A Quiet Revolution (19 page)

In the immediate aftermath of the
1952
revolution all seemed well.

Only days before al-Ghazali had received a visit from Major General Muhammad Naguib, one of the leaders of the revolution. He had been accompanied by Prince Abdallah al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

Then, in the wake of the alleged assassination attempt on Nasser by the Brotherhood, began the wave of imprisonments and executions of Brotherhood members, including many of its leaders. Al-Ghazali now felt that she had been “drafted into the service of the Islamic call” in re- sponse to the devastated families—children, wives, widows, elderly, now

homeless parents—of the men who had been rounded up and were suffering imprisonment, torture, and execution. People needed food, clothing, shelter, and there were rents to be paid, school supplies to be provided. Organizing donations and distributions, mobilizing networks of support and communication and connecting with the leadership whether in prison or outside it, al-Ghazali’s work was key to the suste- nance of the organization through these times.

Through this period al-Ghazali played a key role in the discussions among the Brotherhood’s leadership. She was in close touch with Qutb, even when he was in prison, through his sisters. In the seminars and Is- lamic study groups that she led through this period, made up of young men who met at her home, the readings were often Qutb’s writings, in- cluding
In the Shade of the Quran
and drafts of
Milestones,
which Qutb was completing in prison and which his sister Hamida brought to them. “When we had finished reading what she brought us, she would bring more,” wrote al-Ghazali. These were “sweet glorious days,” she wrote, “and Allah’s bounties passed by while we studied and taught ourselves, as well as prepared our youth for da‘wah.”
34

Al-Ghazali also was collaborating with Hasan al-Hudaybi, who had succeeded al-Banna as Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood, and with Abdel Fattah Ismail, a major figure in the Brotherhood who would be her close collaborator until his execution, along with Qutb’s, in
1966
.

It was in these years that al-Ghazali and the Brotherhood leader- ship would devise their plan to pursue the program of Islamic educa- tion. All of their meetings had to be carried out in secret because of the government’s ban on the organization. But, as al-Ghazali wrote—evi- dently rebutting the accusation that they had been plotting violence and the overthrow of the government—“I call on God as my witness that our program consisted of nothing but the education of the Mus- lim individual so he would know his duty towards his Lord, and the creation of Muslim society, which will of necessity be separate from pagan society.”
35

In
1964
the government ordered al-Ghazali to dissolve her organi-

zation, which, she said, had a countrywide membership of
3
million women.
36
Shortly before this she had been the target of an assassination attempt, and in
1965
she was arrested and charged with complicity in a

plot to overthrow the government. Qutb and Ismail, also arrested, were sentenced to death and would be executed. Al-Ghazali was sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor. After enduring “six brutal years,” during which she was subjected to horrifying tortures, al-Ghazali was released as a result of an amnesty issued by Sadat.
37

Al-Ghazali would describe some of her prison experiences in her memoir,
Ayam min Hayati
(literally “days of my life”), titled
Return of the Pharaoh: Memoir in Nasir’s Prison
in the English translation. In this book, more reflexive hagiography (as the memoir was aptly dubbed by Euben and Zaman) than autobiography, al-Ghazali describes the torture and suffering she endured during her interrogations in ways that establish “her insight, endurance, authority and stature as unique among women and superior even to that of most men.” She also describes the mystical visions she experienced, visions that affirm her closeness to the Prophet as well as her importance to the Brotherhood as equal to that of al- Hudaybi, Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood.

After her release al-Ghazali resumed her work as an Islamic activist and educator. Interviewed in
1985
by Kristin Helmore of the
Christian Science Monitor,
in “her fashionable Cairo apartment,” al-Ghazali ap- peared dressed in white robes, “with only her face, hands, and sandal-

clad feet uncovered.” She had clearly specified the subjects she was willing to speak about and those that she was not, and she displayed, according to her interviewer, the “iron determination of one who has given her every waking moment to a cause, and the inner stillness of one who is wholly convinced that she is right.”
38

In answer to one of Helmore’s questions—concerning the differ- ences between a “devout Muslim woman and one who is more modern”

—al-Ghazali eyed Helmore’s “pink, short-sleeved dress sternly” and said that modern women, “like you, for example: If you don’t go back to your religion and dress as I do, you’ll go to hell. Even if you’re a good Muslim and you pray and do what is right, if you dress the way you do all your good deeds will be canceled out.”

When asked about her activities and about Islam and women she replied, “Islam is best, because it makes women and men equal. Since I was
18
years old I have had the role of making people understand what Islam means to women and what women are in relation to Islam. I am

now
68
and I am still doing the same thing.” Al-Ghazali said that a woman had the right to decide whether she wanted to marry, and that she had the right to practice birth control—“It’s up to her,” al-Ghazali said, “but the husband and wife have to agree.” She also said that a woman had the right to work in any field she chose: “in politics, in agri- culture, commerce, anything. But her main role is to be a wife and mother. As long as she maintains both roles, she can also work.”

Al-Ghazali’s view on a woman’s right to work provided she fulfills her duties as wife and mother represented the common Islamist posi- tion on the subject in the
1980
s and beyond. Still, al-Ghazali’s complex viewpoints, positions, and commentary, as well as her own actions, on

this general subject are worthy of full and extended study—study which they have not yet received. Nor indeed have al-Ghazali’s life and work been the subjects of the substantial and exhaustive study that a figure of her importance—to the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, the history of Egypt, the history of the Islamic Resurgence, and the history of Islam worldwide—should receive.

Only a comprehensive study of this nature might fully cast light on, among other things, the questions and debates that have surfaced around her positions regarding women. For, while formally espousing the common Islamist position (as of the
1980
s) as to women’s rights to

pursue careers, provided they fulfill their obligations to husband and family, al-Ghazali herself divorced her first husband (having first ensured that her Islamic marriage contract specified her right to divorce) because marriage “took up all my time and kept me from my mission” and be- cause her husband disapproved of her Islamist activities. When marry- ing a second time, al-Ghazali stipulated to her future husband that she would leave him if marriage prevented her from “continuing in my struggle in the path of God... the struggle to which [I] have devoted [myself ] from the age of eighteen.”
39

Al-Ghazali also describes in her memoirs how, in the fifties and thereafter, her husband would admit male callers at all hours, then call her or wake her up to meet with them before himself retiring. She re- counts a conversation with him in which she explained at the outset of

their marriage that she was a woman who, “at the age of
18
, gave her

whole life to Allah and dawah. In the event of any clash between the mar-

riage contract’s interests and that of dawah, our marriage will end, but dawah will always remain rooted in me.” She accepted, she explained to her husband, “that ordering me to listen to you is amongst your rights.” However, she went on, “Allah is greater than ourselves and His dawah is dearer to us than ourselves. Besides we are living in a dangerous phase of dawah.”
40

In this “dangerous” phase for the Islamist cause, the work of da‘wa and of establishing Islam, for women who constituted the Islamist lead- ership or vanguard, clearly took precedence over duties to husband and children that pertained in more normal times. Once Islamic rule was established, al-Ghazali also explained in her book, “women’s position will be at its proper place, whereby they can educate the men of this Ummah.”
41
In line with this thinking, al-Ghazali considered the fact that she had no children a “great blessing.”
42

Ghada Talhami, whose research regarding Islamist views of women’s roles in the movement I discuss in chapter
6
, points out that the notion that the obligation to work in the service of Islam took priority over other obligations for women as well as men who were part of the Islamist van-

guard was among the views espoused by some Islamists. And as Talhami noted, al-Ghazali refers to herself in her memoir as part of the van- guard.
43

Al-Ghazali’s second husband died while she was in prison after hav- ing been compelled to divorce her following her arrest or face impris- onment himself. She died in
2005
at eighty-eight. Throughout she had continued to work for the cause of Islam, as speaker, writer, and always

as teacher.
44

The
1970
s would close with an event that would dramatically mark the emergence of Islam as a political force in the modern world: the Iranian Revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, which toppled the shah and instituted the Islamic Republic of Iran. This would be one of those mo- ments when the veil’s meaning as emblem of challenge and confronta- tion between Islam and the West seemed to vividly and forcefully break into the foreground. The Iranian Revolution was not only anti-shah but also anti-Western and particularly anti-American. Through the early days of the revolution, and especially through the American hostage cri-

sis, images of the chadors of Iranian women (the enveloping covering that became widespread after the new Islamic government imposed the requirement of veiling) and images of burning American flags became globally familiar signs of the new Iranian Islamic order.
‌

Despite the real divide between the Shi’i Islam of Iran and the Sunni Islam that was dominant in the Arab world and across much of the world, the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran delivered an exhila- rating boost of hope to Islamists everywhere. (Nor was it only Islamists for whom the Revolution spelled new hope: the French philosopher Michel Foucault also welcomed it and flew to Iran to interview its lead- ers.)
45
The Revolution’s success was read by Islamists as a sign that pow- erful authoritarian governments and unjust rulers such as the shah of Iran—even those allied, as he had been, with great world powers such as the United States—could be brought down by a popular uprising and by people united in their opposition to tyranny. Soon after, of course, Anwar Sadat—viewed as a “pharaoh” and an unjust ruler by his assas- sin—would be killed.

Zainab al-Ghazali, in
1981
, was among those who supported the

Iranian Revolution, as she stated in an interview. Interviewed again a few years later, however, she was now opposed to it because of its violence, declaring that the regime the revolutionaries had instituted “was not really an Islamic state.”

In contrast to the Iranian regime, which imposed veiling, the quiet revolution that the Sunni Islamists were setting in motion in Egypt was seemingly rather implanting in women the will and desire to wear hijab. In the following two chapters I explore the ongoing spread of the veil and the apparent willingness and even active desire of an ever-growing number of women to wear it.

•
5
•
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The
1980
s

Exploring Women’s Motivations

B

y the mid-
1980
s it was clear that deep changes were under way and that the Islamist trend was not destined to fade away. Signs that a “quiet conversion to a new way of life” was in progress were in evidence everywhere. The numbers of mosques multi-

plied—by the early eighties as many as four thousand new mosques were estimated to have been built in Egypt.
1
As the architectural landscapes of cities changed, so did their auditory landscapes. In many Cairo neigh- borhoods the call to prayer now came from several minarets at once and typically through loudspeakers. As many have noted (and as I heard for myself ), gone were the days of
adans
(calls to prayer) chanted simply by the unamplified human voice blending with the sounds of the city or quietly marking the dawn.
2

The look of the streets was changing, too, as dress and fashion changed. Some men took to wearing beards as well as baggier, looser clothes and long shirts, sometimes even
djellabas
. But changes in men’s dress were less common and certainly less eye-catching than in women’s dress, as more and more women adopted hijab and/or Islamic attire. The changes for women seemed to be more symbolically charged and to be unambiguously signaling the steady gains that Islamism was making.

For Islamists, the hijab’s growing presence was doubtless an en- couraging sign of their spreading influence. For women of the Egyptian

mainstream, however, who still made up the unveiled majority, and for men opposed to the Islamist trend, the hijab was seen as a sign of the growing strength of people opposed, or seemingly opposed, to their own way of life, and an augury of possibly unwelcome and even menacing changes to come.