Muslim Brotherhood & Misogyny “Women tight-fitting wears reason of harassment”

Cairo – Questions related to women’s issues are an important and significant theme in the Fatwa Section of Al-Dawah (The Call) Magazine, as they exceed in number all other Fatwas related to Copts, politics, and art. 

In issue No. 43, released in December 1979, one of the youth writes to Al-Dawah magazine:

“I am a religious young man who loves obedience [to God] and regularly persists in prayer. However, I am negatively influenced when I see an unveiled woman talking, walking, or when I listen to stories of love and romance, what can I do to hold onto my religion? Is masturbation permissible? Especially many youth are suffering from what I am suffering from. (F.M. Gamal – Cairo).”

How do you expect the Brotherhood scholars and their mufti would respond to the first part of the problem of that young man?  The response came as follows:

• I noticed many messages about these meanings. [And] we bless the young people for this good sense and their fear for themselves and concern about their future, a young Muslim usually gets confused – when he goes out to the street or university or workplace – he find himself surrounded by brazen unveiling, loose hair and see-through, tight-fitting wears. Strange commixes of male and female customs; women imitating men and men imitating women.  In fact, this is all the abominable handiwork of the enemies of Islam, which has happened due to the laxity and inadvertence of Muslims, and the absence of an Islamically ordained dress code that protects the individual, the family and the entire community. According to the ‘Ninth Protocol of the Elders of Zion’, it states: “We have deceived the younger generation of the gentile nations (that is to say non-Jewish) and made them decadent and corrupt by disseminating the principles, doctrines and trends which we have known as sheer falsehoods, but we ourselves teach them such principles.” True believers of Islam, having the sound Islamic approach have to find viable and practical solutions to the plight of youth and their problems. As we educate young people on chastity, purity and sublime attitude, it is not reasonable to ignore the call of the sexual instinct, as “there is no monasticism in Islam.” We as fathers have to get rid of the complications and formalities of the society; we have to look at marriage as obedience and closeness to Allah, not a commodity subject to bargaining, buying or selling. Once young man has the necessary wherewithal to marry, we have to help him complete half of his religion within the scope of Islam as governed by tolerance and ease. We, as advocates, have to make ourselves a field of experiment and a field of application for what we call for, at that juncture, we have succeeded in presented solutions to myriad problems. This is the best we can offer to our noble cause[1].

Critique:

Such a didactic introduction leads quickly to the exoneration of the inhibited youth of every sin. Almost all ills and evils in society are falsely blamed on women who are the prime mover of mischief, that is, wanton unveiling, loose hair, and see-through clothing. In every discussion of depression and regression, the Brotherhood tend to drag conspiracy notions concocted by anti-Islam forces. In this regard, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is an emphasis per se that the Jews plot and conspire against Islam, and that they somewhat succeeded in this without any trouble, as if the Muslims are merely pawns in that silly game, and lacking human will!

The young man’s question ends with specific clear words that need a satisfying and convincing answer: “What should I do?” The Brotherhood’s alternative program is full of sweeping generalizations and lexical ambiguities. How can we get rid of the impediments to marriage? How do we help youth have the wherewithal to marry? There are necessities such as housing and minimum living costs, which are direct materialistic concerns that will never be weathered or solved by loud and hollow slogans. The young man himself may have realized from the unsatisfying answer that he will find an easy solution soon, and that the Brotherhood itself does not have a clear, specific methodical perception to turn good intentions and brilliant phrases into actual tangible reality. Because Muslim Brotherhood does not have a real remedy for the social and economic problems in the Egyptian society, they cling onto harsh condemnation of women and demand that they be suppressed, tamed and hidden from eyesight, as if they were deadly infectious!

Dr. Abdel Rehim Ali, an Egyptian Journalist and Member of Parliament, is an expert on Islamist Movements and political Islam. Ali is a member of Egypt’s Press Syndicate, head of the Arab Center for Journalism in Egypt and chairperson & Editor-in-Chief of Al-Bawaba Newspaper and Portal. He is also an Egyptian MP and head of the Arab Center for Research and Studies (ACRS) in Cairo and Paris.

[1] Issue No. 43 of Al-Dawah magazine, released in December 1979.