Jordanian islamists and the agenda for women: Between discourse and practice

Middle Eastern Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 140-158

  Taraki, Lisa ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0011182271     PISSN: 00263206     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00263209608701095     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. The author wishes to thank the Ford Foundation for a grant under its Middle East Research Competition which made it possible to take time off from teaching to conduct field research and complete most of the writing of this article.
2. This article focuses primarily on the Society of the Muslim Brethren (Jama'at al-lkhwan al-Muslimun, hereafter the Ikhwan), which is the largest Islamist force in Jordan.
3. S. Zuhur, Revealing Reveiling: Islamist Gender Ideology in Contemporary Egypt (Albany, NY, 1992), p.107.
4. B.F. Stowasser, 'Liberated Equal or Protected Dependent? Contemporary Religious Paradigms on Women's Status in Islam', Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol.9, No.3 (1987), p.276.
5. Ibid.
6. V.J. Hoffman-Ladd, 'Polemics on the Modesty and Segregation of Women in Contemporary Egypt', International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.19, No.1 (1987), p.43.
7. M.S. al-Zumayli, Libas al-Mar'a wa Zinatuha fi al-Fiqh al-Islami: [Women's Dress and Adornment in Islamic Jurisprudence] (Amman, 1987), pp.8-9.
8. Hoffman-Ladd has observed much the same about Zaynab al-Ghazali, the foremost Islamist woman leader in the Arab world. She notes that even al-Ghazali, 'whose own life demonstrates an unusual activism - she divorced her first husband because he objected to her activities outside the home, and she offers [her] readers . . . historical examples of Muslim women as warriors for the faith in the public sphere - says it is contrary to woman's fitra [nature] to work outside the home, and it is a woman's first duty to be a wife and mother.' See V. Hoffman-Ladd, op. cit., p.41.
9. Mahdiyya al-Zumayli, interview with author, Amman, 31 March 1992.
10. Ziyad Abu-Ghanima, interview with author, Amman, 26 October 1991. Abu-Ghanima was the spokesman of the Islamic Bloc during the 1989 parliamentary elections, and served as editor of the Ikhwan newspaper al-Ribat for some time.
11. Al-Risala al-Intikhabiyya: Kutlat al-Haraka al-Islamiyya [Election Message from the Islamic Movement Bloc], Amman, n.d. This document was circulated during the 1989 parliamentary elections campaign.
12. From the charter of the Hizb al-'Amal al-Islami (Islamic Action Front Party), founded in 1992 at the initiative of the Ikhwan and with a majority of Ikhwan members. See H. Hurani et al. (eds), Dalil al-Hayat al-Hizbiyya fi al-Urdun: Hizb Jabhat al-'Amal al-Islami [A Guide to Party Life in Jordan: the Islamic Action Front Party] (Amman, 1993), p.20.
13. From the charter of the Hizb al-'Amal al-Islami (Islamic Action Front Party), founded in 1992 at the initiative of the Ikhwan and with a majority of Ikhwan members. See H. Hurani et al. (eds), Dalil al-Hayat al-Hizbiyya fi al-Urdun: Hizb Jabhat al-'Amal al-Islami [A Guide to Party Life in Jordan: the Islamic Action Front Party] (Amman, 1993), p.20.
14. Among the important buzzwords in the Islamist gender discourse are ikhtilat, sufur (which literally means uncovering the face, but which has come to denote going bareheaded), and tabarruj (literally, display of the female body, which is equated with wearing Western dress, using makeup, and going bareheaded).
15. M. al-Mansur, Hikmat al-Hijab [The Wisdom of the Hijab] (Amman, 1988), pp.21-2.
16. Ibid., pp.27-8.
17. H. Quffa, Al-Muslima al-'Asriyya ila Ayn [Whither the Modern Muslim Woman?] (al-Zarqa', 1989), p.95.
18. Ibid., p. 141.
19. M. Al-Mansur, op. cit., pp. 19-20.
20. The author refers to a book by Imam al-Mundhiri, in four volumes.
21. H. Quffa, op. cit., pp. 143-67.
22. In fact, Barbara Stowasser has observed that modernist, conservative, and fundamentalist literature all lacks local specificity and consistently speaks to the problematic of the 'Muslim woman', not that of the Egyptian or Jordanian or Turkish Muslim woman. See B. Stowasser, op. cit., p.262.
23. The first issue is actually numbered zero (10 December 1990). Several issues seem to have been censored and did not appear.
24. In an interesting twist, the newspaper (No. 10, 28 May 1991) ran a story ('reported by Agence France Presse, which certainly is not dominated by Muslim Fundamentalists!') about the battle against coeducation at Mills College in the United States, claiming that the students' success in keeping the college an all-woman institution (by raising three million dollars in three weeks) indicated that even the American people are sympathetic to the cause of single-sex education. In other words, it is not only the 'backward' Islamists who fight for sexual segregation; even the morally bankrupt Americans have seen the value of a women-only education.
25. al-Ribat, No.24 (16 July 1991).
26. al-Ribat, No.50 (14 January 1992).
27. al-Ribat, No.14 (30 April 1991).
28. In fact, these three articles are the only ones to raise controversial issues related to women in the 15-month period covered by the survey of the newspaper.
29. An encounter between the author and a group of Ikhwan women in a private home in Amman in 1991 shows the dissonance between the external and the private; once the jilbabs and head coverings were taken off, a range of individual idiosyncracies and styles were revealed: from short tight skirts and carefully coiffed hair sported by two of the younger women, to conservative Western dress worn by most of the older women. None of them wore anything resembling traditional peasant dress.
30. Actually, men who are not maharim, that is, men to whom marriage is prohibited.
31. al-Ribat, No.29 (20 August 1991).
32. Interestingly, a nurse offered the author the information that many of her colleagues had met their husbands on the job in the hospital.
33. A distillation of most of these prescriptions and prohibitions can be found in M. Siba'i, Al-Mar'a Bayn al-Fiqh wa al-Qanun [Woman Between Jurisprudence and the Law] (Beirut and Damascus, 1984), pp.203-4. It was recommended to the author by an Islamist ideologue in Amman as one of the classic works setting out Islam's view on women. The ideas in it are reproduced repeatedly in popular tracts and booklets.
34. Author's interview with a member of the Nurses' Committee at the Islamic Hospital, Amman, 26 October 1991. This nurse pointed out that about 80 per cent of the nurses at the hospital are married.
35. Some examples are the Umm al-Qura, al-Rabi', Anwar al-Huda, and al-'Ata' women's associations.
36. The court was ruling on a petition submitted by non-Islamist Federation members.
37. For example, the Federation organized a mass women's rally under the slogan 'Rise to the Jihad!' during the Gulf War, which was addressed by Federation President Mahdiyya al-Zumayli and two prominent male Ikhwan personalities.