A rchive Date
[ 02-11-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Egypt ]
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[http://www.islam-online.net/English/contemporary/2002/07/Article01.shtml
Rethinking Secularism ... Rethinking Feminism
Heba Raouf Ezzat
Teaching Assistant of Political Science - Cairo University
01/07/2002
This is not an attempt to “re-invent the wheel”, but rather to place the concept within its paradigmatic context, and to highlight the origin of dispute between the secularist and those who see Islam as an all encompassing religion that represents a different view than Christianity. With the absence of “Church” as an institution in the first place in the faith of Islam, the “separation between church and state becomes meaningless.”
The core question is the difference in the frame of reference.
Defining Secularism
Secularism in theory and secularisation as a historical process do not mean the mere separation between the church and the state, for this supposes that secularising processes are confined to the political and economic realm. Yet an increasing number of scholars is arguing that secularism is a comprehensive world outlook that operates on all levels of reality through a large number of explicit and implicit mechanisms.
The secularist outlook is basically one that starts by marginalizing God, or sometimes even announces his death, placing the human being at the centre of the universe as its logos.
The complex duality of transcendental monotheism is replaced by a sharp dualism of human beings and nature, which manifests itself through a conflict between the two, while at the same time attempting to explain human nature by focusing solely on its physical/material dimension.
The problem however is eventually resolved in favour of the “natural”, and the category of the “human” is thereby absorbed in and reduced to the category of “nature”.
The initial enlightenment humanism is replaced in the course of the secularisation process by a naturalistic anti-humanism, and the initial dualism of the human being and nature is replaced by a thorough naturalistic monism: the reduction of reality to one natural law, immanent in matters, and this is the epistemological basis for a process of deconstruction and desanctification, not only of nature but of the human being and all its transcendental criteria.
Feminism: A Stage of Secularism
Trying to contextualize feminism and understand its archaeology is very much linked to the history of secularisation of the European mind and sciences.
The mentality of generations of women liberation activists and theoreticians was also shaped by the Marxist notions of patriarchy and position towards family, as well - of course - as its ideas regarding religion as a male-made set of oppressive ideas, especially when it comes to women. These ideas infiltrated even non-Marxist circles and became embedded in most of the feminist writings.
It is interesting to see how the analysis of “social construction of reality” in the sociology of the sixties was taken further by feminists to focus by the nineties on the “sexual construction of reality”.
The social contract on which the humanist enlightenment liberal approach based its equality notions was as well deconstructed and an alternative sexual contract discussed.
Forms of lesbian and bisexual feminism can be given as examples of this self-referential/self-contained discourse, where the “body” has become the logos of a Weltanschauung, pushing the “naturalization” of the human being as far as one can imagine, and achieving full lucidity in questions of morals. This sort of analysis can be applied on the political theory level to understand the shift from the modern concern about the political body, to the feminist and post-modern enthusiastic interest in “body politics”. This, too, is a historic secular moment.
Though feminism had, and quite with lots of insight, criticised many social circumstances that are hindering and restricting women in the Third World, very little has been done from the other side of the globe to contextualize feminism and understand its sociology of knowledge and paradigmatic limitations. More attention should be given to re-examine its declared universality as an answer to women’s problems, an answer that almost implicitly claims in this regard…the end of history.
The Legal Leviathan
Since 1945 more than twenty different international legal instruments have been drafted which deal specifically with women.
Starting by the Charter of the United Nations that was the first multilateral treaty which clearly enunciated a norm of non-discrimination on the basis of sex, then the conventions concerning the protection of women from exploitation and improving their conditions of employment, and reaching to the declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.
It is important to analyse the assumptions made within these documents about the role of women in society, and to identify some basic patterns which have emerged in this process of codification. Three analytic categories can be applied to the provisions of the treaties regarding the status of women they seek to establish or maintain: protective, corrective and non-discriminatory.
Some writings argue that the protective category describes those provisions which reflect a societal conceptualisation of women as a group which either should not or can not engage in specified activities. The protection normally takes the form of exclusionary provisions, articles which stipulate certain activities from which women are prohibited.
The corrective category also identifies women as a separate group which needs special treatment, but their aim is to alter and improve them, without making any overt comparison with the treatment of men in these areas.
Finally, the non-discriminatory, sex-neutral category which includes provisions which reject a conceptualisation of women as a separate group, and rather reflect on men and women as entitled to “equal” treatment. The concept is one which holds that biological differences should not be a basis for the social and political allocation of benefits and burdens within a society.
One can claim that these categories represent a historical evolution, as previously mentioned, of feminism as a process of secularisation.
The existing (secular) laws are considered unjust and patriarchal, and the process of legislation became the target in order to gain feminist equality, hence the recent over-occupation with political power.
Having the legislative power in its hand, the state became an important actor in this struggle.
The state has played also a very important role in the secularisation process that led to the fading away of many social bonds, and the dominance of contractual relations.
The state became the major actor on all scenes, and many functions were transferred to it from the declining extended family, and the increasingly shaking nuclear one. It also took over most of the activities once performed by the religious institutions, and became the guardian of such aspects as education, and even morality - a secular “morality … without ethics”.
The feminist thought and movement evolved then around the search for power, trying to become more and more “empowered”, and looking to law as the tool to obtain equal rights…especially in the political sphere.
Little attention was given to the announced “death of the family”, and even those who were not hostile against it were not encouraged by the cultural atmosphere to defend it. With the “coming out” of the lesbian and gay movements, and the powerful theorisation on lesbian epistemology, many women became intimidated. In the last (secular) analysis one should not define the family according to some fixed, biased, pre-modern measures!
The mildest accusation would be “homophobia”, the utter one …fundamentalism.
The gains of Modernity were considered far numerous than the losses.
Islam Feminised: Parentalising the State!
The feminist discourse in the Arab and Muslim world witnessed too a qualitative change, moving from general demands of equality to adopting more or less the broad international agenda of the feminists, though not criticising religion as such but rather the male/patriarchal interpretation of it. “Extreme” demands of lesbianism were not openly discussed due to the cultural circumstances of the Arab and Islamic societies.
Increasingly the movement used legal approach to women’s problems, and the crisis of the family in the modernising societies did not seem to be of much concern.
The recent campaign led by feminists, mainly professional lawyers, to change the personal (family) code in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and their ongoing effort to change the marriage contract to guarantee more “equality” are very indicative examples.
How equality can be guaranteed within social structures that are facing increasing poverty, and deteriorating basic life condition under the Structural Adjustment Programs dictated by the IMF and World Bank is not a question asked by the majority of feminist activists. The answer would lead to a deeper discussion of state social and economic policies, and as they are desperate to have the state’s approval of their agenda to translate it into legal changes, they would not wish to upset the regimes.
The political conditions to the feminist legitimate presence are restrictive. Till now the law as a bargaining instrument has been successfully abused by the state, as well as by the feminists.
Within that balance the feminist movement has become one of the allies of the regimes against the “fundamentalist” threat.
The direct discussion of full Shari`ah application question had to be marginalized in their discourse in order not to loose the support of the masses of women who would not tolerate a direct attack on Islam.
The epistemological and the political approach are therefore very important in understanding the real dilemmas of feminism in the Islamic World regarding the question of equality, and the legal rights of women.
No profound understanding would be achieved unless this analysis is done also on the international level…namely addressing the international law level, as well as the international networking of the NGOs and their role in North-South relations as agents of the New World Order, or at least facilitators of its structural domination.
Society or …“Togetherness”!?
The bitter lessons of modernity should not be repeated.
We need to open up for new ideas, but we do not have to repeat the same mistakes, falling into the same traps that no one could foresee when the European enlightenment project started. We have the golden opportunity to construct our own modernity, and carefully see where things went wrong.
If sociologists in the West are carefully studying the changing nature of social relation in a late capitalist era, this analysis is highly important for us. We still have the chance to change our social structures, and make relations within them more “equal” and more just, without having to loose them or helplessly watch them decay. We do not have to settle down with a form of togetherness if we can liberate women, and still keep the family.
There are many complex aspects of women’s lives that we as social scientists, committed to political struggles for justice and human dignity, need to explore.
Recent socio/anthropological studies that western researchers could resume (while native researchers are usually not permitted to undergo) tried to approach the life of the majority of poor (supposedly oppressed women) and discovered how these women could make their destinies, use the social and kinship ties in their survival strategies, and make their life better, a well as their children’s.
The importance of household economy as an informal sector for women to use for their benefit is also under focus now.
We do not have to turn past of the West into a future for the East.
Many educated women in the Islamic world are rediscovering the liberating potential of their religious traditions. They demand respect, they actively participate in economy and politics, but they also are proud of their motherhood as a value and a role, they believe in the family as a social institution and regard themselves as the guardians of the culture. Increasing number of them chose, sometimes against the wish of their own families, to be within the wider Islamic resurgence. They suffer from restrictions and sometimes rigid discrimination and violation of their human rights by the political regimes.
Their life is also worth looking at and drawing lessons from, and what’s more: to show how simplistic approaches regarding their identity and consciousness need to be revised.
Further Readings:
- Ameena Wadud Muhsin, Women in the Qur’an: The Absence of Sex-Role Stereotyping in the Qur’an, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1988.
- Anis Ahmed, Women and Social Justice: Some legal and Social Issues in Contemporary Muslim Societies, Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1991.
- Abdel Haleem Abu Shucka, Liberating Women during the Time of the Prophet: Readings in the Qur’an and the Hadith, Kuwait: Dar Al Qalam, 6 Volumes, 1995 (Arabic).
- Heba Raouf Ezzat, Women and Politics: An Islamic Perspective, Washington: The International Institute for Islamic Thought, 1995 (Arabic).
- Peter Glasner, The Sociology of Secularisation: A Critique of a Concept, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.
- Dr. Abdel Wahab Elmessiri, ”Towards a more Comprehensive and Explanatory Paradigm of Secularism”, Encounters (Journal of Intercultural Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 2, Sept. 1996.
- Michael Hill, A Sociology of Religion, London: Heinemann Books, 1973.
- Owen Chadwick, Secularisation of the European Mind in the 19th Century, London: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
- Natalie Kaufman Hevener, International Law and the Status of Women, Boulder: West view Press, 1983.
- Zygmunt Bauman, Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
- Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
- Charles Taylor, Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
- Nadia Abdel Wahab and Amal Abdel Hadi (eds), The Feminist Movement in the Arab World, Cairo: New Woman Research Centre, 1995. (Arabic)
- Women, Law and Development, Cairo: New Woman Research Centre, 1997. (Arabic)
- Dawn Chatty and Annika Rabo, Organizing Women: Formal and Informal Women Groups in the Middle East, Oxford: Berg, 1997.
- Unni Wikan, Tomorrow - God Willing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
- Diane Singermann, Avenues of Participation: Families, Politics and Networks in Urban Quarter of Cairo, N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1995.
- Diane Singermann and Homa Hoodfar, Development, Change and Gender in Cairo; A View from the household, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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