By Mursi Saad El-Din I have already written about the two pioneers of enlightenment, Gamaleddin El-Afghani and Sheikh Mohamed Abdu. Now I come to the third side of the triangle, Qassim Amin. Both El-Afghani and Abdu stressed the fact that one can embrace Islam and at the same time not shun the spirit of the age, an age that was, in this case, obsessed with science. They were able to solve the main dilemma of the intellectual life of Egypt: how to reconcile the national and Islamic legacy with the ideas and trends of modern times; how to harmonise both sides into an organic unity that bears the traditional stamp as well as the Western and European trait. Following the two Islamic thinkers came Qassim Amin with his two important books The Liberation of Women and The New Woman. What is amazing is that although these books were published in 1899 and 1900, respectively, most of the problems they discuss are still with us today, not only in Egypt but in the whole of the Arab world. While Amin is always regarded as a pioneer propagator of the rights of women, he was in fact by no means the first one, having been preceded by such figures as Butrus El-Bustani, Ahmed Faris El-Shedyak, Rifaa Rafei El-Tahtawi, and Abdalla El-Nadim. But it was Amin who produced what can be regarded as the most seminal tract in the history of Egyptian feminism. Unlike El-Afghani and Mohamed Abdu, Amin was the product of secular education. Hailing from an upper middle- class family, with a Turkish father and an upper Egyptian mother, Amin received his primary education in a school in Alexandria and attended a preparatory in Cairo. After graduating from the School of Law and Administration, he practiced law until he was sent in 1882 on a scholastic mission to the University of Montpellier. Amin's French experience was a turning point in his life. On his return to Egypt in 1885, he became involved in the nationalist reform movement. While taking up arms, as it were, to defend Egypt, writing a book in French entitled Les Egyptiens as a riposte to the Duc d'Harcourt's book L'Egypte et les Egyptiens, he realised that one of the major reasons for his country's backwardness was the low status of women. It should be noted, however, that his yardstick in this respect was the image of the emancipated French women he had encountered in France. Inspite of his secular education in Egypt and his years of study in France, Amin never deviated from the principles of Islam. Like Abdu, he used Islamic arguments, quoting from the Quran to prove that Islam gave women a high status and rights unknown in a number of European countries. Going through Amin's two books, to which I return with pleasure from time to time, I am struck by the range of his knowledge and the depth of his arguments. For him, the liberation of women was an essential ingredient in the political battle for the liberation of Egypt. While reformers before Amin focussed mainly on education for women, we find him dealing with the issue in more global terms, tackling women's role both in domestic life and in society, taking in such aspects as the veil, marriage, polygamy, and divorce. In his introduction to The Liberation of Women (and here I am quoting from the excellent English translation by Dr Samiha Sidhom Peterson, published by the American University in Cairo Press), Amin writes, "I call on every lover of truth to examine with me the status of women in Egyptian society. I am confident that such individuals will arrive independently at the same conclusion I have, namely the necessity of improving the status of Egyptian women." He then goes on to assert that the evidence of history "confirms and demonstrates that the status of women is inseparably tied to the status of a nation. When the status of a nation is low, reflecting an uncivilised condition for that nation, the status of women is also low, and when the status of a nation is elevated, reflecting the progress and civilisation of that nation, the status of women in that country is also elevated." This argument that we would do well to heed today is what Amin set out to make and defend in his two books written over a century ago.
