Birthing Democracy: The Role of Women in the Democratic Discourse of the Middle East

Abstract

For the better part of the twentieth century, women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have been afflicted by a dual malaise: from within, through questionable patriarchal state and legal mechanisms; and from external sources via the ‘fetishization of Islam’ (Lazreg, 1988: 95).1 In the haste to seek solutions that would ameliorate the circumstances of women in the MENA region, existent notions of democracy have been overlooked and the source of gender discrimination attributed to the theological aspect, with less regard for the historical and socio-economic context. The notion that ‘[r]eligion cannot be detached from the socio-economic and political context within which it unfolds’ yields a new perspective in which to study the early women’s movements of the nineteenth and twentieth century (Lazreg, 1988: 95). In recent years, women’s organizations in the MENA region have inspired vigorous debate within the field of gender studies, rather than in that of political studies. Nevertheless, their early struggle provided the foundations not only for a democratic future for subsequent generations, but also for a harkening back to religious and social practices and beliefs that have become mired in the re-Islamization of society.

It had to begin at the beginning: The Woman! A nation cannot be liberated whether internally or externally while its women are enchained. In the very midst of this earthquake, in this crazy desire for Liberty for a whole nation my feminist movement was born.

(Shafiq, cited in Nelson, 1996: 142)