Islamic Feminist Discourse in the Eyes of the Egyptian Women: A Fieldwork Study

Abstract

This paper discusses the Egyptian Islamic feminist discourse (2012-2014) as viewed by Egyptian professors and students whether they are Muslims or Christians, Activists or non-activists, secular or Islamic feminists or conservatives/ as Islamists. Anthropological method is applied with its main tools: in-depth interviews and focus group. The reaction to contemporary Egyptian Islamic feminist discourse varies in the eyes of Egyptians according to various Islamic feminist issues. This Egyptian discourse has molded some Islamic terminology with secular feminist ones to give it new justification known as Gender Jihad. Most of the issues dealt with in this discourse such as, gender equality, patriarchal dominance, women submission to men, women as God’s Caliphate, Domesticity and women’s private space, veiling and freedom of the body, progressive mandate legislations, and woman imamah in congregational prayers, are discussed in this paper. The focus group was chosen to affirm or refute the Islamic feminist discourse as a kind of evaluation to the data derived from the in-depth interviews. When this Islamic feminists have trespassed the global discourse to a local one: a mixture of Islamic and secular feminist discourse. Finally, the focus group is to analyze the Egyptian discourse as the contemporary Islamic feminism rendering it problematically.