1Women’s participation in the Egyptian uprising in 2011 that led to the overthrow of the long-term autocrat Hosni Mubarak and women’s political engagement during the transitional period (2011-2013) that followed the uprising should not be seen in isolation, but as a constituent element of socio-political transformations and the long history of women’s activism in Egypt (Haghani 2017; Badran 2016; El Said 2015). Yet, as Hafez (2014: 91, 94) notes, the “Egyptian uprising elevated women’s participation to another level” and despite recurring setbacks, women fought for social causes on various fronts. In the midst of these political upheavals, women’s active participation illustrated that gender norms were not set in stone in Egypt, but that various gendered practices existed simultaneously (Abouelnaga 2015; El Said 2015). Many female activists felt increasingly distressed, however, when the Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi al-Nūr party – commonly labeled as the “Islamists” – won the parliamentary elections (in 2011 and 2012), and when later in the summer of 2012 the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi won the presidential election. The existing scholarship on women and gender points to activists’ and feminist scholars’ strong dissatisfaction with President Morsi (El Said 2015; Abouelnaga 2016; Tadros 2015; Badran 2016; Elsadda 2013). They worried about the new rulers’ anticipated gender politics. Consequently, many Egyptian women (and men) envisioned the overthrow of President Morsi in the summer of 2013, a year after his election, as an important step toward gender equality. Despite the strong involvement of the Egyptian military that had notoriously violated women’s rights in 2011 by conducting virginity tests on female protestors (Hafez 2014), many Egyptian women argued that the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi constituted a revolution as it “uprooted a theocratic regime” (Tadros 2011: 26). This is only one side of the story, however. On the other side of the political spectrum, women who supported President Morsi and the anti-coup alliance did not believe in the benefits of President Morsi’s deposition. They did not share the vision of the hundreds of thousands of people who marched to Tahrir square in support of the regime change. Their perspective on the 2013 developments in Egypt has largely gone unnoticed in the discussion on women’s activism in Egypt. By delving into the reasoning and motivations of a group of women who attended Qur’an lessons in one of Cairo’s mosques and supported President Morsi, this article explores this little researched dimension of the events that took place in the summer of 2013.
- 1 Some scholars, however, claim that women’s participation in the Muslim Brotherhood is only cosmeti (...)
2The analysis of women’s activism in Egypt should take into consideration that in the summer of 2013 women were active on both sides of the political spectrum. While many women supported the anti-Morsi demonstrations, other women joined the ranks of the anti-coup alliance (Hatem 2014). This needs to be understood against the backdrop of the 2011 uprising that witnessed an increase in the activism of women who were affiliated with the Islamist segments of Egyptian society (Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi parties). Like members of other youth sections in Cairo, the younger members of the Muslim Sisters (women’s organization of the Muslim Brotherhood) participated in the 2011 demonstrations. The Muslim Brotherhood understood that women formed an important political constituency, it had women candidates in its ranks, and it educated women on election practices1 (Hafez 2014: 96). The 2011 uprising also provided new opportunities for the ultra-conservative Salafi movement and shaped the way in which it organized its gender relations. The Salafi movement became more active and visible in the Egyptian public sphere by establishing al-Nūr Party (Brown 2017: 131), and women’s activism within the movement increased considerably (Deschamps-Laporte 2018). While until 2011 women’s involvement in the movement had been constrained and irregular, after the uprising women became more visible and politically active (Deschamps-Laporte 2018; Bouras 2017).
3In the spring of 2013, while observing the increasing hostility against the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, I wondered how Egyptian women who did not share the widely propagated vision of President Mohammed Morsi’s opponents would respond to the criticism that he and his government faced. How did those Cairenes, who disapproved of the planned demonstration against president Morsi, envision Egypt at this particular time? How did they justify their own struggle in an increasingly antagonistic political climate, in which their voices were marginalized? How did they counter the rhetoric that dehumanized them in their role as supporters of the president?
- 2 Scholars also emphasize the diversity of the views within the Muslim Brotherhood and point to the (...)
- 3 The list of the Muslim Brotherhood’s false promises is long and includes the promise to not run fo (...)
4While pondering these questions and observing the increased hostility towards President Morsi and his supporters in the state media and in discussions with Egyptians, I remembered my friend’s stories of her Qur’an lessons in her neighborhood. I wondered how the community that gathered in a small mosque in one of Shubra’s quartiers to study the Qur’an would relate to the developments that were unfolding in Egypt at the time? How would they view the evolving situation? My friend and her family had been politically disengaged for many years. During the uprising in 2011, they had sympathized with the people in Tahrir but did not participate in the events that led to President Mubarak’s ouster. Yet, later they supported Mohammed Morsi’s candidacy for presidency. Hence, my friend had an ambivalent relationship to the events that at the time was considered a revolution in the public imagery. She voted for the first time in her life and participated in the referenda. Some scholars have pointed to Muslim Brotherhood’s similarly ambivalent relationship to the uprising in 2011. Their critics assert that the Muslim Brotherhood was not the main initiator of the protests that led to President Mubarak’s overthrow, but that they benefited the most from the uprising due to the organization’s wide support networks and its long tradition of organizing in various disadvantaged neighborhoods in Egypt (Wickham 2013: 161; Achcar 2013; Alexander, Bassiouny 2014).2 The unfulfilled promises of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi3 did not bother my friend in the same way as they bothered those who supported the Tamarod campaign collecting signatures for a petition that demanded the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi in the spring of 2013.
5On the following pages, I discuss the women’s support of President Morsi amidst the political conflict that swept over Egypt in the summer of 2013. I explore how the mosque attendees addressed the political developments in their weekly meetings in the small mosque in Cairo’s Shubra neighborhood. In specific, I focus on the ways in which the unfolding political struggle was interpreted, contextualized, and translated by and for the Qur’an reading group at the very moment when the risks attached to participation in anti-coup protest action were high and violence loomed large. The perspective that I present in this article continues to be an unpopular account of the events that unfolded in the summer of 2013. Its advocates face severe repercussions by the current Egyptian regime and their lives are under constant risk.
6My participation in the women’s Qur’an lessons was shaped by Saba Mahmood’s much debated work on the piety movement in Cairo. Mahmood’s book Politics of Piety: the Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2005) did not only enrich the field of Middle Eastern studies but it also questioned some of the premises of feminist scholarship. While analyzing a Cairo-based mosque movement that she considered to be a part of a larger Islamic Revival, Mahmood asked how to analyze “operations of power that construct different kinds of bodies, knowledges, and subjectivities” (Mahmood 2005: 14). Her study illustrated that women’s participation in the Cairo based women’s mosque movement was motivated by the participants’ beliefs that in an increasingly secularized Egypt the role of religious knowledge had been marginalized. Marking a contribution to feminist debates, Mahmood noted that because human action is culturally and historically conditioned, an analysis of human agency needs to account for the particularities of modes of being, and hence cannot be fixed in advance (ibid.). Mahmood’s thesis has been subject to critique that lie outside of the scope of this article. Yet, it is useful to be reminded that the increasing focus on women’s religious activism and what others call Islamic feminism – an understanding of women’s activism through the categories that originate from their experiences and actions (Badran 1995) – as the only “home-grown, locally produced” form of activism, has been criticized by some feminist scholars (Moghissi 2011).
- 4 I was able to attend nine Qur’an lessons between the period of June 2013 and December 2013. Three (...)
7Besides Mahmood’s influential work, my friend played an invaluable role by helping me to understand the female mosque-goers’ perspective on the events that unfolded in Egypt in 2013. She did not only introduce the mosque and her fellow Qur’an students to me, but her explanations and translations also helped me to gain a better understanding of the discussions in the mosque. The mosque was located in one of the impoverished quarters of Cairo’s densely populated neighborhood Shubra. The public infrastructure of the area was failing. Piling trash and the lack of maintenance of streets and buildings conditioned the lives of the inhabitants. In the summer of 2013, the violence on Cairo’s street and the politics that fueled it constituted an even bigger obstacle to women’s attendance in the Qur’an classes. Thus, given the circumstances within which the research was conducted, this essay does not provide a thick description of the practices of the women’s Qur’an reading group.4 My purpose is not to offer an in-depth analysis of the religious texts and sources that were discussed in the lessons. Instead, the women’s activism will be discussed within the political context of 2013 that was characterized by clashing visions of Egypt's future. Given the difficult conditions that the unfolding political situation set for the women’s involvement in the mosque, this article tries to do justice to their interpretation of the summerly events. Thus, it is precisely their reading of the political developments in Egypt that I focus on.
- 5 Author interview, 26/08/2013, Cairo.
8The mosque lessons and the related practices discussed here can be interpreted in light of what other scholars have written about the Salafi movement. The movement has traditionally had a strong support base in Egypt’s second largest city Alexandria. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafi movement’s organizational structure is flexible and consists of several groups and individuals (Deschamps-Laporte 2018: 178; Schielke 2015: 29). However, despite the support of President Morsi, no political parties or religious groups were mentioned in the meetings and in my private discussions with the women who attended the Qur’an lessons in Shubra. My friend and her mother explained that they were not aware of the specificities of the doctrine that the leader of the Qur’an reading group followed. Indeed, such affiliations did not matter because the decision to attend the lessons was motivated by other forces, desires, and practical arrangements. The mosque lessons provided a space for gatherings and conversation for the extended neighborhood. In a private discussion, one of the participants responded to my inquiry about her motivations to attend the Qur’an lessons by stating that the lessons were good for her heart.5 When I wondered why she walked such a long distance in order to reach the mosque every week, she explained that no such lessons took place in the mosques in her area. She refused to elaborate on her attendance in further detail. My repeated attempts to find out more about the political affiliations of the Qur’an classes were to no avail. The secretiveness needs to be understood within the context of the past state repression of Islamist movements in general, and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. After the overthrow of President Morsi in 2013, violence against dissidents and other forms of repression by Egyptian state actors increased considerably. State measures that directly affected the women’s Qur’an lessons included the temporary closure of the mosque. Later the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the new incumbent government sought to ban all unauthorized preaching and set restrictions to regulate speech at mosques (Brown 2017: 65). As of early 2014 no more Qur’an classes took place in the small mosque in Shubra. Later the same year, the preacher and leader (dā‘iyya) of the lessons moved to another neighborhood and it was impossible to tell whether she would have been able to reinstitute the Qur’an classes under the oversight of the new government, and if she continued to live in the area.
9The Qur’an lessons took place on Wednesday mornings when the mosque was reserved for women. The classes were always led by the same preacher. She was the wife of the mosque’s worship leader, the imam, who led the regular Friday prayers for men. Every Wednesday morning, before the dā‘iyya began her lessons, another woman, the assistant of the dā‘iyya, read the hadīth – a collection of Prophet's exemplary speech and actions. Although the lessons usually started punctually, the women did not need to obey strict attendance times. While some women would arrive late to the class, others would leave before the class was finished. The lessons always followed the same pattern: First the assistant would read the hadīth while the attendees were still settling on the mosque’s floor. When everyone had found his place, the dā‘iyya would start the lesson. On these Wednesday mornings the small mosque was crowded and the seating space was limited. I often worried while sitting on the mosque’s floor that I would touch someone with my feet as unintended bodily contact was not easy to avoid. Around fifty to sixty women of all ages, some of them accompanied by their children, gathered on the mosque’s carpeted floor, listened to the message of the dā‘iyya, and occasionally engaged in a discussion. The discussion themes were sometimes very praxis-oriented. For example, during one of the lessons the dā‘iyya advised the women how they could better arrange their household tasks during the approaching Ramadan and thereby maximize the time they could allocate for praying. Some of the women asked questions related to daily practices such as cooking and washing. An elderly woman had brought an old pot with her to the mosque and demonstrated how robust the old kitchenware was. Her message to the other women was that one should never throw anything away. During the lessons and discussions, the accompanying children stayed startlingly quiet while their mothers carefully followed the dā’iyya’s speech. Some women were taking notes while a pile of recorders and phones lay in front of the religious leader. Just like my own recorder, I assumed that these technical devices served the purpose of further study.
10Women’s participation in the mosque in Shubra illustrates the historically changed value associated to women’s presences in mosques. As Katz notes (2014: 276), by attending ceremonies and lessons in mosques women could not only enhance their religious knowledge, but also acquire social and political awareness. Saba Mahmood’s work in Cairo in the late 1990s and early 2000s illustrated that women sought guidance from the Qur’an classes. Against the backdrop of what they considered an increasingly secularized state, the women in Mahmood’s study were concerned with the question of how to better organize their lives according to Islamic standards (Mahmood 2005: 56). In the summer of 2013, in the small mosque in Shubra, the mosque attendees did not only seek guidance on practical daily matters. In the changed political situation, they also engaged in a discussion about politics and wanted to gain information about the unfolding political situation.
- 6 Meeting in the mosque, 25/06/2013, Cairo.
11Besides the discussion of various aspects of daily life and practical advice on how to organize one’s time during Ramadan, the preaching in the Shubra mosque had a political tone. Focusing on Islam, Saba Mahmood (2005) criticized the way in which political agency of religious activism in Egypt has been theorized as apolitical because of its lack of direct engagement with the Egyptian state. She pointed to the women’s mosque movement’s dissatisfaction with the Egyptian state and its often unaccounted indirect involvement with it (Mahmood 2005: 73). In contrast, within the political context of the summer of 2013, the women in the mosque engaged directly and openly with the state. The dā‘iyya challenged the political developments both on the discursive level by preaching against the military coup, and physically by participating in the anti-coup demonstrations. During the class that took place just a few days before the planned demonstrations against President Morsi in June 2013,6 she clearly addressed the political situation in her speech. She told her students to ask themselves whose interests the anti-Morsi protests served and encouraged her listeners to talk to those who were planning to attend the demonstrations that were taking place on Tahrir square. She posed the rhetorical question to the attendees: Why would anyone want to overthrow a democratically elected president? She clarified to the attentive group of women that it was not about her support for a specific person, but that she was concerned about the successor of President Morsi. Who would replace him, she asked. And, she continued, would Egyptians be able to agree on a new president?
- 7 While the Islamic headscarf was visible in most of Cairo’s neighborhoods during the time of my res (...)
12Although the dā’iyya’s preaching inside the confines of the small mosque in Shubra addressed only a small number of Egyptian women, her authoritative voice touched upon many of the issues that the opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood and the state media propagated. The issues criticized by Morsi’s opponents included among others Morsi’s presumed plan to sell the Suez Canal – Egypt’s major revenue source – to Qatar, and his alleged attempt to lower girls’ marriage age – originally a discussion started by al-Nūr party – (Elmasry 2017: 182). Eminently aware of these narratives, the dā‘iyya challenged them by posing rhetorical questions: Is Morsi really going to sell the (Suez) canal to Qatar? Is Morsi really going to make girls marry at the age of nine? Does Morsi really want (you) to wear a niqab?7
13The litany of questions illustrates that the dā‘iyya was well aware of the criticism that targeted President Morsi and other Islamists. This was not surprising because Egyptian media concentrated their efforts on supporting the regime change and tirelessly emphasized the real or imagined mistakes of the Muslim Brotherhood. By referring to the “democratically elected president,” the dā‘iyya introduced a “language of democracy” into her preaching. On the one hand she attempted to correct some of the myths that circulated about the Muslim Brotherhood’s disloyalty to Egypt, such as the claim that Morsi advanced foreign interests in Egypt (Elmasry 2017: 182-184). On the other hand, she questioned what was feared to be the Brotherhood’s interpretation of religion and tradition, such as young marriage age for girls (El Said 2015: 17). Her preaching did not only illustrate her support for President Morsi, but it also forced the women in the mosque to reflect thoroughly on the unfolding situation. Yet, her questions were rhetorical and she made a clear point that attending the demonstration in Tahrir was wrong.
- 8 Author interview, 07/09/2013, Cairo.
14The socio-economic class position of the participants was reflected in the rhetoric of the dā‘iyya. She expressed her resentment against Egypt’s wealthy and the remnants of the old regime who were connected to the former President Hosni Mubarak, commonly referred to as the felūl. In addition, the dā‘iyya made an implicit reference to class when she explained that the demonstrations on Tahrir square only served the interests of the elite (al-nukhba). Her political message to her attentive audience was that Egyptians of lower classes would not join the marches that led to Tahrir. Yet, we know that many people from Cairo’s popular neighborhoods participated in the anti-Morsi demonstrations. In my later interview with her, she acknowledged that also people from her neighborhood had been dissatisfied with President Morsi’s politics and participated in the demonstrations that demanded his resignation.8 She added that many people in the popular neighborhoods lacked the right kind of education and only relied on the propaganda of the Egyptian state. In this vein, her discourse does not only have the pietist mission of “correct social conduct” (Brown 2017: 58), but also, as Abaza (2010) has astutely pointed out, the Islamists’ discourse finds similarities with the liberal-secular segment of Egyptian cultural actors, who insist on their own, superior, vision of good life and enlightenment (tanwīr).
15In 2013, the month of Ramadan fell in the hot summer months of July and August. The overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi took place on the 3rd of July, a few days before Ramadan began. The Egyptian state claimed that “33 million protestors” attended the anti-Morsi demonstrations – these numbers were then used for justifying the regime change (Ketchley 2017: 128). Optimistic about their support base in Egyptian society, the Muslim Brotherhood, together with individual Salafis and other supporters, formed an anti-coup movement. It consisted of various sub-groups such as the “youth against the coup,” “students against the coup,” and “women against the coup” to name a few. Two camps were set up to occupy major traffic points in Cairo: Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya square and al-Nahda square. As Ketchley illustrates, by hosting many people, these camps developed their own lives that included among others radio and televisions stations (Ketchley 2017: 136-137). The camps were viewed with hostility by the coup leaders. Moreover, many Egyptians considered the protest sites a burden and complained about them. It was no surprise, then, that after Morsi’s overthrow, the security services deployed violence and live ammunition against the anti-coup protestors on several occasions. The incident at the Republican Guard Officers’ Club – leaving over sixty Morsi supporters dead – was just one example of such violence. These episodes of violence were formative in shaping the anti-coup activists’ minds (Ketchley 2017: 142).
- 9 The National Salvation Front was formed by oppositional political parties in late 2012 to protest (...)
16As the month of Ramadan proceeded, tensions on Cairo’s streets grew. No classes were held in the mosque. I met the women in the mosque on the 13th of August again. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the following morning the Egyptian security services dispersed the protest camps causing death, deep trauma and confusion among many Egyptian Christians and Muslims (Ibrahim 2018). At the time of the mid-August lesson when we gathered in the mosque again, not only had Morsi been overthrown six weeks earlier, but also the constitution drafted by the Islamists a year earlier in 2012 had been suspended. In that spirit, the lesson started with a reflection on the political situation. The dā‘iyya first recognized that President Morsi had been overthrown. Then she asked: “why did we lose?” Her critique addressed the coup leaders – the National Salvation Front9 – who, according to her, advocated for the separation of religion and politics. She addressed the women in the mosque with the following statement:
This is our society, and in society we have to connect religion and politics, not to separate them. If you hear someone saying that Islam and politics are not related, it is only because people talk without going to the main sources. Politics is life and religion. The light of truth will come.
If you are in the square because there are many people, you will lose. It is important to think for yourself.
You don’t listen to people who say that there is no democracy, or no elections, or Morsi irḥal (leave), or that they kill you. You listen to God.
There is no people who would help you or who you could rely on.
The only help comes from God.
17By introducing the notion of transcendence, the dā‘iyya turned to God’s powers and construed an explanation for the misery that lied beyond the worldly comprehension. Her remedy was both profane and sacred at the same time as she encouraged her listeners to have faith in God and to think for themselves. She also cautioned her listeners that one should not join a group only because it was big. Then she continued with a statement that invited the women to resist the hegemonic forces of the state: “Do not rely on the president, on shaykhs, on the army, on the East or the West but on God.”
- 10 Other scholars have argued that for example the constitution drafted in 2012 by the Islamists was (...)
- 11 Article 219 under chapter 2 on general provisions stated the following: “The principles of Islamic (...)
- 12 Yet, in the summer of 2013 al-Nūr party joined the ranks of the coup leaders (and accepted the omi (...)
18The suspended Constitution, drafted by the Islamists in 2012, had faced harsh criticism from Egyptian feminists. One of the points of critique was Article 219 that, as it was argued, would expand the jurisprudence of sharī‘a interpretations (Elsadda 2015).10 Upon its introduction, it had complemented Article 2 (that defines Islam as “the religion of the state and Arabic language [as] its official language. Principles of Islamic sharī‘a are the principal source of legislation”) by specifying the explicit sources of jurisprudence.11 It was specifically introduced by the Salafi al-Nūr party and tied the new Constitution to the Sunni doctrine (El Ashwal 2013).12 The dā‘iyya was particularly concerned about the omission of Article 219. I summarize her critique here:
People of the state do not want this article, because, for example, if they are judges they want their sons to become judges. They pay under the table and so their sons can become judges.
This is not in accordance with Islam.
They don't want the son of a doorman to be a judge.
They do not want him to be at the same level as they are.
This is why they do not want sharī‘a because Islam would not be in accordance with bribing.
19Thus, the dā‘iyya tied the notion of just society to this specific article. She elaborated further that Article 219 was meant to impose limitations on the lives of the “elite” (al nukhba) as it would have put a ban on alcohol and prostitutes. Her opposition to the coup leaders thus also relied on common stereotypes about wealthier and secularized Egyptians. Nadje Al-Ali’s (2000: 48) research that shows how sometimes wealthy and “westernized” Egyptians were considered foreigners by other Egyptians is illustrative here.
20Sherine Hafez (2011: 154) argues that religious practices cannot be analyzed in a vacuum but that they need to be contextualized within the political and social processes that shape them. Earlier studies have indicated that the mosque movement’s dissatisfaction with the Egyptian state was related to the perceived marginalization of religious knowledge (Mahmood 2005: 4). In addition, the fear expressed by the dā‘iyya needs to be contextualized within the long history of state repression of religious movements in Egypt (Al-Anani 2016: 136-137; Brown 2017: 159). Viewed from the perspective of the mosque attendees, they had a reason to believe that their living conditions would benefit from “more Islam.” The dā‘iyya was well aware that there were people in a materially superior position in Cairo. She believed that those people had benefitted from the regime of the former President Hosni Mubarak and thus they would gain from its return to power. As an empirical proof of the old regime’s corruption, before finishing the lecture, the dā‘iyya paraphrased a video that had circulated online. She explained that in the video – originally not meant for public distribution – a judge of the constitutional court declared that eventually Egypt will be a secular state. After this anecdote, the dā‘iyya asked: What kind of a secular state? A secular state based on blood?
- 13 The Human Rights Watch (2015) estimates that the Egyptian security forces killed 1150 people durin (...)
21The fear expressed by the dā‘iyya materialized violently a day after the Qu’ran lesson on the 14th of August when the Egyptian security forces dispersed the protest camps in Rab‘a al-‘Adawiyya and al-Nahda squares. According to various estimates, several hundred Egyptians died.13 The next Qur’an lesson, that took place a week after the massacre, provided a space for mourning and reflection. Some of the attendees had lost friends, family members, and acquaintances. Upon my arrival in the mosque, the dā‘iyya’s assistant was delivering a eulogy for the martyrs (al-shuhadā’). It was followed by the dā‘iyya’s prayer in which she addressed the losses of the massacre and spoke about people and friends who had died. The women cried. The Qur’an class was notably more interactive than other lesson I attended and it turned into a collective mourning and remembrance of the martyrs of the massacres. The dā‘iyya also presented her assessment of the situation. This time with a more affirming voice, she stated that Egyptian television was airing lies whereas the people in the mosques were right. She asserted that it was everyone’s responsibility to explain to their children that the news was wrong. Her own behavior provided an example to others. She had turned off her television and radio. The lesson also provided the women with the opportunity to ask precise questions about the unfolding situation in Egypt. One woman asked why they (“we” – referring to the women in the mosque and other supporters of President Morsi) did not carry weapons unlike the Egyptian security forces who had dispersed the protest camps. The religious leader responded that it was important to remember that the others, referring to those who attended anti-Morsi protestors, were also Muslims and therefore should not be killed. She had abandoned the term “elite,” which she had previously used to describe those who had attended the demonstrations against President Morsi. Her conciliatory tone provides evidence that contradicts interpretations claiming that the allies and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood categorized the supporters of Morsi’s overthrow in Tahrir as not true Muslims (Schielke 2017: 209). Moreover, the dā‘iyya reminded her students that one should not be happy about other people’s misery: those who were happy about other people’s death lacked a heart, she stated. She also encouraged the women to listen to all opinions and then choose the best one.
- 14 A statement by the National Salvation Front on 03/07/2013.
22Since Morsi’s overthrow, the National Salvation Front called the Muslim Brotherhood the “murderous terrorists that kill.”14 On the third Wednesday in August, the dā‘iyya took a stance against this dehumanizing rhetoric that had enabled the mass killings in Cairo’s squares by asking “where are the terrorists?” She encouraged her students to ask: “who is using live weapons?” Three weeks later, when I visited her in her tiny ground floor apartment that was located a few blocks away from the mosque, she gave a more elaborate analysis of the rhetoric of the coup leaders. I summarize her thoughts here:
- 15 Author interview, 07/09/2013, Cairo.
If the people from Tahrir square would come to see us, they would realize that we are not terrorists. They would see that we would help them and that we do not engage in terrorist acts. If there was no media they would see that in the popular areas we are not terrorists.15
23Thus, her words did not only address class-based issues such as her neighborhood’s spatial marginalization. She was also critical of the lack of alternative voices in the media. She defined herself as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that was portrayed as a disloyal group by the mainstream media (Elmasry 2017: 183). The dā‘iyya recognized that despite the brief period of flourishing free press in post-2011 Egypt, little had changed in the Egyptian media landscape.
24Recent studies have paid little attention to the activism of women who supported factions of political Islamists and President Mohammed Morsi in post 2011-Egypt. The political climate that prevails in Egypt since the military coup makes such research difficult to conduct. The attempts to obstruct activities of the opposition in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular have included mass incarceration and the state’s tightening control of religious practices. Violence practiced by the Egyptian state against the Muslim Brotherhood is widely accepted (Pratt 2019) and the death of President Morsi during his court hearing was barely addressed in Egyptian media and quickly forgotten. Against this backdrop, the account of the events in the summer of 2013 that I have presented in this article is counter-hegemonic as it challenges the official narrative of the developments in Egypt’s recent past. The perspective articulated by the dā‘iyya and other supporters of President Morsi was not heard in Egyptian mainstream media and barely any records account for the women’s opposition. Expanding on Mahmood’s work (2005) that illustrated the need to think about political agency more broadly, I have shown that in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising the mosque provided a space for direct engagement with politics. In the small mosque in Shubra, the women challenged the hegemonic interpretations of the political situation that were offered by the Egyptian state. In her quest for a more “just society,” the dā’iyya’s speech combined religious discourse with notions that derived from what we could call a “language of democracy.” The socio-economic and legal reforms related to gender, that the Mubarak regime had initiated, had little impact on the lives of ordinary Egyptian women (Hafez 2014: 88), including the women who attended Qu’ran lessons in the small mosque in Shubra. Thus, the dā‘iyya’s perspective needs to be understood within the socio-political context in which it was expressed. Her framing of the situation and the support of President Morsi demonstrates how religion was applied to politics in order to criticize the unequal distribution of resources by the Egyptian state. Hence, by contextualizing women’s agency, this article is an attempt to pave the way for a more holistic analysis of the developments in Summer 2013.
Flux RSS