Feminists from the Arab World: Women’s issues and feminist movements are discussed by scholar-activists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt at the first-ever conference, “Arab Feminisms: A Critical Perspective” – organized by the Lebanese Association of Women Researchers, Bahithat.
Excerpt of an interview with Professor Hatoon Ajwad Al Fassi from Saudi Arabia:
Can you explain briefly what you talked about in your presentation – about how feminism in Saudi Arabia – or the non-existence of it, as you question – developed over the last decades, and what kinds of historical contexts shaped the feminism in question?
Al Fassi: I don’t think there is a political movement called feminism in Saudi Arabia, there isn’t such a thing. My definition of [a feminist] is someone who has an awareness of her being as a woman, who has rights. I consider this as a feminist consciousness. That is a kind of feminism if you like. This happens on different levels: a level that is very leftist, very liberal that has extreme demands and others that are to the right – Muslims or Islamists who have extreme demands from our point of view…
So when it comes to practical issues, extreme Islamist feminists think that personal status laws are untouchable because they have to do with the Islamic faith?
Al Fassi: Yes… Or they would say that these laws are the right ones in Islam and that nobody should question them. But the question is their application. And this is something that we agree on… But they go into more details that we disagree with, such as [the fact] that they believe that women should not go to work unless they are very needy, that the priority should be to stay at home and that the man should always provide for the woman.
