Malak Hifnī Nāsif

Malak Hifnī Nāsif

Malak Ḥifnī Nāṣif (born December 25, 1886 in Cairo ; † October 17, 1918 there ; Arabic ملك حفني ناصف) was an Egyptian suffragette. She wrote the first public proclamation of women's rights in Egypt.

Life

Malak Hifnī Nāsif was born on December 25, 1886 in the Cairo district of al-Ğamāliyya. As the mother was often ill, she was the oldest and had to take responsibility for the six younger siblings from an early age. Her father was a respected Sunni judge . He was convinced of the benefits of women's education and sent Malak first to a private French school and then to a state school for girls, where she was one of the first class to take the final exam for primary schools. She switched to a teachers' college, where she was also part of the first graduate class in 1903. After further internships, she received her teaching license in 1905 and worked in this profession until her marriage in 1907.

Her husband ʿAbd as-Sattār al-Bāsil was the head of a Bedouin tribe in the Fayyūm . In 1907 he was one of the founders of the moderate-liberal People's Party (Hizb al-Umma). It was only after their marriage that Nāsif found out that he already had a daughter from a previous marriage; their own marriage was childless. The two made several trips abroad, including to Turkey; occasionally foreigners were also guests in her house. Nāsif was fluent in English, French, Arabic, Turkish and the local Bedouin dialect. In 1908 she began her journalistic career (see below) because as a married woman she was no longer allowed to work as a teacher.

The early Egyptian women's movement

The situation of Egyptian women's rights activists was problematic because the British colonial administration propagated feminism , even if the suffragettes were being fought in Great Britain at the same time . In British eyes, the veil and gender segregation were among the causes of the backwardness of Muslim society. On the Egyptian side, feminism - for which Arabic did not even have its own vocabulary - gained the reputation of being an instrument of the British, created to destroy its own culture.

Women first published in the Egyptian press in the 1880s, most of them Syrian Christian women. As a rule, the authors wrote under pseudonyms; when they were openly women, they often emphasized in their articles that they had previously performed all domestic and family duties. Access to journalism was made easier for them by the fact that writing was a free profession that was not subject to guild restrictions. The first Muslim Arab woman published from 1889, special magazines for women appeared from 1892.

In 1899, the Muslim judge Qāsim Amīn published his book Tahrīr al-marʾa ( The Liberation of Women ), in which he called for the abolition of the veil and gender segregation and also claimed that this was compatible with Islam. The discussion of such theses was initially limited to the urban upper and middle classes. From the end of the 19th century, there were also associations there for the first time, in which women could practice participation in society. Here they learned to hold elections, deal with finances, talk and discuss.

Feminism based on the Koran

As a student, Nāsif had already written her first newspaper articles; after she had to give up the teaching profession due to her marriage, she recognized here a possibility of practicing the profession. Unlike most of her colleagues, from the start she wrote not for special women's magazines, but for the general press. Most of her articles appeared in the liberal newspaper al-Ğarīda , published by the People's Party. Her first contribution on the occasion of the death of Qāsim Amīn is dated here in June 1908, and she soon received her own column "an-Nisā'iyyāt" (German as much as: From the world of women , this term only got the meaning later of "feminism"). The focus of her publication activity falls in the years 1908 to 1911; today there are still 49 articles to be found. al-Ğarīda had a circulation of about 4200. It was mainly read by the upper class; However, it is documented that newspapers were often read aloud in private meetings, so that their articles may have reached wider circles in a still largely illiterate society.

Nāsif wrote under the pseudonym "Seeker in the desert", which consequently no longer had the function of disguising her identity as a woman. In her articles she developed a feminism based on the Koran. She emphasized the fundamental equality of the sexes, from which she deduced that women should not be excluded from education. As a former teacher, she made detailed suggestions for improving schools.

In the traditional gender segregation, Nāsif continued to see the prerequisite for maintaining morals and decency. She accepted the traditional division of labor between men and women, but emphasized that their respective areas of responsibility were equal. Women certainly have the intellectual and physical abilities to exercise a profession. For example, unmarried and divorced women could work in education, health care and journalism, as well as get involved in charitable causes. Nāsif called for a minimum age of 16 years for young girls to be married, and women should have the right to see their bridegroom before the wedding. Marriage should be based on mutual sympathy. She proposed a judicial body that would decide on a divorce or the addition of another wife.

Nāsif did not reject the unveiling in principle, but did not consider her society mature enough for this step. She herself always went veiled in public and dressed in black. However, she had herself photographed unveiled and was the first Egyptian woman to agree to the publication of her picture. The customs of western societies should not be accepted uncritically, as this would result in the loss of one's own cultural identity. In summary, Nāsif pleaded for a separate, Islamic path to modernity.

In 1909, Nāsif was the first Arab woman to give a speech in front of over a hundred listeners, which was reprinted in numerous magazines. In 1910 a second speech followed at the Egyptian University, where special lectures for women had been set up. Nāsif published her articles in book form in October 1910, which was still unusual for male journalists at the time and has only been documented for one other woman. Her book under the title an-Nisā'iyyāt was reprinted in 1925, 1962 and 1998.

In 1911, women's rights were publicly proclaimed in Egypt for the first time when the first Egyptian parliament met in Heliopolis from April 29th to May 4th . The basis was a ten-point statement that Nāsif had formulated from her articles published up to then. Since she was not allowed to appear as a woman herself, a man presented her suggestions for improving the situation of Egyptian women. Almost all of them were rejected by parliament. Because of their political commitment, the British initially wanted to ban them, but then contented themselves with house arrest. In the following years, Nāsif fell silent almost entirely because of a protracted, life-threatening illness. One of her last activities was in 1916 when she founded a nursing school.

Shortly before her death, Malak Hifnī Nāsif was still working on a book on women's rights. On October 17, 1918 (according to the Islamic calendar: 11th Muharram 1337) she died of the Spanish flu . In December, a memorial service was held at the Egyptian University - the first public memorial service for a woman in Egypt. A memorial service reserved exclusively for women had to be postponed for a year because of the epidemic.

Quotes

Malak Hifni Nasif: "Because your depravity is the main cause of our veiling!"

literature

• Susanne Bräckelmann: 'We are half the world!': Zaynab Fawwāz (1860–1914) and Malak Hifnī Nāsif (1886–1918) - two publicists from the early Egyptian women's movement. Ergon Verlag, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-89913-351-X .
• Margot Badran, Miriam Cooke (ed.): Reading book of the 'New Woman' - Arab women about themselves. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1992, ISBN 978-3-499-13106-6 .