Al-Nahda & the Emergence of Arab Feminist Thought
Introduction
Arab feminism has regularly been portrayed in Western discourse as the manifestation of European influence in the region. Viewing the emergence of regional feminist thought from an Orientalist lens, such scholarship has tended to argue that feminism has been historically irrelevant to Arabs. The constructed image of a veiled woman walking a few steps behind her male guardian has not only existed in prevalent narratives about the region, but also continues to be reproduced in international academic and policy circles, perhaps with more detrimental effects.
A careful analysis of early feminist thought in the Arab World shows that feminism as a framework evolved not from Western influence, but from the unique historical, social, and political context of Arab cultures. Orientalist discourse on the matter lacks a multidimensional approach to study Arab feminism from the 19th to the 20th century. I attempt to challenge these outdated and inaccurate narratives about the emergence of Arab feminism by examining the life and work of Arab scholars during Al-Nahda, or what many refer to as the Arab Renaissance. Feminism was embedded in the reformist agenda of these thinkers, particularly of Butrus Al-Bustani in Beirut, Qasim Amin in Cairo, and Mary Ajami and Naziq Al-Abid in Damascus. As the lives of these intellectuals demonstrate, feminist thought evolved in the sociopolitical context of Al-Nahda through attempts at the modernization, rather than the Westernization, of Arab societies. These cities were also the main centers for intellectual thought where Arab feminism first emerged, a close study of which is crucial to decolonize and reclaim existing narratives around women’s rights and empowerment in the region.
Challenging Narratives About Arab Feminism
A multitude of scholars from the region made significant strides in challenging Western approaches to Arab feminism, emphasizing that it is not merely a reflection and emulation of European thought. Instead, feminism is “bound to the national context which produces it.”1 Arab feminism is inherently reflective of the region’s sociopolitical context, and cannot have persisted if it was a superfluous imitation of Western values. Historian Margot Badran notes that Arab women shaped feminist discourse from their “own perspective and experience.”2 She goes further to argue that “the West is not a patrimonial home of feminism from which all feminisms derive and must be measured,” concluding that “feminism(s) in the Middle East originate in the Middle East.”3
Furthermore, scholar Nawar Golley notes that Western feminists have described Arab women’s lives as being “so different from theirs that they cannot possibly develop any kind of feminism.”4 Goley challenges the colonialist representation of Arab women and emphasizes that feminism is not “alien to Arab culture.”5 Lila Abu-Lughod also accuses Western discourse of adopting an Orientalist paradigm when tackling women’s studies in the Arab World. She writes, “Instead of political and historical explanations, experts [on Arab feminism are] being asked to give religious and cultural ones…recreating an imaginative geography of West versus East.”6 Abu-Lughod criticizes the Western practice of defining Arab women solely through their differences with their counterparts in the West, and of characterizing their cultural setting to be inherently oppressive.
In the context of this debate, it is crucial to reconsider the period in which Al-Nahda took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and how scholars from the Arab World sowed the seeds of the emergence of Arab feminism. Al-Nahda was marked by a declining Ottoman Empire and a transforming Arab region characterized by a rapid shift in social, national, and class affiliations. In this period, intellectuals pursuing the modernization of their society introduced early feminist thought to their readers during what was known as the “liberal age.”7
It is important to note that although Al-Nahda thinkers may have drawn explicit or implicit inspiration from the Western enlightenment era in their work, for instance by referencing the French Revolution and admiring European models of governance, their work puts a great emphasis on self-perception outside the Ottoman Empire and the West as a whole. As scholar Abdulrazzak Patel puts it, Al-Nahda “has been a long and a persistent attempt towards the merger of Western modernity and Arab tradition in a determined effort to achieve progress and civilization, while preserving identity and authenticity.”8 Arab thinkers sought to promote industrialization, which had defined the European experience in the 19th century, while advancing the key pillars of Arab societies on their own terms, not in pursuit of replicating European development.
Despite encompassing different ideologies and affiliations, Al-Nahda intellectuals, both men and women alike, strove to embed feminist thought in their reformist paradigms. In fact, the inclusion of men in early feminist discourse in the Arab World is more palpable than in today’s regional discourse on women’s rights. This reflects the historical and sociocultural context of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Reformers of that epoch, such as Rifa’at Al-Tahtawi, Ahmad Faris Al-Shidyaq, Francis Marrash, Ibrahim Al-Yaziji, Mouhammad Abduh, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Kawakibi, and Rashid Rida, have consistently promoted the crucial role of women in the development of their societies. As Fatima Mernissi, a prominent Arab feminist, points out, “There are huge differences between Arab and European women’s movements. The Arab women’s movement is not just driven by women, but by women and men. The women’s movement in the West is just driven by women, men have no business there.”9 Contrary to claims made through Western discourse, history shows that a myriad of intellectual men in the Arab World advocated for women’s empowerment and equality. More importantly, their quest was not a reproduction of Western feminism, rather, it was rooted in their progressive paradigms towards state and nation-building.
Butrus Al-Bustani In Beirut
The late 19th century highlights a critical juncture in women’s rights movements in the region. Particularly in Syria and Lebanon, early feminist discourse stepped to the fore during this period. Al-Nahda intelligentsia commonly referred to women’s empowerment as a vital element in reforming the state and society. One such scholar is Butrus Al-Bustani. Commonly referred to as AlMou’llim or the educator, he is regarded as “one of the great luminaries of Al-Nahda in Syria” due to his commitment to the country’s nationalist cause and to women’s empowerment.10 An examination of Al-Bustani’s work demonstrates that the emergence of Arab feminism interplays with the nationalist and anti-colonialist sentiments of the time.
Al Bustani’s scholarship was informed by his upbringing and social standing, which contributed to his early feminist views. He was born into a prominent family in Dibbiyyah, to the north of the city of Sidon, and studied at the prestigious Ayn Warqa school in Mount Lebanon. There, he studied theology, philosophy, literature, history, and languages, mastering Arabic, Latin, Syriac, and Italian simultaneously. After graduating, he moved to Beirut, where he launched journals, intellectual salons, and sociopolitical associations. Through his intellectual work, he crafted a shrewd balance between secular and religious affiliations, Syrianism and Arabism, and pride in Arab heritage and modernization. The progress of Al-Watan, that is, the homeland, and advocating for women’s rights were central to his philosophy. As one of the very first thinkers to construct a sense of Syrianism and a sentiment of feminism in his country, he focused much of his work on women’s empowerment and attempted to expand women’s roles in society.11
According to Al-Bustani, the principal avenue for women’s empowerment was education. His passion manifested in his renowned lecture entitled Khitab fi Ta’llim Al-Nisa, that is, “On the Education of Women,” which sought to introduce feminist theories to both female and male audiences.12 In 1849, when “no one dared to speak about women” in the public sphere, Al-Bustani boldly moved the needle on women’s rights discourse.13 In a lecture delivered at the Syrian Society of Sciences and Arts, he highlighted the crucial roles that women should play in society, and the necessity of education as an essential tool for women to attain their rights.14
Al-Bustani also advocated for engaging women in social and political spheres. Printing and publishing were the main tools for Al-Nahda’s intellectuals to circulate new ideas and to test hypotheses in such a transformational era. One of the most famed journals he established was Majjalat Al-Jinnan, which was first released in 1870. It featured both male and female writers, and was the first pan-Arab journal in the Ottoman Empire to offer an analytical discussion of political, cultural, social, and literary matters written in Arabic.15 Influential female intellectuals, such as Maryana Marrash, a poet and a novelist from Aleppo, were frequent contributors to Al-Jinnan. In her writing, Marrash called upon female readers to advocate for their rights, and regularly highlighted the significance of women’s education in her published works.16 By creating a platform for feminist thought to reach the wider public, Al-Bustani enabled the central role of women to become a mainstream aspiration.
It is important to note that Al-Bustani’s work was informed by his wife Rahil Ata, with whom he shared reformist ideas. Rahil was known as the “wife and mother of Al-Nahda,” and played a significant role alongside Al-Bustani. She was instrumental in starting Al-Maddrasa Al-Wattaniyya, that is, the National School, which was the first educational institution in Ottoman Syria to offer a secular curriculum, and to welcome students from various religious backgrounds.17 Acting as the matron to the boarding school, which only housed male students, Rahil strove to break down stereotyped visions regarding a woman’s role in a male-dominated institution. Later on, she started a girls’ school in Hassbiyah, a small town to the south of Beirut. As scholar Christine B. Linder, who produced extensive research on Rahil, notes, “Rahil and Butrus mutually supported each other both ideologically and tangibly, in their work and marriage.”18
In this light, the focal points of Al-Bustani’s reformist project were education, national unity, and women’s empowerment. These issues were interdependent in his rationale. He viewed the rise of women’s role in society as instrumental to the wider project of nation-building in Syria and Lebanon.
Qasim Amin In Cairo
As exhibited by the life and work of Al-Bustani, the end of the 19th century inspired new models of nationalism and feminism in the Arab World. Just as in Beirut, feminist thought evolved in Egypt, in parallel with the country’s wider reformist agenda. Among the most renowned feminist thinkers of the Al-Nahda period was Qasim Amin from Cairo, a jurist and a prominent reformer. More than a century after his death, Amin’s ideas remain relevant to contemporary debates on Arab feminism, and continue to be controversial in some contexts. On the one hand, Amin has been accused of assuming a position on women’s rights that is a mere imitation of Western models, as well as of adopting a colonial perspective on this front. On the other hand, some scholars view Amin as Muhrarer Al-Mar’aa, or the liberator of women in Egypt.19 Within this academic debate, multiple accounts have examined Amin’s early feminist work in Egypt, however, these tend to prioritize Orientalist elements and the social stratification of Egyptian women as a point of departure. By doing so, contemporary literature neglects the nationalist and reformist threads that characterize Amin’s work.
Amin’s scholarship developed during a transformational era in the history of Egypt. He came from an aristocratic Ottoman background, his father being an Ottoman of Kurdish origin, and his mother an Egyptian from the upper class. He was educated at a prestigious school in Egypt and traveled to France for four years to complete a degree in law. The Egypt in which Amin was born and grew up in, however, differs from the one he returned to after finishing his studies in 1885. Amin’s return coincided with the transfer of political power in North Africa from the Ottomans to the British, a period marked by the flourishing of nationalist movements, which came to characterize and greatly influence his thinking. A revolutionary and a nationalist, he frequently contributed to newspapers and built a close network with national figures like Mohamed Abdu, Rashid Rida, and Saad Zaghloul. It was within this context that Amin published articles in Al-Mu’ayyad, a daily newspaper, discussing various social and political issues, and arguing against colonialism and the anti-Muslim rhetoric of the West. In 1894, Amin published his first book in French, Les Egyptiens: Réponse à M. le Duc d’Harcourt, in defense of the Egyptian cultural and social identity. He criticized and argued against Duc d’Harcourt’s account in L’Egypte et Les Egyptiens, which depicts Egyptians as belonging to a “naturally backward” nation.
Although Amin was a defender of Egyptian society when writing for Western readers, he was a vigorous critic of its prevalent rhetoric when writing for Arab audiences. Women’s empowerment was integral to Amin’s reformist and anti-orientalist logic. He wrote that “in a weak and servile nation, the word ‘no’ is little used.”20 He wrote, “It would be disgraceful for us to assume that we are perfect, to deny our shortcomings, to claim our traditions are the best in any historic time, and to resist the truth.”21 He encouraged Egyptian readers to come to terms with the constructed role of women in society, instead of uncritically maintaining traditional gender dynamics that did not leave room for women to flourish intellectually and socially.
He strove to reform political and cultural structures, which for him, hindered the modernization of society and the progress of the nation. In his seminal works, Amin illuminated that Nahdat Al-Umma, the awakening of the nation, cannot be achieved without empowering women. He maintained that promoting women’s empowerment was good for Egypt as a whole, and was indicative of a virtuous society.22 He thus presented feminist thought as a path to societal transformation, a thread of the nationalist sentiment that heightened with the arrival of the British in Egypt.
Mary Ajami And Naziq Al-Abid In Damascus
The first decades of the 20th century witnessed a remarkable transformation in the Arab World, as territories of the Ottoman Empire, then termed “the sick man of Europe,” were divided between European colonial states. Building on the development of feminist thought in the wider region, Mary Ajami and Naziq Al-Abid emerged as pioneers in the field in the early 20th century, and as unique figures in Syria’s modern history. Ajami was a nurse by training, but was also a journalist and a political activist who was born to a middle-class family in the Old City of Damascus. She adopted secular and pan-Syrian sentiments during the early years of her education, which was a result of how forward-thinking her city was for its time. The main essence of Ajami’s feminist thought interplays with the struggle against colonizers, first the Ottomans and then the French, and was embedded in her progressive and reformist aspirations for Syria.23 She advocated for the emancipation of women and strove to achieve social justice for minority groups.
In this regard, Ajami pursued avenues such as print and education, aiming to construct a sense of feminism in society and to provoke a “feminist awakening” among Syrian women. In 1910, Ajami established Al-Arous, The Bride, the first feminist magazine in the Arab World. Al-Arous was edited by Ajami and a small team of female editors, and discussed women’s issues in political, cultural, literary, fictional, and medical spheres.24 In the first edition of Al-Arous, Ajami elaborates on the reason behind choosing the magazine’s name, saying: “Our Bride [referring to the magazine] is a bride dedicated to the service of her society. It is for those who believe in the power of women.”25
Moreover, similar to Al-Bustani and Rahil Ata, Ajami considered education as a primary tool to empower women. She established a girls’ school in Damascus, where she taught a course on women’s rights. In 1920, Ajami instituted the Damascene Women’s Club, which turned into an intellectual hub for feminist discussion and political activism.26 The group aimed to challenge the social restrictions imposed on women, particularly those from the upper and middle class, and aimed to engage them in the struggle against “oppressors,” be it the Ottomans, the French, or even men more broadly. In the same year, Ajami petitioned the Syrian National Congress to permit Syrian women to vote. In the aftermath of the French occupation, Ajami’s steadfast nationalist struggle intensified. Despite the fact that the French authorities stopped the publication of Al-Arous, Ajami and her feminist circle distributed pamphlets in Damascus covertly. In one pamphlet Ajami passionately writes, “Who said that our nation does not deserve to be independent and that we cannot rule ourselves…each of us should work to awake nationalism in the heart of Syria’s sons and daughters because even if France is ruling us now, [France] cannot make us French.”27 Incorporating feminist views into the national discourse, Ajami strove to empower women while introducing sociopolitical reforms in the state and society.
Naziq Al-Abid, who was a decade younger than Mary Ajami, shared the same passion for women’s empowerment and the same sense of patriotic commitment to building an independent Syria. Al-Abid’s feminist work and activism echo that of Ajami, and, to a large extent, represent the historical era in which feminism was evolving. Born in Damascus to an upper-class family of Kurdish origin, she received a high-level education in Damascus, Iraq, and Astana, and was exposed to a multitude of intellectual traditions. The main themes of Al-Abid’s writing unfolded through political activism.28 She strove to trigger women’s awakening and to engage Syrian women in the political, economic, and social spheres.
To this end, Al-Abid established a women’s club named Nour Al-Fayha, or the Light of Fayha (a name that refers to Damascus), during World War I, which attracted Syrian women from upper-class backgrounds. Like Ajami, the concept of Al-Watan is integral to Al-Abid’s aspirations, as she emphasized that women should play a key role in liberating and building Syria. Al-Abid attempted to include women in the struggle against the French occupation and in the quest to create a Syrian Arab Kingdom, as she was a passionate supporter of the late King Faisal. Al-Abid also founded the magazine Nour Al-Fayha in 1918, a “feminist, literary, and moral” magazine.29 The main aim of the magazine was to be a platform for “men and women to understand each other and arrive at truths worth expressing, and to lift this wretch nation from the ruin of misery.”30
Nour Al-Fayha discussed political matters, family issues, poetry, and history. The magazine also dedicated a special section to feature stories of powerful women in the Arab World as inspirational figures. In an article titled “Oh, Girl of Homeland, Where Are You?” in the May 1920 issue, Al-Abid urged Syrian women to rebel against colonial occupation, as well as against the social context that denies women their rights. She wrote, “Rise and enlighten the homeland with your intelligence… Leave your hiding place [your home] because your homeland needs you… Do not say that you need a long time [to be able] to fulfill your national duties.”31 She emphasized that the continuation of outdated practices, for the sake of “preserving traditions,” was bound to stand in the way of women’s empowerment.
Like Ajami, Al-Abid’s work correlated with her nationalist discourse and evolved within the anti-colonial context of the 20th century. In this light, a legendary photograph of Al-Abid in military uniform was taken ahead of the Mayssalun Battle in July 1926, when the Syrian army fought against French troops a few kilometers away from Damascus. Al-Abid bravely joined soldiers at the frontlines as the head of Red Star, a humanitarian association, to help injured soldiers. She became known as a heroic role model and figure in Syria, and effectively disrupted outdated archetypes about women’s place in society.
Conclusion
The aforementioned cases illustrate that the writers of Al-Nahda challenged the traditional status of women in Arab societies and were determined to advance women’s rights as part of the broader reformist project. Their attempts generated the first stream of feminist thought in the Arab World. It interplayed with nationalism and the struggle against colonizers, whether the Ottoman Empire or various European powers. One cannot neglect that Arab feminism during that historical period suffered from various flaws, such as being exclusive to elitist circles and adopting a top-to bottom approach. As the upbringing of these scholars make evident, they belonged to privileged strata in their respective societies, highlighting that feminist thought was a product of the privileged upper-class.
That said, the advancement of women’s empowerment during Al-Nahda was impactful and unprecedented in nature, and should not be underestimated. As a multitude of grassroots movements emerge, feminism in the Arab World today challenges this historical top-to-bottom approach. Nevertheless, Arab women are still struggling with underrepresentation and misrepresentation in global academic discourse, which tends to categorize them according to their color, class, or religion, rather than examining the question of the status of women through the right historical, cultural, and sociopolitical nuances and frameworks. Arab academic discourse should consider undertaking multidimensional and interdisciplinary research on Arab feminist movements to counter these dominating and enduring narratives, and perhaps even follow Qasim Amin’s advice in simply saying “no.”
To access the endnotes, download the full report.
The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author, and do not represent Fiker Institute.
