A Quiet Revolution (13 page)

thesizing” past and present legal opinions. In addition, he said, studies of the laws of other societies should also be undertaken, laws that, if they were not in conflict with sharia, could also be drawn on to formulate laws “suitable to the needs of Egyptian society.” No model as yet existed, he pointed out, as to how sharia should be implemented in the contem- porary world. Therefore, when Egypt produced the first model of a sharia-based system of laws, “that model should be flawless so as not to disillusion those in other countries who wished to do the same.”
20

Banned from political activities, the Brotherhood poured all its en- ergies and resources into offering a broad range of charitable services. These included not only schools for the poor, which the Brotherhood had long offered, but also private Islamic schools for the well-to-do. In addition, they set up nurseries and day-care centers for young children, as well as clinics and hospitals, legal aid units, and youth centers.
21
Often such services would be provided at facilities attached to the rapidly grow- ing numbers of mosques that the Muslim Brothers, along with other Is- lamist groups, were funding and building.

Providing for the needs of the poor and donating skills, services, and financial support in the interests of working for justice and for the greater good of society as a whole were always key parts of the Brother- hood’s broad ethos, strategies, and methodologies. Offering services to the poor and to others in times of crisis—earthquakes, floods, fires— has been a mainstay and hallmark of Brotherhood activism, and typical of the work of Islamist groups modeled on the Brotherhood that began

to multiply in the
1970
s. Islamist charities and relief agencies working in

Egypt and around the world also began to multiply. Typically these or- ganizations provided (and still provide) for the needs of poor, distressed, and dispossessed Muslims wherever they are—Palestine, Bosnia, Kash- mir, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. In many such countries, as in Egypt, the services that the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups offered, gen- erally at nominal cost, usually were far better than anything the govern- ment offered, if such services were even available.
22

Such work significantly improved the quality of life and alleviated real material hardships for countless people. It was also a highly effective form of da‘wa; as the members carried out their service to society they ex- emplified the genuineness of their ethical commitments and their dedi-

cation to serving those in need. Their example doubtless drew people to their cause, beliefs, and ways of practicing Islam.

The
1970
s, the decade in which the Muslim Brothers and other Islamist organizations began to flourish, was also the decade in which the Sadat government abandoned the Nasserite principles of socialism, and along with this the socialist policies that Nasser’s government had pursued. Such policies had provided at least a modicum of relief for the poorest and most needy in society, relief that was now withdrawn even as eco- nomic problems were worsening and hardships were growing for many Egyptians.

In place of socialism Sadat initiated what he called an “open-door” policy toward Western capitalism. This had brought in, among other things, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s, along with lavish con- sumer goods—all of these beyond the means of most Egyptians.
23
Only a tiny percentage of the population, some of whom had become im- mensely wealthy through their connections to the government and for- eign agencies, was able to enjoy such luxuries.
24

Scandals and stories of corruption, greed, and profiteering at the upper levels of society were rife. These topics were commonly taken up in the Islamist leaflets and pamphlets, including the Brotherhood’s jour- nal
al-Da‘wa,
which was now available at newsstands on every street cor- ner and at bus and tram stops. As one commentator noted in an issue of
al-Da‘wa,
in a time of corruption and economic crisis, government poli- cies seemed focused on importing “trivial goods like false eyelashes” while neglecting the necessities.
25

Other Islamist organizations likewise expanded through the sev- enties, among them organizations on university campuses that received the covert support of the Sadat government.
26
These organizations were particularly strong in the most competitive and prestigious faculties, such as engineering, medicine, and pharmacy, which in the Nasser era had

been the bastions of left-wing student activism. By
1975
, Islamists had

gained control of important campus committees, among them the Com- mittee for Publications. This allowed them to produce and distribute Is- lamist pamphlets at low cost. Within another couple of years Islamists

had taken over all of the important student leadership committees and positions.
27

Enrollments at Egyptian universities had risen rapidly through the sixties with the availability of free education. They continued to rise at an even faster rate through the
1970
s, creating ever greater pressures on the resources—housing, transport, lecture halls—of cities and of campuses. By
1977
the student population had swelled from two hundred thousand in
1970
to over half a million. The numbers were rising faster—at almost twice the rate—among women than among men.
28

These overcrowded conditions were particularly hard for women. Young female students, often from rural backgrounds, who found it cul- turally uncomfortable and inappropriate to be in close quarters with strange men, now had to join them in crowded lecture halls and in con- gested public transport. All of this was occurring, moreover, during a time of worsening economic conditions, and when lavish consumerism was practiced only by the wealthy few and when many of the goods fill- ing the markets, including clothes and Western fashions, were well be- yond the means of most young women.
29

This was the time that the new veil and Islamic dress—a distinctive and arrestingly different form of dress that always included a head covering or hijab—began to make its appearance on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities. Women in this new style of dress suddenly became a very noticeable presence, particularly, according to a contemporary ob- server, Fadwa El Guindi, immediately following the
1973
October war with Israel.

The ’
73
war had been launched by Egypt and Syria with the object of recapturing the territories taken by Israel in the ’
67
war. It was a sur- prise attack by the Arabs, and the Arab armies were successful at first. Subsequently, the Israeli forces would rally. Still, the Arabs had been suc- cessful enough to shock Israel and the world into realizing that Israel was not, after all, invincible.

In Egypt, this war, launched during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, and also on Yom Kippur—became viewed as a victory, and Sadat was regarded as hero. Islamists would say that the Egyptians had been

successful on this occasion, in contrast to their defeat in
1967
, because this time they had gone to war not for Arab nationalism or some other secular cause but in the cause of religion. This time, it was said, they had gone to war shouting “Allah Akbar!” (God is Greater).
30

Sadat and his supporters also would use religious language and symbolism to describe the war: even the name by which the war would be known in Egypt, the Ramadan War, foregrounded its religious di- mension. Sadat would use the term jihad in referring to this war—a term which again connoted that it was a struggle or battle undertaken in the service of Islam. In addition, Sadat would now begin to refer to himself as al-rais al-mu’min the “Believer President.”
31

El Guindi, who had reported that Islamic dress had suddenly be- come noticeable after the Ramadan War, would be one of a number of scholars to address this phenomenon, as well as other aspects of Islamism, that now, along with the veil, began their rapid spread.

Initially, and through the
1970
s, these developments took everyone by

surprise—it was a turn of events that no historian or student of society had predicted. Contemporaries making up the Egyptian mainstream were also bewildered and sometimes shocked and disturbed by the appearance of the hijab and the new and formidably concealing styles of dress.

By a stroke of fortune, we now have a wealth of material and stud- ies available on this era of dramatic transition in Egypt (and soon also across the Muslim world) out of the Age of No Veiling and into the era of hijab and Islamic dress. The seventies and eighties in the United States saw the rise of women’s studies and feminist scholarship in the Ameri- can academy. The developments that were under way in Egypt regard- ing the returning veil and Muslim women’s seeming “return” to patriarchy became an attractive topic for doctoral students in these fields and an apt testing ground, so it seemed, for the latest American feminist theo- ries and research methods.

Consequently, we have today a series of studies, on which I draw in the following pages, that collectively richly document how women were persuaded to change their dress, whether because they joined the Islamist movement or because they were going along with the current for a vari- ety of reasons. Such studies also document the stages and process by which this transformation in dress and in the practices of Islam took

place in Egypt in that pivotal era. A profound social and religious trans- formation under way in these decades would momentously shape the direction that Islam, Islamic activism, and the veil would take, not only in Egypt but also globally.

Among the first on the scene and keenly observing these developments in the late seventies was El Guindi, who found that the appearance of the hijab was linked to an emergent movement of Islamic religiosity that was at that point essentially confined to student and university life. Women who participated in this movement and took up the hijab, El Guindi found, reported undergoing an “internal transformation.” The experi- ence of this transformation had the effect of making such women feel, El Guindi wrote, separated “psychologically and intellectually from main- stream society.” As they became participants in and affiliated with the movement, the women would now take on not only head covering but also Islamic dress, and they would begin to scrupulously follow the spe- cific “ritual, behavioral and verbal prescriptions” required by the move- ment. Among the most important of these behavioral prescriptions was a strict adherence to the foundational taboo against the mixing of the sexes—a taboo of course signaled by hijab and Islamic dress.
32

The women’s different dress and their observance of required rit- uals and prescriptions created a sense among them that they constituted a separate community from the broader society. Their dress enabled them to easily recognize each other as members of this separate, special community, a community living dispersed among the mainstream and committed to its own quite different mores, values, and ideals.
33

Affiliation or membership in the movement was informal, El Guindi reported. The movement comprehended sororal/fraternal col- lectivities, which offered separate and parallel opportunities for involve- ment and leadership among both men and women. The goals of these groups were broadly reflective of the goals and ideals articulated in the Islamist pamphlets and periodicals that were in wide circulation during this period. Their aim was to bring about the ideal Islamic society based on the Quran and the Sunna (the literature of the early Islamic period re- porting the sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad). They op- posed “Communism, Zionism, and Feminism,” and they understood

Islam as they practiced it to be distinctly different from Islam as followed and practiced by mainstream society, and as different from the Islam of the Establishment.
34

More specifically, they saw Islam as they followed it to be different both from Islam as practiced in mainstream society and from Islam as followed and practiced by al-Azhar—even though this institution was widely regarded at the time by many Sunni Muslims across the world as perhaps the major center of Sunni learning as to the correct beliefs and practices of Islam. This tendency, however, of seeing their Islam as dif- ferent from that of al-Azhar was in sync with the Brotherhood’s per- spective. The Brotherhood did not for the most part share mainstream society’s general respect for al-Azhar. Even early on al-Banna had fa- vored modern interpretations of Islam that addressed the modern needs of Muslims over the scholastic readings that focused on ancient texts em- anating from al-Azhar and its ulama (men of learning). And during the Nasser era, when al-Azhar was brought under government control, ten- sions between al-Azhar and the Brotherhood grew more intense.

Women’s involvement in the hierarchical structures of Islamist or- ganizations represented a new development for Islamic organizations. In the Muslim Brotherhood, the dominant Islamist organization prior to the
1970
s, women had not held organizational roles that entailed re-

sponsibility paralleling those assigned to men. The Brotherhood’s main interest in relation to women had been that of educating them in the principles of Islam and in practices to be cultivated within their own homes. The ideal Muslim woman was seen as a “homebound but reli- giously enlightened woman who left the home only to carry out the task of educating other women.”
35
Now, however, female students were par- ticipating “side by side with men” in the movement’s activities and re- sponsibilities. The Sisters’ hierarchy paralleled that of the Brothers, El Guindi noted, and a sister leader could even serve as a vital link to uni- versity authorities or in relation to the Brothers’ hierarchy.
36