Who is qasim amin

She is, from this point of view, a slave, more than this, a prisoner in her own house and worse off than a slave They count it among their most glorious achievements when it can be said that the woman never left her house except to be carried to her tomb!

There is no doubt that the man's decision to imprison his wife contradicts the freedom which is the woman's natural right It cannot be said that the conditions of the man and the woman are equal. Because of the fact that he does not know his wife before they marry, the man can end the matter at any time by divorcing her as he wishes, or, marry in addition to her a second, a third, or a fourth.

However, the woman who is afflicted with a man who does not satisfy her with his companionship has no escape. That a woman may be given in marriage to a man she does not know who forbids her the right to leave him and forces her to this or that and then throws her out as he wishes: this is slavery indeed!

The woman who is forbidden to educate herself save in the duties of the servant, or is limited in her educational pursuits is indeed a slave, because her natural instincts and God-given talents are subordinated i deference to her condition, which is tantamount to moral enslavement.

The who is completely veiled - arms, legs, body - so that she cannot walk, ride, breathe, see, or speak except with difficulty is to be reckoned a slave. In short, the woman from her birth to the day of her death is a slave because she does not live by herself and for herself.

Instead, she lives for the man. She is dependent upon him in every way Related Books. Subscriber Services Contact Us Help. Print Email Cite. Next Result. Amin, Qasim d. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice.

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Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Egyptian novelist Salwa Bakr argued that male biases and stigmas inherent in the Arabic language reflect deep-seated gender inequalities in Arab society at large. Although many panelists may have agreed with this statement, they were divided on whether a radical transformation of gender structure in Arab society should start within society or with the language itself, and whether a fundamental alteration of the latter would actually lead to a new gender awareness.

She noted that the elimination of certain grammatical rules promoting the male language of taghlib dominance would force men to understand the frustrations women feel whenever they are addressed in the masculine form. Author Hussa Munif opposed the feminization of the Arabic language, arguing that it would give a false sense of gender equality, making it easier to overlook the discriminations against women.

Madihah Dus also questioned the call for the feminization of language as yet another version of domination. A parallel debate emerged around literature in a round table chaired by Sabri Hafiz, a professor of Arabic literature. The panelists were divided between advocates of a feminine literature and humanitarian literature, strangely posed as distinct and separate entities.

Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury encouraged women writers to put an end to writing invested in the emotional defense of women's rights. Not unlike Khoury's views, Baradah's position leaves one wondering whether such views comprise an improvement in gender consciousness or a segregation that would demote women's literature or banish it altogether.

Ashur felt that writing consciously feminine literature is a grave error because women have long suffered from narrow spaces and intellectual confinement, a marginalization they are deliberately continuing.

Hanan al-Shaykh corroborated with this view, adding that women should be ashamed of characterizing their literature as nisa'i — feminine. She nonetheless embraced and took pride in women's and feminist literature. Reconfiguring the Relations between Arab and Western Feminism. Cynthia Nelson argued that the interaction between the Third World and Arab society on the one hand, and Western modernization on the other, introduced to the latter new ideas about justice and women's rights which were hard to ignore.

She emphasized, however, that the Arab feminist movement was not merely an echo of the Western precedent, despite the fact that women's demand for equal rights with men was considered an expression of the colonial period.

Anwar Mughith, professor at the University of Halwan in Cairo, proposed that the women's movement internationally offered the best avenue for interaction among cultures and civilizations. The Arab women's movement, he said, interacts with its European and American counterparts on three distinct levels.

The first is philosophical, emphasizing fundamental concepts of human freedom. The second is moral, proposing women's liberation as a way for the triumph of good against evil. Mughith explained that the moral argument attempts to show that confining women to the patriarchal household limits their abilities whereas work outside the house transforms them into complete and fulfilled human beings, as Muhammad Abdu and Faris al-Shidyak had advocated.

The third level relates to the social value given to the liberation of women. Mughith, echoing the view of several other conferees, reminded us that colonialism gave the feminist Arab discourse a suspicious overtone as a manifestation of colonial penetration and control. Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, a history professor at UCLA, discussed three central elements in the American feminist movement, namely: the emphasis on women's control over their bodies including freedom of choice in marriage, including remaining single; the extent of their authority in comparison to men; and their access to job opportunities and equal material rights.

American feminists insisted that without total equality with men, no liberation is complete. Marsot noted that as long as men monopolize centers of political power, the legal system, and the economy, equality is an illusion.

As such, for Marsot, women must achieve some type of progress because ultimately freedom is a relative issue. Nuna al-Bahir, who agreed that the concept of feminism cannot be discussed in isolation from the Western context that produced it, asserted that a real concern for women's rights did exist in the Arab world independently of the West.

Al-Bahir noted that Western feminist movements looked at their Arab counterparts as backward and incapable of making decisions. These processes differ from one Arab society to another over the course of history, creating as such a dynamic and constant development of turath that is at once traditional and modern.

Finally, we need to appreciate the variety of Islamist and feminist-Islamist movements and ideologies. Indeed, the Tunisian Rashid al-Ghanushi's support for women's full particiption in governmental affairs, and the Sudanese Major Maryam al-Sadiq al-Mahdi's rejection of anything less than full equality with men at the level of political and military command, are a far outcry from the Wahhabi outlook on women.