Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (24 page)

other comparatively smaller organizationS- in the 1 940s ( such as the National Feminist Party and the Daughter of the Nile Union) highlighted liberal val, ues and principles, such as equality between men and women, individual rights, and so on-issues that al,Ghazali treats with considerable ambivalence in her speeches and writing. Al,Ghazali has often portrayed the "woman ques, tion"
(qaQ, yat al..ma a)
as a "Western invention," and has continued to re, gard Muslim concern with this question as a refl ction of their "colonized mentality" ( al,Hashimi 1990, 23 1 ).73 The principle of gender equality, while implicit in some of al,Ghazali's writings, never fi the prominent place it is accorded within the literature of other women's organizations and feminist figures of her time.

Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to disregard the extent to which al.. Ghazali's Islamic activism was shaped by the liberal discourse of early nation.. alism, with its emphasis on women's public visibility. This infl is evident in al..Ghazali's position that Muslim women should play an active role in pub.. lic, intellectual, and political life (such as running for public offi or holding the position of a judge), with the important caveat that these responsibilities should not interfere with what she considers to be women's divinely ordained obligations to their immediate kin ( al..Hashimi 1990 ) .74 In espousing this po.. sition, al..Ghazali departs from the views of the male religious establishment of her time. Similarly, the language of "women's rights" fi an important, if at, tenuated, place in al..Ghazali's speeches and writings and is often invoked to emphasize that Muslim women and men are equally called upon to serve God. Al,Ghazali's modern st religious activism illustrates how the histories of Is, lamism and secular liberalism are intimately connected, a connection that is, nonetheless, saturated with tensions and ambivalences.

al-ghazali and her legacy

Signifi aspects of al,Ghazali's genealogy as a d�f�iya continue to character, ize contemporary women's daewa activity in the mosque movement.75 Doctri.. nal similarities exist between al,Ghazali and the daeiyat of today, particularly

73
Relatedly, al,Ghazali has long insisted that Islam does grant Muslim women all the rights that feminists are concern w ith, and that what is missing is their proper implementation (al, Hashimi 1990). Note al,Ghazali's use of the term "women's rights" even as she condemns its in, vocation by feminists.

74
Al,Ghazali is, however, against the idea that a woman should be allowed to hold the posi, tion of president or prime minister of a Muslim nation (al,Hashimi 1990, 242-56).

75
Despite the signifi continuity between the work ofthe Society of Muslim Ladies and the women's daewa movement, I was surprised that none of the women I worked with ever invoked ei, ther al-Ghazali or her organization in the context of mosque lessons or private conversations. When I mentioned al,Ghazali's work, many of the daeiyat acknowledged her legacy but remained

in their adherence to those positions that represent the majority consensus among Muslim jurists. For example, like al..Ghazali, most of the d�fiyat I worked with do not dispute the prohibition on women's delivery of the Friday sermon, nor do they advocate for women to serve as imams for women (let alone men) in mosques. Similarly, like al..Ghazali, the da�iyat seldom employ the rhetoric of women's equality: while they do invoke the language of rights to justify their access to sacred knowledge, the female bearer of these rights is not regarded as being on equal footing with her male counterpart. (See my discussion of these issues in chapter 3.)

Important continuities also exist in the organizational history of women's daewa between al..Ghazali's time and the present. Just as the University of al.. Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood were avenues for al..Ghazali's activism but never directly supported the establishment of the Society of Muslim Ladies, neither have these organizations been instrumental in organizing or promoting the contemporary women's mosque movement.76 Despite the fact that the University of al..Azhar opened its doors to women in the study of re.. ligious sciences in the 1 960s, none of the contemporary d�tiyat have come to the practice via this institutional trajectory, and only a very few of the mosque groups are affi iated with the Muslim Brothers. Moreover, the contemporary da�iyat encounter the same neglect and 5: �epticism from their male counter.. parts in regard to their considerable achievements as al..Ghazali did two gen- erations prior. Just as the story of al..Ghazali's organization remains relatively obscure, the contemporary Islamic press bemoans the lack of women's partici.. pation "in the fi d of da�wa" despite the proliferation of women's mosque groups (see, for example,
al--Litv :) al..Jslami
1 995 , 1 996a, 1996b) .77 Similarly,

circumspect. Some of the daeiyat, when pressed, explicitly said that they did not consider them- selves to be working within a model of daewa similar to al-- zali's since they were not part of a political movement aimed at reforming the state. Such responses may reflect the nervousness many Egyptians feel about potential state reprisals against those who sympathize with the Muslim Brotherhood. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the earlier history of the Society of Muslim Ladies is not well known, and that neither the Brotherhood nor other religious associations have done much to publicize it.

76
Recall that al-- had already attained considerable notoriety when the Muslim Broth- ers asked her to join them, and that, earlier, she had been able to continue her preaching activi- ties successfully even after al-- har terminated its affi with her organization.

77
During the period of my fi ldwork (1995-97), it is signifi that other than one small arti- cle in an Egyptian French newspaper (El--Imam 1996 ), I did not encounter any press on the ubiq- uitous women's dacwa movement. Women writers have not addressed this omission either. For ex- ample, when I reviewed the list of Masters and Ph.D. theses produced by women at the College of Islamic Sciences (Kulliyat al--Dirasat al-- miyya lil Banat) at the University of al-- between 1981 and 1996, I found none that addressed the role of women in daewa from either a theoretical or a sociological perspective.

despite the copious literature that currently addresses the techniques and skills of male dueat, hardly any publications focus on women's practice of daewa.78