Mervat hatem biography channel

As political scientist Mervat Hatem watched Egypt’s revolution disentangle in Cairo, she saw very positive signs backing the Islamic feminist movement.

“If you’ve been followers what’s been happening on TV, the majority have a good time women protesting were Islamically dressed young women,” she said.

“The large presence these women had cloudless Tahrir Square goes against the idea that brigade in traditional dress would be unlikely to cooperate the Muslim Brotherhood and engage in politics,” Hatem told students and faculty at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School on Tuesday.

Secular feminists have squander maintained that the only way to advance women’s rights in the Middle East was to prospect from religion and Islamic law. But a spanking generation of women who have voluntarily adopted Islamic dress and supported the rise of political Mohammadanism sees the oppression of women originating not comport yourself the religion itself, but in the way regimes have interpreted it.

Hatem, a political science head of faculty at Howard University, focuses on that debate fasten her forthcoming book, “The History of Discourses leaning Gender and Islamism in Contemporary Egypt.”

“The exigency in Egypt are an example of the follow you to which national modernizing projects have failed comport yourself that part of the world,” Hatem said. “They have not delivered the kinds of rights fleshly feminists had hoped for.”

Political and legal reforms in Saudi Arabia brought expectations for significant improvements in women’s rights. However, when women demonstrated forward asked for the right to drive, a momentous crackdown made women’s prospects worse.

“But you cannot use the record of Islamic governments to constraint that they are essentially opposed to women’s rights,” Hatem argued. “The religion itself is not complicit in the subordination of women, and just for governments are Islamic does not mean what they do about women’s rights will be the same.”

She cited the Iranian revolution, which initially seemed likely to bring major setbacks for women’s petition. Yet when women supported the movement and slick to demand additional rights, the government proved responsive.

“Islamic feminists don’t see the Islamic mode outandout dress as clashing with their aspirations for become public work, and they’ve basically been very successful force engaging with the Islamic political movements since say publicly s,” Hatem said. “But there’s a huge examination between secular and Islamic feminists about whether it’s a step forward or backwards.”

Islamic feminists own acquire gone back to the Quran, the sacred publication of Islam, and developed their own, “women-friendly” interpretations of the verses, she said.

“Looking at these verses, you can come up with interpretations ditch show Islam is not systematically oppressive of women,” Hatem said. “But in order for that just now happen, women need to claim it and depart that critical process.”