Political Islam and Qasim Amin - Essay Example

Political Islam The 21st century woman has come a long way to claim her position among men and women of the society in which she lives. This is a position that she cherishes given that it has not come so easily. History has had it rough on women in such a way that every effort made by a woman has always been thwarted by man’s ego. A man’s ego is occasionally flanked by other vices like battering, parroting, and ineffective role-play as the head of family. According to Qasim Amin, Men have slammed and shut the doors of opportunity in women’s faces, thus hindering them from making a living. As a consequence, the only recourse left to a woman was to be a wife or a whore1. Whether this is an overstatement largely remains to the interpretation of an individual differently. Nevertheless, there is one thing for sure that many arguments propounded by men will be filled by biases and stereotyping. Paradoxically, the society we live in has come to agree with some of these fallacies conceived about women. Ironically, most people normally find solution in religion but Islam as a dominant religion offers so little protection for the woman. Qasim wonders why the same men would go such a long way to demean women. He observes that although men tend to discriminate against women based on their ignorance2, their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters are not included in the same category. Qasim goes on to ponder whether a man’s happiness can be complete without women. Qasim also notes that out of their ego, men deprive themselves of the greatest delight in the world3 Scholars seem to have noticed that the most affected person is a woman who confesses Islam as faith. It should be noted that Islam has only been used here as an example but not as to attack its dogma. Mahfouz notes in the book Palace Walk, the plight of women especially under brutal and irresponsible husband. According to Mahfouz, husbands have failed to play their roles as husbands and consequently left women at the temptation of developing bad habit to supplement the missing part of their married life. Mahfouz notes on the very first page how women would do anything just to keep their men happy. The first victim of abuse Mahfouz presents is Amina. Amina has no alarm clock to wake her up at midnight to wait for her husbands return. She has a duty to welcome back her husband who allegedly goes for evening entertainment every evening4. It is past midnight and as a good wife, Amina struggles to keep awake so that after she has served her husband food she can go to bed. On personal qualities, Mahfouz presents Amina as a beautiful and obedient woman. She was married at the age of fourteen, implying that her education came abruptly to an end. Nonetheless, one cannot fail to notice that Amina was a bright woman. Her effort to try and correct her husband had not been taken kindly. The first time Amina had objected to her husbands night outs, his response had been to seize him by the ears and yell at her that he was the master. He had said, “I am a man. I am the one who commands and forbids. I will not accept any criticism of my behavior. All I will ask of you is to obey me. Don’t force me to discipline you.”5 Since then, Amina had opted to leave that issue unaddressed. However, for how long was she going to assume that all is well when her husband induced that through fear and a show of power? In fact, Amina became convinced that true manliness, tyranny, and staying out until midnight were common characteristics of single entity. Like most women whose rights were annexed by their men, Amina was already between the devil and the deep sea. Mahfouz has portrayed Jalila the vocalist as irresistible. She easily goes with different men at different times, a perfect picture of beauty who was herself a victim of tyranny of manliness. It is ironical that even Sultana attends the performances, which were in many cases characterized by immorality. For Jalila, it was business as usual as long as the fire was burning. It is difficult to categorize Jalila as a whore given that she had her own standards. She tried as much as possible to have one man at a time as long as the flame was still burning. Jalila on her personal trait was an open personality. With good education, Jalila would have made good use of her talent as a respectable woman if not for the society that thwarted any development towards the girl child’s education and emancipation. At the wedding6, Mahfouz portrays Jalila’s open personality when she made a comment which although left many people feeling uncomfortable, she herself did not want to beat about the bush concerning it. The male chauvinist society had literally robbed them of all their rights as women and all that was left seemed to rotate only around anything that would bring pleasure. Again, pleasure was for men, not women. If there were some hierarchies then women were lower in that chain. Zubayda’s house has been portrayed as one of the places where women assemble to comfort themselves with music. Men also come to be entertained, though people are entertained differently. Jalila teases some of them and even becomes affectionate with them. She does not mind committing adultery in the line of duty7. It is only Amina8 who seems to disapprove of the waywardness of Jalila. When Jalila begins to entertain her gusts with music in Zubayda’s house, the tunes of the tambourine is captivating and everyone forgets himself. Drinking and singing is all that men appreciate women for but that alone does not cater for their needs. Mahfouz portrays music drink and entertainment as elements that the society has adopted as a weapon to undermine the rights of women so that they are forever under the men’s custody. However, the society is at risk of moral decay given even young children are aware of the dirty acts of their parents. Qasim Amin on his part asserts that men violate women’s rights because of the natural implication of women’s weakness. He says that when women were weak, men crushed their rights, despised them, treated them with contempt, and stomped on their personality9. He proceeds to argue that the fact that a woman had a very low position in the family as a daughter, wife, or mother has aggravated the situation today in the sense that the past has not been completely done away with. A debatable clash between what was socially accepted then in the society and what is being associated with Western culture is what has been responsible for the slow pace of addressing issues related to women’s rights. However, it should be noted that women, irrespective of culture or religion, have their rights that must be respected. It is time we lived in the 21st Century by deeds, appreciating that old is gone and new has come. Bibliography Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk, (Cairo: The American University Press in Cairo, 1956), 1-272. Qasim Amin, The Liberation of Women and The New Woman: Two Documents in the History of Egyptian Feminism (Cairo: American University Press Cairo, 2000), 1-34, Translated by Samiha Sidhon Peterson American University Press. Read More