NOREF - Arab Muslim women after the uprisings: the encounter between the liberalisation of Islamist politics and the feminisation of Islamic interpretation

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Aitemad Muhanna

Aitemad Muhanna is a research fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre pursuing post-doctoral research on gender, religion and sustainable human development in the Gaza Strip. Originally from the Gaza Strip, she has extensive experience as a gender and development specialist and activist in P...
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Arab Muslim women after the uprisings: the encounter between the liberalisation of Islamist politics and the feminisation of Islamic interpretation

Aitemad Muhanna, 6 June 2012

Women’s participation in the Arab uprisings has been inspired by the expansion of an Islamist-based model of Arab women’s activism and a gradual shrinking of secular liberal women’s activism. The uprisings have provided outcomes that prove the possibility of combining Islam with democracy through the political success of Islamist parties in the post-uprisings era, like in Tunisia and Egypt.

Although this new de facto political map of the region has largely frightened liberal women, the victory of moderate Islamist voices may also be promising, especially when they are in a position to provide a state governance model. The determining factor in combining Islam with democracy is the willingness of the two major players – Islamist parties and the international community – to ensure that the main debatable issues – religion, gender and human rights – are not discriminated against in the name of either religion or Western democracy. However, the actual practice and outcomes of moderate Islamist discourse remains under experimentation, and it is a space for Islamist and secular women’s and human rights organisations to co-operate, monitor, negotiate and strategise, to ensure that gender issues are engaged in policy discussions and formulations as a substantial issue for real democratisation.