Feminism in Islam

Some urban middle- and upper-class women began to contest the Islamic justification for their seclusion, hijab (then meaning the veiling of both face and body), and related controls over their lives.1

When Hind Naufal founded the journal al-Fatah (The young woman) in the same year, inaugurating a women’s press in Egypt, women found a new forum for discussing and spreading their nascent feminism.12

Shaikh Muhammad ‘Abduh, a distinguished teacher and scholar from al-Azhar.

Abduh turned a revolutionary corner when he proposed that believers could go straight to the sources of religion, principally the Qur’an and the Hadith, for guidance in the conduct of everyday life.13

However, in Egypt, there has been sufficient space – albeit more frequently taken than granted – within state and society for women to speak out as feminists and activists

Moreover, the authorities have at times deliberately encouraged women’s initiatives for their own purposes.

This new awareness (not yet called feminist; in fact, the term “feminism” was not used in Egypt until the early 1920s)

In the early nineteenth century, for example, Egyptians did not initially allow their daughters to

attend the new state school for hakimas (Ethopian slaves were recruited as the first students)

In 1836, Muhammad ‘Ali appointed a Council for Public Education to look into creating a state system of education for girls, but it was found impossible to implement