Leila Ahmed
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Leila Ahmed is an Egyptian American professor of Women's Studies and Religion at the Harvard Divinity School. Prior to coming to Harvard, she was professor of women’s studies and Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Cambridge, before she moved to the United States to teach and write.
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[edit] Background
Born in the Heliopolis district of Cairo to an upper class family in 1940, Ahmed's childhood was shaped both by Muslim Egyptian values and the liberal orientation of Egypt's aristocracy under the ancien régime. After Egypt's last ruling monarch was overthrown by the Free Officers Movement in 1952, life for Ahmed's family along with others in that milieu was irrevocably changed. Her father, a civil engineer by profession, was a strong opponent of Nasser's construction of the Aswan High Dam on ecological principles; a move that earned him the wrath of the ruling regime for years to follow and had detrimental effects on Ahmed's family.
[edit] Writing
In 1999 Ahmed published her memoir, A Border Passage. She describes her multicultural Cairene upbringing and her adult life as an expatriate and an immigrant in the West. She tells of how she was introduced to Islam through her grandmother during her childhood, and she came to distinguish it from "official Islam" as practiced and preached by a largely male religious elite. This realization would later form the basis of her first acclaimed book Women and Gender in Islam (1993), a seminal work on Islamic history, Muslim feminism, and the historical role of women in Islam.
She speaks of her experience in Europe and the United States as one that was often fraught with tension and confusion as she attempted to reconcile her Muslim Egyptian identity with Western values and beliefs. Faced with racism and anti-Muslim prejudice, and after deconstructing traditionalist male-centered beliefs in her own culture, she set out to dispel equally damaging myths and misconceptions held by the West about Islam and Muslim women. Today, Ahmed is perhaps known most widely for her groundbreaking work on the Islamic view of women and their historical and social status in the Muslim world.
Ahmed has been a strong critic of nationalism in Egypt and the Middle East. She devotes an entire chapter in her autobiography on the question of Arab nationalism, and the political factors and efforts which went into constructing an Arab identity for Egypt after the army's coup d'état. According to Ahmed's research, the idea that Egyptians were "Arab" was virtually unheard of until well into the 20th century. She describes Arab nationalism, like many other forms of pan-nationalism, as a type of cultural imperialism eating away at the diversity and cultural creativity of both the Arabic-speaking national majorities (who often speak widely divergent vernaculars) and the non-Arabic speaking minorities throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
[edit] Women and Gender in Islam
In her seminal work, Women and Gender in Islam, 1992, Ahmed argues that the oppressive practices women in the Middle East are subjected to are due to the prevalence of patriarchal interpretations of Islam rather than Islam itself.
Ahmed argues that at its inception in 570 Muhammad gave Islam two divergent voices: (1) an ethical structure that advocates the moral and spiritual equality of all human beings and; (2) A hierarchical structure as the basis of male/female relations, a gender-based/sexual hierarchy.
Islamic doctrine developed within an androcentric, misogynist society, that of Abbasid Iraq (750-1258). This society emphasised and institutionalised the gendered hierarchical voice and silenced the voice of equity and justice. Islam as a religion therefore became a discourse of the politically dominant elite, male society.
There were early signs of resistance to establishment Islam. For example the thoughts of Sufi and Qarmatins groups, philosophers such as Ibn al-Arabi and the liberal stance of powerful families and individuals towards their daughters in respect of marriage and education e.g. imposing a monogamy clause in marriage contracts, providing private education.
Despite such resistance establishment Islam experienced little serious challenge until the early 19th Century colonialist encroachment. European colonialisms’ remit was essentially economic however female emancipation was used as an argument to legitimate geopolitical incursion. Colonial feminism was a Western discourse of dominance which, ‘introduced the notion that an intrinsic connection existed between the issue of culture and the status of women, and … that progress for women could be achieved only through abandoning the native culture’ (Ahmed, 1992, p244)
Inevitably the initial reaction to this was a rejection of western values by political Islamists. This rejection saw the conflation of Islam and culture where Islamic authenticity became defined in terms of cultural authenticity and, specifically, the role of women within Islam. This led to a reaffirmation of indigenous customs relating to women and restoration of the customs and laws of past Islamic societies.
The underlying assumption was that there is an authentic interpretation of Islam that is based on the texts and institutions developed in Abbasid Iraq. The meaning of gender and the position of women within Islam is therefore, 'unambiguous and ascertainable in some precise and absolute sense'. (Ahmed, 1992, p238)
Since this initial reaction Muslim women scholars have argued that the values of the Abbasid Iraq era are not universal to Islam rather they were specific to a particular time and people. Islamic texts and institutions need to be separated from patriarchal culture and reappraised in terms of merit, listening to the voice of equality and justice. Ahmed concludes by exhorting feminists, both Muslin and Western, to attempt this task by critically engaging with, challenging and redefining the Middle East regions diverse religious and cultural heritage.
[edit] Bibliography
- Ahmed (1978). Edward W. Lane: A study of his life and works and of British ideas of the Middle East in the nineteenth century. London: Longman. ISBN 0-582-78083-7.
- Ahmed (1993). Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05583-8.
- Ahmed (1999). A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman's Journey. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-11518-4.
