Rights Discourse and Women’s Rights in Islām
Arab(ic)-Islamic discourse on women’s rights can be neither separated from a multifaceted discourse on rights nor abstracted from a multitude of socio-cultural and political forces that undermine them. These include social and cultural biases and organizing stereotypes within/outside the Arab-Muslim world, and it is a complicated history: A discourse on women’s rights in Islām exists; a patriarchally justified/justifiable framework questioning, if not undermining, these rights exists; misconceptions of women’s rights in Islām and Arab/Muslim communities also exist. Needless to say, tracing the history of women’s rights discourse results in a story irreducible to polemical soundbites.
9.3.1 Beyond Soundbites: Negative/Positive Rights and the Moral Order
Going back to the seventh century, I trace roots for a legal-ethical discourse on rights and women’s rights. Though not without setbacks and inconsistent enforceability, this discourse on rights lives and circulates – sometimes inconspicuously – and warrants attention. Reasons for the inconspicuous presence of articulations of rights might be attributed to assumptions that rights are only articulated positively or are indexed in modern-day terms as rights.
As a scholar of peace-making rhetorical practices and legal-political instruments in the Middle Ages and beyond, I center my work on articulations of rights. Clearly, articulations of rights take different forms. Some are articulated positively; some are articulated negatively. Scholars distinguish between positive and negative rights. The former addresses the right to things including life or a resource (e.g., medical or legal aid), whereas the latter addresses the right “not to be interfered with in forbidden ways” (e.g., Fried, Reference Fried1978, p. 110; emphasis added). We assume positive rights to be the norm. However, in contexts of gross violations, negative rights ascertain protections from abuses or infringements on others’ rights; negative rights imply duties to others (i.e., abstaining from harm). Therefore, they are undismissable forms of legal-ethical intervention. Like the right to, the right not to is a key topos of legal rhetoric that migrates beyond legal spheres. Regardless of how they are articulated, rights are inseparable from a discourse on justice and visions of a moral order. I turn now to shed light on an enduring history of rights and justice discourses that comprise positive and negative rights, underscore a vision of a moral order, and call for and authorize accountability to these rights.
Drawing on previous research (e.g., Diab, Reference Diab2016; Fried, Reference Fried1978; Khadduri, Reference Khadduri1946), I situate positive/negative rights, including the ACWR, in the context of multifaceted, Arab(ic)-Islamic iterations of rights/obligations. This discourse spells out acts that lead to and deviate from what is just. These iterations conspicuously
identify and counter aggression (baghī), injustice (ẓulm), or evil (shar);
identify and affirm rights (ḥuqūq), what’s right (ḥaq), and people as rights-holders, regardless of their identifications and social, political, or legal standing;Footnote 2
advise against injustice and advocate for realizing justice, or ‘adl and qist (i.e., actionable, just measures); and
support/invite work to clarify what these teachings and legislation mean now about women’s rights.
In these iterations, what seems most obvious is a discourse on conduct, or good/bad or permissible/impermissible actions. This discourse can be understood as a legal-ethical code mapped onto a spectrum of positive/negative actions; on this spectrum, actions are (1) mandatory (farḍ); (2) recommended (mandūb or mustaḥabb); (3) permissible (mubāḥ); (4) reprehensible (makrūh); or (5) impermissible (ḥarām). The fulcrum of this discourse on conduct is justice, which is operationalized in contemporary parlance in terms of rights/duties and good/wrong conduct. All the spectrum’s actions are inseparable from an interlocking legal–political–ethical–religious discourse. This discourse centers (in)justice and has conspicuous features: It is prescriptive, proscriptive, constitutive, and telos driven. Each feature is briefly addressed below.
The legal-ethical code is prescriptive and proscriptive, and it seeks to establish a moral order (e.g., Smith, Reference Smith and Smith2003). The moral order is positively defined and encourages positive conduct pursuing what is right, fair, and just, or ‘adl and ḥaq (e.g., responding in kindness and not in kind to resolve conflict; The Qur’an, 2008, 41:34). It is also negatively defined and discourages harmful conduct that is neither fair nor just (e.g., advising against baghī, ẓulm, and shar, including conceit, which is inconsistent with equality and indicative of supremacy logics; The Qur’an, 2008, 17:37). Proscription and prescription are premised on divine commands, which separate what’s fair from unfair, just from unjust.
The legal-ethical code manifests as constitutive rhetoric (Charland, Reference Charland1987); it constitutes a moral order and its members. The legal-ethical code is simplified and made actionable using the aforementioned conduct spectrum. Significantly, positive/negative conduct is linked to subjectivity. As noted earlier, the legal-ethical code is addressed in terms of actions to undertake/abstain from, and these choices and acts interpellate or call forth a Muslim subjectivity. Calling forth a Muslim is a long, multifaceted process: “[I]nterpellation hinges on socialization” (Charland, quoted in Diab, Reference Diab2016, p. 105). “One aspect of this socialization is naming … their … group membership … [Another is to] invite actions that maintain membership” (Diab, Reference Diab2016, p. 105). Actions that sustain the moral order and Muslim subjectivity map onto the aforementioned spectrum’s positive end and include mandatory (farḍ) or recommended actions (fi ‘l mandūb or mustaḥabb), whereas those that undermine the moral order and Muslim subjectivity map onto the spectrum’s negative end and include condemned, reprehensible (makrūh), or impermissible (ḥarām) acts. Each act determines proximity/distance from Islām and Muslim subjectivity, which is read here as the path of peace and abstention from violence and harm. This legal-ethical code is the context within which discourses of rights emerge and are sustained. So, where do we see traces of this code conspicuously articulated?
To answer this question, I point to the two main sources of legislation in Islām, namely al-Qur’ān, and ḥadīth and sunnah, or the sayings, actions, and “lived example” of Prophet Muḥammad (e.g., Lowry, Reference Lowry and Brockopp2010; Quraishi, Reference Quraishi2008). These two sources are interpreted and explained by “jurists – the legal scholars within Muslim societies – [who] developed a science (or art if you want to call it that) of interpreting those texts to come up with specific legal conclusions” (Quraishi, Reference Quraishi2008, p. 164). In the Holy Qur’ān, the first source of law, both sources of legislation are named and linked to one another and to the telos of establishing and sustaining a just moral order.
Within this teleological frame, moral discord is explained as diverting from divine commands and as caused by and unleashed when one chooses might and inequity to reign over people and communities. In contrast, moral order is described as a structure with numerous building blocks to be deliberately chosen and invested in. Its building blocks are iterated in terms of (commands related to) rights and (im/perfect) duties. These rights and duties form a relational web. On one hand, rights and duties unite people and bind them to a legal-ethical code of conduct. The strengthening of this bond, in turn, guards against a permissive culture where the violation of people’s rights is normalized. On the other hand, these rights and duties underscore obligations to God (huqūq Allāh and shar‘u Allāh). In the Islamic tradition, rights and duties are complex yet simple, separate and clearly interdependent, definitive and commodious. Abiding by God’s law or way (shar‘u Allāh) realizes this telos (maqāṣid). Because of its centrality and conspicuousness, (non-)Muslim scholars underline this telos. For example, Sam Souryal explains that Islamic legislation is an ethical code of conduct, or “a nomos based on divine law and a spiritual commitment to social decency” (Souryal, Reference Souryal1987, p. 431). This legal-ethical code seeks to create and sustain a moral order, as noted earlier.
The connection between the two aforementioned sources of legislation and conduct is well defined. As Quraishi explains, “shari’a as ‘God’s Law,’ capital ‘L,’ capital ‘G’ [ … is] the ideal of how people should be in the world” (Quraishi, Reference Quraishi2008, p. 164). Similarly, the centrality and constitutive dimension of the legal-ethical code is evident in short-hand constitutive teachings from ḥadīth: “A Muslim is the one who people are spared of [the excesses or abuses of] their tongues and hands, or al-muslim man salima al-nās min lisānih wa yadih” (Al-Nawawī, Reference Al-Nawawī and al-Arn’ūṭ2001, pp. 511–513). This ḥadīth explains that the path to belief and redemption hinges on following God’s law or way (shar‘u Allāh) and the Prophet’s teachings, which in turn set people on the right path as described in the legal canon (e.g., Fakhry, Reference Fakhry1991). Denying/observing (kufr/ṭā‘ah) God and the Prophet’s legal-ethical code makes Muslims positioned close to/far from the moral order. Accordingly, actions respond to what is right and just, and iterations of sanctioned and condemned actions further affirm the legal-ethical code that is prescriptive, proscriptive, and constitutive. So, where do we see traces of this legal-ethical code in terms of and to affirm women’s rights?
9.3.2 “Ūṣīkum bil-Nisā’ Khaīran” and Prophet Muḥammad’s “Farewell Speech”
I trace early Arabic-Islamic legal rhetoric of women’s rights to the “Farewell Speech” (khuṭbat al-wadā’), which was delivered at Mount ‘Arafāt on 9 Dhū al-Ḥijjah and during pilgrimage in 10 AH (i.e., 6 March 632). I had long heard the statement “ūṣikum bil-nisā’ khaīran,” or “I [Prophet Muḥammad] advise you to treat women well or fairly,” without realizing that this is a quotation from Prophet Muḥammad’s khuṭbat al-wadā’, or “Farewell Speech” (Bassiouni, Reference Bassiouni2006, pp. 32–33). Khuṭbat al-wadā’ is one of ten prominent Islamic instruments included in Bassiouni’s International Instruments on Human Rights (Reference Bassiouni2006, pp. 23–44). “Ūsīkum bil-nisā’ khairan” is a condensed teaching that reiterates repeated messages in the Holy Qur’ān about equity and fairness to women, and to everyone. In general, teachings from al-Qur’ān and ḥadīth about doing khaīr circulate enthymematically in vernacular discourse to counter baghī, zulm, and shar (i.e., aggression, injustice, and evil), as well as misused legal precepts, which circulate enthymematically, too. (For more on enthymemes and legal rhetoric, see Tanner, Chapter 5 in this volume.) This circulation is seamless and often invisible.
Excerpts from khuṭbat al-wadā’ circulate on different occasions, including Friday Khuṭbah, or Friday oration (a weekly oration delivered to guide Muslim congregants). Whether excerpted or read in full, Khuṭbat al-Wadā’ is to this day widely recognized as encoding human rights topoi, including women’s rights topoi; some of these human rights topoi are identified below because they are a crucial part of the immediate context of “ūṣīkum bilnisā’ khaīran.” Because “ūṣīkum bil-nisā’ khaīran” typically circulates alone without an explicit reference to the speech, I briefly shed light on the speech, and then underscore the relation between this legal-political guidance to al-Qur’ān and Prophetic tradition (sunnah). Situating the “Farewell Speech” within an epideictic rhetoric on equality and reciprocal positive/negative rights and duties, I shed light on early Arabic-Islamic legal discourses on women’s rights condensed in this Prophetic teaching, suggest reasons for the invisibility of this discourse, and then use the concept of vernacular rhetoric of human rights (e.g., Hauser, Reference Hauser2008; von Arnauld & Theilen, Reference von Arnauld, Theilen, von Arnauld, von der Decken and Susi2020) to draw attention to more recent iterations of women’s rights.
Prophet Muḥammad gives the speech about three months before his death, and the speech reiterates principal Islamic teachings, including those on women’s rights. Prophet Muḥammad’s “Farewell Speech” addresses in/justice topoi. Farooq (Reference Farooq2018) identifies twelve themes. The sanctity of the moment is emphasized: time (9 Dhū al-Ḥijjah), place (Mecca), occasion and ritual of pilgrimage, or ḥajj; transition from jāhilīyah (often translated as the age of ignorance) to Islām. The speech also reiterates key issues like pardon (i.e., “abolition of all prior claims to blood revenge”); abolition of usury; repudiation of racism; gender matters related to equity and rights; Qur’ān and Prophet Muḥammad’s teachings as a legacy (for legal and ethical conduct); compliance with divine law and adherence to principles of Islām; and other teachings concerning rights, ṣalāh and zakāh, and debts. The speech identifies congregants (and secondary addressees) as witnesses (Farooq, Reference Farooq2018, pp. 325–330).
A bidimensional throughline unifies all topics: (a) advocacy against wrongful acts that cause harm and (b) advocacy for the negative right of the self and others to be free from manipulation or harm. For example, impermissible conduct is evident in references to supremacy, usury, aggression targeting other people’s money (amūālukum), a‘rāḍukum (honor or reputation), and lives (anfusakum). Based on these im/permissible actions, we can discern positive/negative rights. To name two examples, Prophet Muḥammad refers to women’s right to equality and to the right to one’s inheritance, which includes women’s right to inheritance (addressed later). Relatedly, obligations, including obligations to self and others, are evident in the reference to abstaining from denying/disbelieving God (“falā targa‘na ba‘dī ilá al-kufr”) and by extension God’s laws. Across these themes, it’s clear that Prophet Muḥammad underscores im/permissible conduct, positive/negative rights, and obligations; the three work together to establish and sustain a moral order and constitute the Muslim. It’s within this context that women’s rights are affirmed in the speech (Bassiouni, Reference Bassiouni2006, pp. 32–33).
In the speech, women’s rights are mentioned in relation to reciprocity of rights. The section on women’s rights begins by underscoring that “they have rights, which you [Muslim men and Muslims in general] are obligated to realize (linisā’kum ‘alikum ḥaqa), and you [Muslim men] have rights, which they [Muslim men and Muslims in general] are obligated to realize” (Bassiouni, Reference Bassiouni2006, pp. 32–33).
What strikes me most is the accessible enthymematic force of the condensed teaching in “ūṣīkum bil-nisā’ khaīran.” An enthymeme is a truncated syllogism, which is often defined as a three-pronged argument by deduction. When one (or two) of the prongs is assumed, we are left with a shorthand deductive argument. The suasive potential of an enthymeme hinges on “the joint efforts of speaker and audience” (Bitzer, Reference Bitzer1959, p. 408). In this case, the audience is a nascent community that is bound by a religion and its legal-ethical code. The truncated argument “ūṣīkum bil-nisā’ khaīran” can be expanded as follows: Women have rights; their rights are diminished or undermined; therefore, I [Prophet Muḥammad] counsel you to treat women fairly and do good by them.
The enthymeme mirrors and condenses Islamic teachings about the pursuit of khaīr, or good, and the obligation to counter baghī and ẓulm (injustice) and shar (evil). The teachings condensed in “ūṣīkum bil-nisā’ khaīran” are central to and recur in the two main sources of legal-ethical prescriptive/proscriptive and constitutive discourse in Islām, which are al-Qur’ān and ḥadīth, as noted earlier. Women’s rights are so important that Prophet Muḥammad affirms them in his “Farewell Speech” and later in his last oration on the day he died. He reiterates, “ūṣīkum bil-nisā’ khaīran.” I now turn to Qur’ānic verses that underwrite and provide divine legislation that “ūṣīkum bil-nisā’ khaīran” condenses.
Numerous verses in al-Qur’ān reference women as created from one and the same self, and therefore equal to men in rights and responsibilities (and concomitantly rewards and punishment). These rights and responsibilities cover all dimensions of life, including religious, social, financial, inheritance, and ethical rights and responsibilities (e.g., The Qur’ān, 2008, 33:5, 7:189, 4:1, 4:124, 9:71, 3:195, 16:97, 2:286); these iterations of rights/responsibilities counter pervasive cultural misrepresentations of women (e.g., as intellectually or morally inferior) at the time. Among many verses that highlight a general principle guiding women’s rights is the first verse of Surat al-Nisā’ (Women; The Qur’ān, 2008, 4:1) and verse 228 of al-Baqarah (Cow; The Qur’ān, 2008, 2:228): “[W]omen have rights similar to those of men according to what is equitable.”Footnote 3
Numerous verses in al-Qur’ān underscore women’s rights and duties. More importantly, articulations of im/permissible conduct and corresponding positive/negative rights/obligations are linked using connective tissue. Al-Qur’ān constantly emphasizes reverence and recognition of the sanctity of life. (This idea is affirmed in numerous verses in the Holy Qur’ān [e.g., al-Mā’idah, verse 32] and is addressed later.) Another, which is in line with the sanctity of life and a counter to objectification and dismissal, is identifying all people (e.g., women and people of other confessions, ahl al-dhimah) as rights holders and rights claimants. The sanctity of life and the representation of disenfranchised groups as rights holders are conspicuously iterated in al-Qur’ān. (This is an issue addressed in the following section.)
Unsurprisingly, these ethical and rights topoi are ever-present and circulate in vernacular discourse. They are invoked to structure and amplify arguments, including those for women’s rights; they are also partially quoted and weaponized to undermine women’s rights, social authority, or standing. It is within this distant and enduring context that we need to question the invisibility of women’s rights. Why are women’s rights as articulated in al-Qur’ān and ḥadīth invisible? Why is recent advocacy for women’s rights represented as an unprecedented victory while un(der)recognizing the recurrent backlashes against women’s rights in and outside the Arab(ic)-Muslim world?
9.3.3 Misconceptions of Women and Their Rights in the Arabic-Islamic Traditions
Misconceptions block a more nuanced understanding of Arabic-Islamic women’s rights discourse. Earlier in the chapter, I pointed to selective memory. In the following paragraphs, I deepen earlier reflections on selective remembering and highlight three interrelated phenomena that block the recognition and exploration of official and vernacular rhetorics of women’s rights. These are conflating terms, historical forgetting, and decontextualizing rights from their socio-cultural and historical contexts.
From an analytical perspective, the conversation about women’s rights in the Arabic-Islamic traditions abounds with conflations of terms and concepts. As a starter, Islām and Muslims are conflated. A parallel and related conflation results from fusing an edict embedded in and actualizing an Islamic worldview with enduring socio-cultural misogynistic legacies. Needless to say, misogyny as ideology and practice has a momentum and a quotidian, gripping force. The religious edicts of Islām seek to halt this momentum and loosen its grip. For a long time, scholars have been writing about these parallel conflations (e.g., Esposito, Reference Esposito1975; Syed, Reference Syed2008). Just to illustrate, Khalida Tanvir Syed explains that, among many misconceptions, “perhaps the most controversial, is that Islam oppresses women. In reality, Islam offers women the right to make their own choices in the areas of education, business, and property, to name a few” (Syed, Reference Syed2008, p. 245).Footnote 4 Where does this misconception come from then? It’s partially due to the conflation of Islām and Muslims and misunderstanding of the history of interpretation of al-Qur’ān. Scholars illustrate how this conflation manifests again and again.
The conflation between Islām and Muslims is explicitly addressed by Esposito (Reference Esposito1975): Islām brought about many legal reforms that actualized women’s negative and positive rights (e.g., the rights to life, to inheritance, and to [withhold] consent to marriage). As Esposito explains, “the implementation of Qur’ānic reforms markedly improved her position in the family and society in the classical period. However, subsequent historical events as well as assimilated cultural influences [impacting Muslims] at times seriously compromised her rights” (Esposito, Reference Esposito1975, p. 113).
Esposito clarifies that many biases are “assimilated cultural influences” that are antithetical to the teachings of Islām. Because they are assimilated, they are not recognized as projected cultural influences. The slippage from Islām to Muslim clouds debates and obscures the Islamic legal-ethical code. To clarify the role of these “cultural influences,” scholars shed light on women’s social, cultural, and legal status and (violation of women’s) rights before Islām and contrast them with Islām’s rights discourse since its stance is ignored in the mix. A brief introduction to highlight key points about these cultural influences is warranted.
As Syed (Reference Syed2008, p. 254) puts it, “Pre-Islamic practices have been very threatening for women.” Women in pre-Islamic Arabia were situated culturally, financially, and economically in a subservient position in a power matrix which, to a large extent, is premised on controlling their bodies. Within this power matrix, women’s bodies become the locus of articulations of control, power over, an impending threat. Collective gender anxieties (Adamson, Reference Adamson2007) about and responses to this perceived threat are seen in practices of female infanticide. Predictably, within this matrix, their killing is justified. Two verses of Surat al-Naḥl (The Bee; The Qur’an, 2008, 16:57–58) explicitly critique perceptions of and subsequent actions against women, especially those against the female child. The verses also provide a socio-psychological profile that makes this normalized violence perceptible.
When news is brought to one of them of [the birth of] a female [child], his face darkens, and he is filled with inward grief! With shame does he hide himself from his people because of the bad news he has had! Shall he retain her [on sufferance and contempt], or bury her in the dust? Ah! What an evil [choice] they decide on!
Even at birth, the rights of the female child are denied and her standing as a rights holder is rejected. Writing about these two verses, Syed explains that the “Qur’an also condemned the unwelcoming attitude of some parents upon the birth of a baby girl” (Syed, Reference Syed2008, p. 253). This attitude justifies the violent practice of female infanticide and numerous other harmful practices; these include disregard of right to wealth, inheritance, or income; disregard of the right to choose a spouse; and disregard of true consent to marriage. All harm women and society at large. All of these practices were countered by Qur’ānic legislation.
Al-Qur’ān criticizes such practices in several verses. In al-Takwīr (The Qur’an, 2008, 81:8–9), al-Qur’ān condemns female infanticide, uses irony to make the unjustifiable harm against the child irrefutable, and offers us the analogy of a “trial scene.” Al-Qur’ān exclaims, “And when the female (infant) buried alive is questioned – For what sin she was killed.” The irony is coupled with role-reversal. Al-Maghāmsy (Reference al-Maghāmsy2019) explains that the killed female child is present(ed) on the day of reckoning so that she becomes the interlocutor; this is the reversal of the power dynamic that crushed her life and voice out of existence. So the child, who was the object of the aggressor’s wrath, is an agentive subject. The child is presented as a rights holder and claimant bringing a grievance to a legal authority (i.e., God and the Prophet). Fully present(ed) here, her question(ing) centers the pursuit of justice, holding perpetrators accountable, and doing right by her. And by extension, doing right by all other children (and females), whose right to life is affirmed (Al-Maghāmsy, Reference al-Maghāmsy2019).
In the context of verses 1–28 of al-Takwīr, verses 8–9 (quoted above) about female infanticide lead to accountability for human life and the rights of people; both are affirmed in this “trial scene.” Enthymematically presented, we see mainly the conclusion of the syllogism in verse 14, which stipulates that “a soul will (then [on the day of reckoning]) know what it has brought (with it).” In the context of the “trial scene,” or day of reckoning, the verse points to the presenting of evidence of injustice and the punishment incurred. Since al-Qur’ān represents God’s law and commands, verses addressing im/permissible acts read as legislation clauses that spell out the consequences of im/permissible actions.
What corroborates this reading is that verse 14 is amplified by later verses, namely 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, and 28, which identify and confer about this guidance as divine law by asserting: “Verily this is the word of a most honourable Messenger, Endued with power, with rank before the Lord of the Throne, With authority there, (and) faithful to his trust … (With profit) to whoever among you wills to go straight, or whoever wills among you to take a right course of action.” In short, at the beginning of Surat al-Takwīr (verses 8–9) the killed child is present(ed) as a rights holder and plaintiff, and their categorical rights to life and justice are affirmed. A few verses later (verses 18–28), the terms of accountability (e.g., judgment event(s) and processes, record of deeds/evidence against aggressors, law and law enforcer against harm done) are named, and female infanticide is denounced.
Terms of accountability are asserted repeatedly in al-Qur’ān. One of the most crucial legal assertions of accountability to the right to life is in Surat al-Mā’idah (The Qur’an, 2008, 5:32), which addresses cases of murder. It comprises the stasis of quality and underscores the weight of the offense as an ultimate violence. To amplify the stasis of quality, the significance of work done to protect and/or sustain life and wellbeing is also underscored using parallel structure: “if any one slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people” (The Qur’an, 2008, 5:32, emphasis added). The right to life is complemented with a multitude of other legal assertions.Footnote 5
Zooming in on overt references to women’s rights, we find that evidence in al-Qur’ān abounds. A broad Qur’ānic legal-ethical rights mandate is discernible in verse 228 of al-Baqarah: “[W]omen shall have rights similar to the rights against them according to what is equitable.” This general rights mandate is matched with specific assertions of women’s rights. To illustrate, among their financial rights, women have the right to their dowries and the right to inherit in their varied roles as spouses, daughters, sisters, and/or mothers in Surat al-Nisā’, or Women (The Qur’an, 2008, 4:10–11); specifying women’s roles impresses on readers an image of women as partners and rights holders and not as objects (of desire) or extensions of others. In verses 10–11, women’s right to inherit and the percentage of inheritance in numerous cases across the aforementioned roles are detailed. (Women’s political rights will be touched on in the following section.) Financial rights are vital because they counter “assimilated cultural influences” (Esposito, Reference Esposito1975, p. 113). Before Islām, women often were denied financial rights. Patriarchal control, which is a manifestation of “assimilated cultural influences,” deemed women as objects, and as objects they are owned and don’t own. Terms of accountability work proactively when they center rights holders and underscore others’ duties to rights holders. Terms of accountability also reactively respond to rights violation. Verses 12–13 underscore that inheritance rights as outlined are God’s hudūd (singular ḥadd; The Qur’an, 2008, 4:12–13); those who observe God’s laws are rewarded, and those who violate them are punished (de Vaux et al., Reference de Vaux, Schacht and Goichon2012). Tracing terms of accountability helps us see the discourse of rights, which can be made invisible by unfair practices.
Unfortunately, sometimes readers of al-Qur’ān don’t know this history or miss the point of the discourse on female infanticide and women’s rights. Esposito (Reference Esposito1975) highlights this as a methodological problem caused by unnuanced attention to context and urges scholars to detangle Qur’ānic legal reforms from (1) backlash against these reforms and (2) a history of “assimilated cultural influences.” To reiterate, Esposito’s critique seeks to clarify the conflation of Islām and Muslims, the context of Qur’ānic reforms, and the reforms themselves. His work clarifies how and why these important distinctions are often un(der)studied or just ignored for a simpler account premised on binaries.
Misconceptions have other causes. Misconceptions of women’s rights in the Arabic-Islamic traditions are also partly due to the far-reaching consequences of the epistemic arm of colonial waves. Explaining this, Howe, in her “Introduction” to The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender (Reference Howe and Howe2020), underlines the contributions of decolonial studies of Islām and gender. Decolonial studies foreground the far-reaching consequences of orientalist misrepresentations orchestrated by the epistemic arm of colonial waves. Scholars trace orientalist misrepresentations to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European colonial and mercantile expeditions and then invasions of the Near and Far East. Howe (Reference Howe and Howe2020, p. 9) explicates that “Muslim female bodies have long been sources of desire and disgust.” As a cultural and religious foil, “The female Muslim body became a ground through which colonial actors constructed their versions of Islam as backward and uncivilized … European, Christian, societies were celebrated as the high point of civilization” (p. 9; emphasis added). This profile of the Muslim woman and Islām doesn’t align with a nuanced assessment of the discourse on rights or the discourse on women’s rights in Islām.
Similarly, Khalida Tanvir Syed clarifies that misconceptions of “Muslim women as being ignorant and submissive” and Islām as repressive and backward are amplified by internal political forces: These “[m]isconceptions … are also created by ostensibly Islamic leaders who do not practice Islam. They may believe theoretically and gain the advantage of appearing to be knowledgeable or pious in the Islamic world, but their practices are contradictory to the teachings of the Qur’an and Hadith” (Syed, Reference Syed2008, p. 247). Together, the aforementioned local, regional, and global imperial forces impact our conceptions of women’s rights and assumed nonexistence of official and vernacular rhetorics of women’s rights. The resulting misconceptions and binaries (e.g., civilized versus uncivilized) have emotional dimensions, and they feed into a desirable “progressive” narrative and epistemic agendas.
Notably, assumptions about and attachments to comfortable/comforting narratives of a linear, progressive march of human rights discourse make us forget about relapses and regressive politics. Recognized as political turns and not necessarily the norm, relapses and regressive politics alert us to the danger of forgetting the nonlinear march of history, humans, and rights discourses. Feminist scholars like Leila Ahmed (Reference Ahmed1992), Asma Barlas (Reference Barlas2002), and Fatima Mernissi (Reference Mernissi1991) alert us to these narratives as forms of denial of the complexity of history and the persistence of patriarchy. Summarizing this point, Howe (Reference Howe and Howe2020, p. 11) explains “that while the early Muslim community enacted more egalitarian gender norms, patriarchal practices came to be hegemonic in the decades following the death of the Prophet Muhammad.”
To illustrate, in Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’ān, Asma Barlas demonstrates how patriarchy is read into the Qur’ān. Explaining that “the Qur’an was revealed in/to an existing patriarchy and has been interpreted by adherents of patriarchies ever since,” she underscores that “Muslim women have a stake in [explicating the methods and consequences of and, therefore,] challenging patriarchal exegesis” (Barlas, Reference Barlas2002, p. xi), which is beyond the scope of this chapter. Yet it warrants brief mention. Zooming in on the method of interpretation, Barlas continues to explain that early Muslim exegetes and Qur’ān commentators relied on a “linear-atomistic” method for interpretation (Mir quoted in Barlas, Reference Barlas2002, p. 8). This “linear-atomistic” method takes as its unit of exegesis a verse and, therefore, separates verses and reads them only linearly. “As a result, the Qur’ān is not read as a text possessing both ‘thematic and structural nazm [coherence]’” (Mir quoted in Barlas, Reference Barlas2002, p. 8). Instead, “recognizing the Qur’ān’s textual and thematic holism, and thus the hermeneutic connections between seemingly disparate themes, is absolutely integral to recovering its antipatriarchal epistemology” (p. 8). So, Barlas identifies guiding principles (e.g., unity of divine ontology and divine discourse and justness) to show that injustice to women is inconsistent with divine ontology and divine discourse:
The principle of God’s Unity (Tawhīd) has the most far-reaching implications for how we understand God and God’s Speech. … In its simplest form, Tawhīd symbolizes the idea of God’s Indivisibility, hence also the indivisibility of God’s Sovereignty. … To the extent that theories of male rule over women and children amount to asserting sovereignty over both and also misrepresent males as intermediaries between women and God, they do come into conflict with the essential tenets of the doctrine of Tawhīd and must be rejected as theologically unsound.
Reading al-Qur’ān intra-textually, holistically, and contextually, we are better positioned to read how patriarchy is projected and used to justify injustice against women. (I tried to embrace these principles in the section on female infanticide and women’s financial rights.) Reading al-Qur’ān intra-textually, holistically, and contextually, we are better positioned to address misconceptions, including misconception of cycles of rights discourse and how topoi of rights inform and circulate beyond official legal discourse. Part of this cycle is rights violation, articulation of grievance, denial of grievance, rights recognition, recognition of rights holders, actualizing rights and affirming rights holders, backlash and relapse, and repeats of the cycle, which will become obvious in the last section.
Centering narratives of Islām as patriarchal is a manifestation of historical forgetting, decontextualization, and conflation of Islām’s legal rhetoric and Muslims’ uptake of it. The historical record underscores how and when patriarchal, “linear-atomistic” hermeneutic practices came to be hegemonic after Prophet Muḥammad’s death, as Barlas (Reference Barlas2002) and Ahmed (Reference Ahmed1992) explain. Denying the historicity of patriarchy and the possibilities of legislation for a vernacular of rights rhetoric, patriarchy persists. In the next section, I expand my exploration beyond medieval historical and legislative roots of women’s rights in Islām and their invisibility to address more recent roots in the Arab Renaissance. Beyond the Arab Renaissance, advocacy and legislation for women’s rights continues, as I illustrate below.
9.4 Illustrative Moments: The Arab Renaissance and Continuous Advocacy and Legislation
I fast forward from the seventh century to al-Nahḍah, or the Arab Renaissance or Awakening, to shed light on illustrative moments for women’s rights. I begin with an illustrative moment that precedes the ACWR by a century and has had an enduring impact. Before the issuance of the ACWR, generations of women and men like Bint al-Shāṭi’ (ʿĀʿishah ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s pen name; Reference Bint al-Shāṭi1991) and Qāsim Amīn (Reference Amīn2010a, Reference Amīn2010b) have advocated for women’s rights. They implicitly and explicitly invoke earlier discourse on rights, including Qur’ān and ḥadīth, and the work on the ground by scholars and activists continues outside and within legislative and legal circles.
Al-Nahḍah refers to a historical period and a dynamic process. Historians describe this period as both a “cataclysmic, colonial event” marked by Napoléon Bonaparte’s (1769–1821) invasion of Egypt and Syria and a massive regional, national, and intellectual awakening (El-Ariss, Reference El-Ariss and El-Ariss2018, p. xxv). The military’s resounding defeat was momentous, for it made clear that Egypt – and indeed the whole region – had become a proxy battlefield for British and French mercantile and political rivalry. Their subsequent colonization of Arab nations made conspicuous the undeniable cultural and technological gaps between Egypt and the colonizing powers. The interplay or collision of the military, economic, political, and cultural forces mandated introspection. In response, calls for cultural transformation, sifting through and reviving the Arab past, and embracing modernizing projects ensued and reverberated across the Arab world.
One of the most conspicuous shifts was a powerful discourse on the rights of women, who were now recognized as crucial partners of both national liberation and transformation, yet not recognized as political and legal actors with rights in these roles. In this context of transformation and reflection, presses and magazines thrived and literary salons proliferated (Diab, Reference Diab, Gross, Mao and Maillouxin press). These venues offered the space for envisioning, deliberating, and advocating for varied transformations. Key among these transformations was women’s right to have rights, including marital and epistemic rights (i.e., the rights to know and interpret). To show the impact of this moment, I very briefly shed light on Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah’s work. Joining leading feminists at the time, she identified ten articles in support of women’s rights. The articles can be considered an early articulation of and precedent for numerous documents and legislative bills that eventually led, 100 years later, to the twenty-eight articles of the ACWR.
9.4.1 Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah
Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah is the pen name of Malak Ḥifnī Nāṣif (1886–1918), a noteworthy figure of al-Nahḍah. She was a well-known writer, first certified woman educator, social reformer, and advocate for women’s rights. She tirelessly joined al-Nahḍah feminists and advocated for women’s rights. Her testimonial and essayistic writing and speeches, published in Nisā’iyāt (Nāṣif, Reference Nāṣif2012), represent astute social critique, brim with justice and rights topoi, and exemplify a vernacular rhetoric of women’s rights.
Breaking silence around social taboos, Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah spoke to and wrote about the right to have rights and the right to advocate for these rights. In this vernacular discourse, she named socio-cultural discourses that undermine women’s potential and rights. She also underscored socio-cultural and educational changes needed to enhance women’s potential and right to autonomy and equality. As a rights holder, she embodied and gave voice to women’s suffering. As she testified, she was amplifying women’s grievance articulations, and she explained how and why women’s suffering is caused by restricted access to education, decision-making, and marital rights (e.g., choosing a spouse), let alone unquestioned cultural practices like polygamy, which she experienced herself. Leveraging the stance of a rights holder who could voice grievances, explain their root causes, and envision potential changes, Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah (and other al-Nahḍah feminists) constructed a vernacular rhetoric of gender equality.
Her advocacy for the right to learn is a case in point. As an educator, she had keen awareness of and interest in women’s epistemic rights. She wrote about women’s rights to education, (decolonizing) women’s right to determine their fate and make decisions regarding education and work, and their rights to affirm their identity and cultural rights. For example, in one of her essays collected under the heading “Arā’” (View Points) (Nāṣif, Reference Nāṣif2012, pp. 13–77), she aligned herself with other advocates of girls’ and women’s education (e.g., ‘Āishah al-Tīmūrīyah) and critiqued the current educational model, which sometimes undermined women’s identity and cultural rights (Zīyādah, Reference Zīyādah2012, pp. 41–67). These concerns were amplified by Egypt’s colonial context.
Under British rule, a meaningful discourse on liberation and rights entailed an investment in questioning the terms of liberation. Often modeled after Western norms and values, terms of liberation became her concern, and Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah attended to cultural and religious difference and centered the needs of the Egyptian woman. The question of the veil accrues ontological and epistemological meanings and becomes a way to address complex issues: Who sets the terms for the rights to know, represent, and testify to the self’s needs and rights? This discourse predates and resonates with third-wave feminist rights discourse.
Among her works, her speech to the Nation’s Party Club (Nāṣif, Reference Nāṣif2012, pp. 77–92) stands out. The content and location of her speech to the Nation’s Party Club (Nādī Ḥizb al-Umah) are noteworthy. The Nation’s Party Club was a dynamic political and cultural space sponsored by and directly affiliated with Ḥizb al-Umah (established in 1907 by Maḥmmūd Pasha Sulīmān as a political, liberal party that sponsored both a club and a paper). Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah spoke at the club and published in the party’s paper, al-Jarīdah. Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah’s speech was relatively long, addressed different issues, and drew on topoi that can be traced to Prophet Muḥammad’s Khuṭbat al-Wadā’ and al-Qur’ān (e.g., critique of injustice and critique for justice, or ‘adl, and fairness, or inṣāf’). She clearly echoed other al-Nahḍah feminists (e.g., Hudá Sha ‘rāwī) who also advocated for equality, or musāwāh, and partnership. Two of the most important issues addressed are misconceptions of women and their roles, and misconceptions of men and their rights and responsibilities. She affirmed women’s standing as rights holders.
This speech is often remembered because, while underlining women’s lack of opportunities, Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah said that had she had the opportunity to be with Christopher Columbus, she, too, would have discovered America (Zīyādah, Reference Zīyādah2012, p. 81). However, this frequently quoted statement deflects attention from the most crucial moment in the speech. Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah’s speech to the Nation’s Party Club (Nādī Ḥizb al-Umah) is of special significance as a manifestation of a vernacular of rights discourse.
Characterized by being unofficial, citizen-driven, and bottom-up discourse that copies the genre and tone of bills, this vernacular centers topoi of justice, rights, and accountability. The speech comprises ten articles that testify to Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah’s keen awareness of the importance of legislation to counter violence against women. Not only are these articles an early articulation of and precedent for the twenty-eight articles of the ACWR issued a century later. They also cannot be read outside of the context of Islamic legislation for women’s rights and the discourse on the moral order enthymematically condensed in the Prophetic mandate, “ūṣīkum bil-nisā’ khaīran,” left un(der)realized.
At the end of her speech (Nāṣif, Reference Nāṣif2012, p. 92), Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah advocated for legal change, enumerated ten articles representing the needs of her time, and called for legislative changes. She introduced the articles as “practical steps to move forward” and declared that “had I [Malak Ḥifnī Nāṣif] had legislative power, this would be [her] bill.” (Her “bill’ was eventually read at the party.) In today’s parlance, she enumerated negative and positive rights and modeled a bill addressing women’s rights. The ten articles are additionally significant because they prefigure many legal articles that followed, including ones underlined by the ACWR. Together, the ten articles amplify two main clusters of rights.
The first cluster (Articles 1–6) centers women’s rights to education. The second cluster (Articles 7–8) centers women’s sovereignty, consent as manifest in women’s marital rights, rights to choose educational and work careers, and right to move.Footnote 6 The articles are intrinsically important, and their significance is enhanced, as they are explicitly stated after a long speech that unmistakably (a) underscores how these rights are not antithetical to Islamic practice and history, and (b) explains the negative consequences of undermining these rights in the microsphere of individual and family and the macrosphere of society and nation. These points resonated with her audience. At the time, her audience struggled with the assumed tension between women’s rights and Islām, which was perceived as threatened by imported ideologies. Her audience, too, comprised people aligned with and affiliated to Ḥizb al-Umah, so it’s reasonable to assume that they shared the investment in national liberation and women’s participation in it.
I think of Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah as a foremother. Her advocacy for women’s rights carries the marks of the early 1900s. Because advocacy for women’s rights is intimately connected to its historical, cultural, political, and national/regional need for liberation, advocacy during al-Nahḍah means that advocacy for women’s rights is connected to national interest. Equally important, foremothers model and inspire. Indeed, some dimensions of Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah’s advocacy for women’s rights are (un)surprisingly current. These current aspects include, for example, her reference to the relation between access to domains of action, imagined/foreclosed possibilities, and actual participation in such domains (often condensed in phrases like “the glass ceiling” and “stained-glass ceiling”) (e.g., Sullins, Reference Sullins2000). Both temporally situated and current, the discourse on women’s rights we see in Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah’s work cannot be seen outside of the buzzing spheres of political rhetoric at the time and shouldn’t be severed from later vernaculars of rights that eventually led to legislation. I now turn to shed light on vernacular rhetoric about women’s civil rights and Personal Status Law (El-Alamai, Reference El-Alami1994).
9.4.2 Women’s Rights Rhetoric Amplified and Continued
Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah died very young because of the influenza pandemic of 1918–19, but her work endured. Her contemporaries continued the work. Just to illustrate, as partners in political activism, women participated in the 1919 Revolution against British occupation and its impact on the political and economic spheres. United, Egyptian people asked for national independence. Yet women, especially women’s rights advocates, were surprised by their exclusion from the commission of thirty people who pored over drafting the new constitution of 1923. Among the most notable features of this constitution, however, was absence. The 1923 constitution absented women and didn’t recognize women’s voting rights. This exclusion resulted in Hudá Sha‘rāwī, a well-known Egyptian feminist and nationalist, establishing the Egyptian Feminist Union (al-itiḥād al-nisā’ī al-maṣrī) in 1923.Footnote 7 This was yet another crucial moment for the vernacular of women’s rights. The Egyptian Feminist Union established two papers, l’Egyptienne and al-Miṣrīyyah. The Egyptian Feminist Union’s main goal was to advocate for women’s political participation, not just in terms of voting rights but also in terms of participating in legislative efforts and legislative bodies (i.e., the right to hold public office) and equity in/at work (Arafa, Reference Arafa1973).
Generations of feminists followed, and with each the vernacular of women’s rights rhetoric evolved, persisted, and eventually intersected with and led to legislation. In the 1950s, there were other key advocacy moments and direct-action rhetoric. Before and after the 1952 Revolution, Durrīyah Shafīq advocated for women’s political representation and participation. In front of the Egyptian Parliament, she led a demonstration of 1,500 women who asked for their right to political participation and for reforms to civil law; a bill for women to participate in elections to the parliament and to vote in these elections moved forward but didn’t pass.
I fast-forward again and point to another key advocacy moment and direct-action rhetoric. In response to women’s exclusion from another constitution-drafting commission, women organized a hunger strike, which the group ended when they won the promise of political rights. The 1956 Constitution and the laws that followed included articles for political participation and voting rights (Law 73/1956). A year later, eight women stood for elections; two won and became members of the National Parliament (Majlis al-Ummah). They were Rāwīyah ‘Aṭīyah (1926–1997) and Amīnah Shukrī (1912–1964). The process and advocacy continued. Within a decade, the number increased from two to eight (1964). Within another decade, a quota system (for women representatives) was used to increase the number of women members of parliament to thirty-five in 1979. The work persisted because the quota system was repudiated and reinstated several times. The backlash was real, and legal reforms and legal advocacy rhetorics were cyclical (Elsadda & Hassan, Reference Elsadda and Hassan2018, p. 141).
A similar connection is evident between the vernacular of rights and “Personal Status Law (PSL)[, which] regulates marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance issues” (Singerman, Reference Singerman and Hefner2005, p. 161) and was issued in 1920 and amended in 1929. The connection is, for example, evident in calls for two different reforms, which I address briefly. The first call for reform was energized by Ḥusn Shāh’s writing and the literary dramatization of the urgent need for change in divorce laws. Ḥusn Shāh, a lawyer by training and a journalist, wrote a column titled “Urīd Ḥala” (I Want a Solution), in one of Egypt’s most prestigious and widely read daily papers, Akhbār al-Youm. She was inspired by one of the column’s true stories to write the film Urīd Hala (Marzūq, Reference Marzūq1975) about three women. (In the film, Shāh centers and gives voice to the struggles of one woman, Durrīyah. Like many, for years Durrīyah tries to get a divorce but fails. Shāh successfully dramatizes women’s struggle for divorce, presents reasons for women to have the right to initiate divorce, and holds the space for a societal awareness of and deliberation about the nature and scale of divorce problems.) A bill to reform the Personal Status Law garnered a lot of attention even from Egypt’s First Lady, Jihān al-Sadāt, who lobbied publicly for the bill, which was named after her. The law passed (Law 44/1979). During the process, fifteen-century-old Islāmic legislation and precedent of the permissibility of this course of action became evident to many.Footnote 8 However, the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt found the law unconstitutional in 1985 based on a procedural matter. Despite this procedural matter, an almost identical law (Law No. 100 of 1985) was issued to replace Law 44/1979: “[W]ith one major exception which was the result of a compromise between religious circles and the feminist movement: A wife’s right to a divorce from her husband in the event that he took a second (or subsequent) wife no longer would be automatic, but rather would depend on the discretion of the court” (El-Alami, Reference El-Alami1994, p. 117).Footnote 9 Feminist legal advocacy continued. “Law No. 100 of 1985, which resulted in a significant improvement in the position of Egyptian women, has become the touchstone for future legal reform” (El-Alami, Reference El-Alami1994, p. 117), including Law No. 1 of 2000 for a no-fault divorce, or khul’.
In 2022 and 2023, there were similar moments for societal concern, deliberation, and increased awareness of PSL. In 2022, debates about custody laws peaked: Egyptians watched and debated the series Fātin Amal Ḥarbī, written by Ibrahīm ‘Eissá, which focused on women’s struggles with custody and their potential loss of custody if they remarry. Similarly, in 2023, women’s guardianship was on people’s minds as they watched Taḥt al-Uṣāiyah. Debates trended on the suffering, social and legal strife of, and right to guardianship of a mother who battled against the children’s grandfather’s guardianship. (The grandfather was next in line and preceded the mother in claims for guardianship after a father died.) After watching the series, the hashtag “Guardianship is my right,” advocating for women’s right to guardianship, became viral and was complemented by numerous articles. For example, Ilhām Yūnis (Reference Yūnis2023), a columnist at al-Ahrām (a widely read Egyptian paper), connected the three works in her piece on “Taḥt al-Uṣāiyah and Urīd Ḥala.” Calls for legal reform ensued; some members of the parliament are currently considering a bill to address this issue.
9.5 Coda
The advocacy continues. No single moment is most crucial or sufficient to disclose the deep roots and rich history of the vernacular and official women’s rights discourse in the Arab(ic)-Muslim world. From the 1960s until now, the vernacular of rights has thrived and led to legislation, which is not without setbacks and inconsistent enforceability. It is worth noting that all the articles that were presented by Bāḥithat al-Bādīyah to the Nation’s Party Club (Nādī Ḥizb al-Umah) became reality. Egyptian women do participate widely in religious activities (Article 1), have access to K-12 and higher education (Article 2), join nursing and medical schools, and more (Article 5). Women continue to advocate for anti-discrimination laws not just by law enforcement personnel but in many aspects of private and public matters. Similarly, there is hope and a process for guardianship laws to be reformed to expand women’s legal rights. It is in this context that I see the Arab Charter for Women’s Rights, which was issued in 2019, as a moment worth celebrating only in relation to and as a recognition of a much longer, multidimensional, and ever-present advocacy for women’s rights and a rich legal-ethical code for justice.
Open access