In Egypt: Good Fundamentalists and Evil Women…………
“Egypt's chilling conservatism. A new religious conservatism is on the march in Egypt, with women the biggest losers. Walk into any bookstore or newsstand selling books on religion. Almost all the books are about women, such as how to be a good wife or how to please your husband or how to cook tasty food for your husband. There is an entire field called "women's fatwas" that goes to unbelievable lengths to debate the legality of praying and fasting during menstruation and pregnancy, the dos and don'ts of sex and proper Islamic attire for respectable women. All over the streets, university campuses and on public transportation, there are posters depicting what women should and should not wear, with a big red X on anything other than a loose-fitting jilbab. Some female professors in Alexandria University's faculty of medicine have gone so far as to refuse to admit girls wearing trousers to oral exams. Any conversation with a taxi driver is bound to turn to how "all women are whores these days" and how they're "tempting us with their bodies". Sermons for men at mosques encourage them to teach "our women" the proper behavior of a Muslim woman, relentlessly reminding men of the alleged hadith of Prophet Muhammad that the greatest fitna (assumed to mean temptation) of the Muslim ummah is that of women…………”
Perhaps nowhere in the Middle East have women lost so much ground in the past two decades as in Egypt. Salafism has been on the march in Egypt, and it has infiltrated institutions and society in general. Salafi ideology now nearly determines what is “proper” in Egyptian public life, and as is the usual Salafi Wahhabi obsession, it has to do with women. One can see it in the proliferation of the niqab and burq’a, unknown in Cairo and Alexandria a few decades ago.
I probably know the secret behind that: almost any woman is smarter than almost any Salafi man (with all their nearly useless Shari’a degrees). And both sides know it.
Cheers
mhg
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