A book reveals a plan to recruit women in Egypt

Written by Mustafa Hamza

The Al-Wafa Foundation, supporting the Islamic State (Daesh), has re-published a book on the recruitment of Egyptian women to the organization by a comparison made by the author, called Um Nusseibeh, and nicknamed Nada Al-Khalifah, with the status of women in five political stages. These stages include the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924, ending at the current stage, through the reign of the late President Anwar Sadat (September 28, 1970 – October 6, 1981), former President Hosni Mubarak, and then the revolution of 25 January 2011, which overthrew the Mubarak regime. She then conducted a comparison between the situation of women in all these stages, and their situation within the organization to encourage women to migrate to them.

In her book “The Egyptian Women between the Inferno of Democracy and the Blessings of the Islamic State”, the author accused Muhammad Ali Pasha (May 17, 1805 – March 2, 1848) of causing  to women because he was the first to make them abandon their homes at the pretext of urbanization and openness to the world.

She also described the establishment of girls’ schools by Refaa Al-Tahtawi, providing them with educational courses, and calling for their participation in various fields of work, with “the deeds of the demons of humanity who justify women leaving their homes.” This reflects her ignorance of the Qur’an and the verses that urged reading and science. “Read!” says one Quranic verse.

The Egyptian writer Qasim Amin, (December 1, 1863 – April 23, 1908) received a large share of the attack of Umm Nusseibeh, rejecting what she described as the attack on Islamic values. He said: “The veil of women is an obstacle to their participation in the intellectual, cultural and social renaissance.”

The attack was also targeting women’s activist Hoda Shaarawi, June 23, 1879 – December 12, 1947, who founded the Egyptian Women’s Intellectual Association in 1914 because of its demand to abandon the headscarf, restrict men’s right to divorce, raise the age of marriage and increase women’s participation in political work.

She denounced what Saad Pasha Zaghloul (1858-1927) did when he removed the burqa from his wife’s face after returning from exile in 1921, accusing all of them of collaborating with others to work on the demolition of Muslim women.

She also reviewed statements of a number of writers and journalists in this period to justify the accusations leveled against them on the destruction of women, including Ihsan Abdul Qaddous, Anis Mansour, Taha Hussein, as their writings were the reason for the abandonment of women of Egypt for their hijab during the seventies. This period began to witness the decline of these liberal ideas, the veil stared to appear gradually, through a simple head cover, until it appeared at Egyptian universities during the era of President Anwar Sadat.

She also highlighted a number of laws and decrees issued during the Mubarak era, such as the ban on female circumcision and the law of khul ‘, which allows women to divorce their husbands, saying: “This law was treated with fraud and injustice against many husbands.” Then, the government appointed the first female judge in Egypt, and then was the first female mayor in the province of Assiut — events that Um Nusseibeh considers unfair to women.

As for the January revolution, which witnessed the participation of prominent women, the responsibility of this participation was shared by the scholars who allowed women to go out on the streets, which was agreed upon by the Islamic movements. This was followed by an increased participation of women of Islamic currents in political work. The author described that as part of the injustice being practiced against women.

She criticized the situation of women in the era of the deposed president Mohamed Morsi, pointing out that the participation of women in political work is part of the faith of the Muslim Brotherhood, and they were more concerned with the issues of unveiled women at the expense of the issues of veiled women.

She considered that this injustice to veiled women was the cause of hundreds of reasons for which God destroyed the throne of Morsi.

She concluded her book with a review of the situation of women within Daesh areas of control, which is run by laws claimed to be from God, including that girls wear the veil at the age of 8 years old.