Qasim Amin’s Primary Arguments
As an intellectual and reformer of his time, he believed that one of the issues underpinning the backwardness and exploitation of Egyptian society was the low status of women. He argued that education was the most important key to transforming Egypt from a colonized country to an independent thinking country. National reform was needed for Egypt and other Arab/Muslim countries to realize their full potential, and the most important reform was emancipating women by educating them and allowing them to come fully into the national stage like men. This focus on empowering women by updating laws on marriage, polygamy, and divorce was seen as a critical need to rise out of backwardness, overcome foreign colonialism, and regulate internal reactionaries.
To wit, he used Islamic arguments to call for the reform of the veiling and seclusion of women, arranged marriages, and unilateral polygamy and divorce as a way to lift Egypt and its society from its inferior place in world politics. Amin concluded that “nothing in the laws of Islam or in its intentions can account for the low status of Muslim women. The existing situation is contrary to law, because originally women in Islam were granted an equal place in human society … Unacceptable customs, traditions, and superstitions inherited from the countries in which Islam spread have been allowed to permeate this beautiful religion.” Basically, he condemns his contemporary status of women as a foreign byproduct of customs against the Sharia; going back to a pure Islam should secure for Muslim women the status they deserve. In other words, Islam has all the concepts of equality and gender justice needed; Muslim society must simply embrace it and let go of parochial and patriarchal traditions that are not supported by his interpretation of Islam.
Qasim Amin’s Methodology
His methodology is well-known to anyone working in the Islamic outreach or reform movements. In one sense it is a revisionist approach that tries to show that the core teachings of Islam and first-order interpretations of Sharia should support women’s equal status to men. In other words, the texts do not need to be challenged or apologized for, merely our interpretations need to be updated. This is good in the sense that it does not cast doubt on the primary texts of Islam. However, its weakness is that it begs the question of how all previous interpreters and scholars could have gotten it “wrong” for all these centuries. Over 1000 years of interpretations have presumed and enforced the lower status of women. . . so how plausible is it that these generations of scholars were misogynistic and myopic but this generation of scholars has the right outlook? While there are many of his points, especially regarding education and women’s right to acquire it, that are echoed by previous scholars and historical precedents, there are other points regarding veiling, polygamy, and divorce rulings that counter the long, rich heritage of Islamic interpretations and norms. The challenge then for the reformer is to diverge from previous understanding without undermining them.
