Hudā Schaʿrāwī

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Huda Sha`arawi

Hudā Schaʿrāwī (also Hoda Shaarawy , Arabic هدى شعراوي, DMG Hudā Šaʿrāwī * June 23, 1879 in Minya; † December 12, 1947 ) was an early Egyptian women's rights activist , founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU) and philanthropist . She was also the ideal image of a modern Muslim woman for the Malay intellectual Syed Sheikh al-Hady .

Private life

Huda Scha'arawi was born in Minya ( Upper Egypt ) in 1879 as the daughter of a wealthy family. Her mother was the daughter of refugees from the Caucasus who fled after armed conflict with Tsarist Russia in the 1860s . Her father was Sultan Pasha, a senior civil servant who became president of the short-lived Egyptian Representative Council in 1881 and died in 1884 .

She spent her first years relatively isolated in the harem , an experience that she would later write down in her memoir . Despite this isolation, she received a basic education, so she memorized the Koran at the age of nine and reported how she secretly used her father's bookcase.

At the age of twelve, Sha'arawi was engaged to her cousin Ali Pascha Sharawi and married a year later, but lived separately from him in Cairo until 1900 . During this time she learned French and Arabic from teachers such as that of the French-Egyptian suffragette Eugénie Le Brun . In their women's salon , she took part in discussions on social issues, particularly with regard to the position of women.

In 1900 she finally returned to her husband, less because of her own wishes and more because of family and social pressures. According to Sha'arawi's own description, married life was harmonious and in 1903 her daughter Bathna and in 1905 her son Muhammed were born. Her husband died in 1922, she died on December 12, 1947.

Philanthropic work

After Scha'arawi's daughter had recovered from a serious illness, she devoted herself more to her friends from her time in Cairo and, together with Marguerite Clemente, organized the first lectures for women at the newly founded university in Cairo .

In 1908 she played a leading role in the founding of Mabarrat Muhammed Ali , a philanthropic society led by Egyptian women who looked after the social needs of poor women and children and was supported by the Egyptian Princess Ain al-Hayat . Scha'arawi viewed the princess and other wealthy people as "guardians and protectors of the nation," while she viewed the poor as merely passive recipients of this aid.

feminism

As the predecessor organization of the EFU, she founded the Intellectual Association of Egyptian Women in April 1914 together with like-minded Egyptian and foreign women , in order to bring women together for “further intellectual and social success” after the successes of the women's salons and lectures.

When, after the end of the First World War, the Egyptian aspirations for independence were ignored and high representatives of the independence movement were deported to the Seychelles , the Egyptian revolution broke out on March 9, 1919 and Sha'arawi was a leader in the demonstrations and protests of women from the upper classes against the British involved in what she took for granted to "serve her country". In 1920 she became president of the newly formed Wafdist Womens Central Committee , the women's association of the independence-striving Wafd party .

In 1922 the British lifted their protectorate with a formal recognition of the independence of Egypt. Articles 74 and 82 of the Constitution of March 1923 guaranteed universal suffrage. In the election law from the same year, women were excluded. Hudā Schaʿrāwī then founded the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU) together with other women from the upper class . The Union campaigned for political rights for women, for equal rights of the sexes in education in secondary schools and universities, for the expansion of skilled employment opportunities for women and for scrutiny of marital laws affecting plural marriage and divorce. In 1923, representatives of the EFU took part in an international meeting of the International Alliance of Women for the first time . After returning from this meeting, Sha'arawi publicly took off her veil on her arrival in Egypt , was enthusiastically cheered by the women who had expected her arrival, and generated a lot of press coverage. It should be noted that at that time the veiling in Egypt only affected the upper class and was never a core topic of the EFU.

In 1924 it became clear that the Egyptian government would not grant women the right to vote in the upcoming elections and that many other demands of the EFU would not be taken into account despite protests at the opening of parliament . Scha'arawi turned away from the WWCC, disappointed at the admissions made to the British in relation to Sudan , and devoted himself entirely to her work for the EFU.

Until her death in 1947, she directed their fortunes, networked internationally and in 1944 became president of the Arab Feminist Union she initiated . In her last years she received numerous honors, including the highest honor of the State of Egypt at the time. She classifies this as follows:

"Men have chosen women with extraordinary successes and put them on a pedestal so that they do not have to recognize the skills of all women."

- Huda Scha'arawi : Harem Years. The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (1879-1924). P. 131

Meeting with Ataturk

In the course of the 12th International Women's Conference, which took place in Istanbul on April 18, 1935 , she was its chairman and member of twelve participating women and was elected as Vice President of the International Alliance of Women . At the conference she declared Mustafa Kemal Ataturk , the founder of the state of Turkey, as a role model for her actions. In her memoirs she writes: “After the Istanbul Conference ended, we received an invitation to a ceremony held by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the liberator of modern Turkey ... In the salon next to his office, the invited delegates stood in a semicircle and a few moments later, Ataturk came in with an aura of grandeur and grandeur, there was a sense of prestige. When it was my turn, I spoke without any translation and it was unique for a Muslim woman from the Orient to give a speech in Turkish for the international authority of women, in which I expressed the admiration and gratitude of the Egyptian women for the liberation movement he cited and expressed in Turkey and I said ... he has encouraged the countries of the east to liberate themselves and demand women's rights and I said: If the Turks see you as the honorableness of their father and you Ataturk (“Father of the Turks "), I say that this is not enough, but for us you are the Ataşark (" Father of the East ") ... he thanked me for the great influence that I had exerted and I asked him to to give us a picture of His Excellency in order to publish it in the magazine L'Égyptienne (note: feminist magazine from Scha'arawi; one of the earliest women's magazines in Egypt). "

Honors

On June 23, 2020, Schaʿrāwī was honored on her 141st birthday with a Google Doodle .

See also

literature

  • Posthumous: Margot Badran (Ed.): Harem Years. The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (1879-1924) . by Huda Shaarawi. New York 1987.
  • Kristina Maroldt: Feminism in Islamic Countries When the veil fell . One day (Spiegel Plus), March 15, 2017
  • Sha'rawi, Nur al-Hudá , in: June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International encyclopedia of women's suffrage . Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , pp. 270f.

Web links

Commons : Huda Sha'arawi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Monika Tworuschka: Huda Sharawi. Islamic feminist . In: Michael Klöcker; Udo Tworuschka (Ed.): Handbook of Religions. Churches and other religious communities in Germany / in the German-speaking area . Issue 17. I - 14.8.1. Munich 2008, p. 1-2 .
  2. ↑ Beth Baron: The Women`s Awakening in Egypt. Culture Society, and Press . New Haven / London 1994.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Huda Sha'arawi: Harem Years. The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (1879-1924) . Ed .: Margot Badran. New York 1987.
  4. ↑ a b c d Postcolonial Studies | Shaarawi, Huda. In: scholarblogs.emory.edu. 2006, accessed September 15, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Nadje S. Al-Ali: The Women's Movement in Egypt, with Selected References to Turkey. Geneva, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development 2002, p. 22, quoted from: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 407.
  6. ^ Margot Badran: Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton, Princeton University Press 1994, p. 207, quoted from: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 407.
  7. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 408.
  8. ^ Soha Abdel Kader: Egyptian Women in a Changing Society, 1899–1987. Colorado / London 1987.
  9. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote: A World History . OUP Oxford, 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-101682-0 ( google.at [accessed on May 25, 2020]).
  10. ↑ 141. birthday of Huda Scha'rāwī. June 23, 2020, accessed on August 22, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Schaʿrāwī, Hudā
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sha'arawi, Hoda; Sha'arawi, Huda; Sha'rāwī, Hudá
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Egyptian feminist
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Minya
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1947