Nawal El Saadawi

ABSTRACT:This essay positions Egyptian physician, novelist, and activist Nawal El Saadawi's understudied novel God Dies by the Nile within a broader framework of Egyptian revolutionary movements. It analyzes representations of the peasantry—which, historically, symbolize Egyptian nationalism—and argues that British and American (neo)colonial intervention in Egyptian policies has legitimized patriarchal violence while disrupting the subaltern family unit through the misuse of religious rites; as a result, women, especially, become victims of sexual exploitation and forced labor. By focusing on the heroine's political awakening through her participation in a Zar ritual, a folklore exorcist practice, the paper highlights the importance of the ritual's failure in subverting the matrimony between Islam, patriarchy, and capitalism. The novel thus overturns preexisting beliefs concerning peasant oppression and foregrounds the significance of non-linguistic modes of political awakening, class-consciousness, concerted collective action, and, ultimately, national revolt.

Women and man always stand at the opposite position in a patriarchal system's point of view. The position is not on the same level. Women stand on the other side as well as under man. Therefore, the relation that links them is not a bridge, but stairs. This novel also reveals such gap, even Nawal el-Saadawi straight forwardly wrote so much oppression experienced by creatures who were born as women. Deconstruction and feminist perspectives will be used as a framework in exploring this novel.

The status of women in today’s Muslim world continues to spur debates regarding their role not just today but during the entire history of Islam. It also raises questions as to whether Muslim women have experienced greater or declining rights and benefits along with that history.
A critical checkpoint for this debate takes place in medieval times, as between the ninth and the thirteenth-century thoughts and views about women were shaped by scholars such as al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Taymiyya.
The school of al-Ghazālī’ emerged from the Ash’ari school of religious thought, and is considered the representative of Al-Ash’ari in today’s primary scholastic school in the Muslim world, Al-Azhar.
Ibn Rushd is viewed as a progressive thinker among Muslim and Western scholars, and, by al-Ghazālī’’s followers, as a rival. This is largely a result of his book Tahafut al-Tahafut, which Ibn Rushd wrote in response to al- Ghazālī’’s Tahafut al-Falasifa.
Whereas the debate took the form of refuting or not refuting philosophy in the first place, it continued among followers from both schools into what each of the scholars (al-Ghazālī’ and Ibn Rushd) stood for, and thus refuted or supported all of what one student preached or taught.
In this sense, many Islamic scholars didn’t do justice to the thought of Ibn Rushd that was beyond the Tahafut, and hence, much of his thought stayed in the unopened drawer of “different” discourse.
Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness is demonstrated not in his jurisprudence books. In many ways, he adapted in his case law, and his fatwa’s to the general line of Islamic law voice of his time. His philosophical works, however, were a demonstration of his true ideals. His views on women were
challenging then, and still, are challenging in today’s Islamic world. His view on the development of the society as a whole is portrayed from a growing understanding that was far from application in his time. It is true, however, that his views were mainly a revision, as well as influenced by his predecessors such as Ibn Sina and Al-Kindi, a school of thought that integrate Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic thought.
Ibn Taymiyya, on the other hand, leaves behind him a school at the opposite extreme of Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness, one that in today’s religious approach is followed by Salafists and Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. His followers include Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama’a1, the same branch of Islamic schools that stands opposite the Shiite2. Ibn Taymiyya, according to his supporters, is considered the “Man of Awakening.” It was his view that many a stream of Muslims, mainly in Arab countries, decided to take after the failure of Arab Nationalism following the Arab defeat in the 1967 war.
The importance of these three thinkers’ work lies in their continuing effect on today’s Islamic lifestyle, and that includes the perception of women in the Islamic world.
This study attempts to discuss and explore the following: 1) the status of Muslim women in that period of al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Rushd (ninth through thirteenth centuries), with particular focus on these men’s views on women, and 2) comparing the effect of their views on today’s thought in regards to women, through a) discussing the general status of Muslim women today, and b) examining different Islamic feminist scholars, namely Fatima Mernissi, who in her works has excessively criticized al-Ghazālī’’s views on
1 When mentioning Ahl al-Sunna, it also includes the same stream that al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd come from.
2 After the death of the Prophet, and by the time Ali ibn Abi Talib became caliph. Split among the Islamic world started when Shiite; those who believed that Ali is the natural heir of the Prophet since he was his cousin, the first to believe in him, and his son-in-law. And those who came from the Umayyad tribe, led by Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, who saw that their strong tribal ties and the power they acquired in the Levant made them the deserving caliphs of Islam. From that moment on Islam was firmly fractioned between Shiites and Sunnis. Their faith in what defines Islam as
religion is the same. The differences are not in the belief but certain behaviors in the schools of jurisprudence. But originally their difference is political.

Women, and Nawal Sa’dawi, who has discussed women’s status from a different perspective relevant to the medieval era and its scholars. And last, but not least, this paper will attempt to show the effects of the teachings of al- Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd and Ibn Tamiya on the role of woman in Muslim societies,
This research will highlight the thought of both Mernissi and Sa’dawi, measuring their direct discours​e against medieval thought and how it shaped women’s status.

2018 Early draft of chapter to appear in the forthcoming collection, Oil Fictions: World Literature and Our Contemporary Petrosphere, edited by Stacey Balkan and Swaralipi Nandi.

Feminist critic Sheena Wilson has recently called for a lens of “critical petro-intersectionality” through which to “expose how the inequities of race, class and gender are not only perpetuated in our current petroculture but also actively deployed as rhetorical strategies to literally and figuratively buoy and sustain existing power sources: oil and the neoliberal petro-state” (177). In particular, Wilson has critiqued how mainstream Euro-American media often instrumentalizes rhetorics that invoke women’s rights in order to rationalize colonial extraction politics and which position female bodies as sites of spectacularized petro-politics, while marginalizing the agency of women in acts of petro-resistance (177). This essay will seek to extend this approach to the gendering of world oil literature by examining two examples of feminist petrofiction from frontiers of oil extraction, Nawal El Saadawi’s Love in the Kingdom, set in a petro-state resembling Saudi Arabia, and Laura Restrepo’s The Dark Bride, set in Colombia. I argue that in these texts questions of gender, petro-sexuality and the relation between energy and women’s work in the realm of social reproduction are explicitly foregrounded in relation to oil imperialism.

The status of women in today’s Muslim world continues to spur debates regarding their role not just today but during the entire history of Islam. It also raises questions as to whether Muslim women have experienced greater or declining rights and benefits along that history.
An important checkpoint for this debate takes place in medieval times, as between the ninth and the thirteenth century thoughts and views about women were shaped by scholars such as al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Taymiyya.
The school of al-Ghazālī’ emerged from the Ash’ari school of religious thought, and is considered the representative of al-Ash’ari in today’s major scholastic school in the Muslim world, Al-Azhar.
Ibn Rushd is viewed as a progressive thinker among Muslim and Western scholars, and, by al-Ghazālī’’s followers, as a rival. This is largely a result of his book Tahafut al-Tahafut, which Ibn Rushd wrote in response to al-Ghazālī’’s Tahafut al-Falasifa.
Whereas the debate took the form of refuting or not refuting philosophy in the first place, it continued among followers from both schools into what each of the scholars (al-Ghazālī’ and Ibn Rushd) stood for, and thus refuted or supported all of what one scholar preached or taught.
In this sense, many Islamic scholars didn’t do justice to the thought of Ibn Rushd that was beyond the Tahafut, and hence, much of his thought stayed in the unopened drawer of “different” discourse.
Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness is demonstrated not in his jurisprudence books. In many ways he adapted in his jurisprudence and his fatwa’s to the general line of Islamic jurisprudence voice of his time. His philosophical works, however, were a demonstration of his true ideals. His views on women were challenging then, and still are challenging in today’s Islamic world. His view on the development of the society as a whole is portrayed from a progressive understanding that was far from application in his time. It is true, however, that his views were mainly a revision, as well as influenced by his predecessors
2
such as Ibn Sina and al-Kindi, a school of thought that integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic thought.
Ibn Taymiyya, on the other hand, leaves behind him a school at the opposite extreme of Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness, one that in today’s religious approach is followed by Salafists and Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. His followers include Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama’a1, the same branch of Islamic schools that stands opposite the Shiite2. Ibn Taymiyya, according to his followers, is considered the “Man of Awakening.” It was his view that many a stream of Muslims, mainly in Arab countries, decided to take after the failure of Arab Nationalism following the Arab defeat of the 1967 war.
The importance of these three thinkers’ work lies in their continuing effect on today’s Islamic lifestyle, and that includes the perception of women in the Islamic world.
This study attempts to discuss and explore the following: 1) the status of Muslim women in that period of al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Rushd (ninth through thirteenth centuries), with special focus on these men’s views on women, and 2) comparing the effect of their views on today’s thought in regards to women, through a) discussing the general status of Muslim women today, and b) examining different Islamic feminist scholars, namely Fatima Mernissi, who in her works has excessively criticized al- Ghazālī’’s views on women, and Nawal El Saadawi, who has discussed women’s status from a different perspective relevant to the medieval era and its scholars.
This research will highlight the thought of both Mernissi and Saadawi, measuring their direct discourse against medieval thought and how it shaped women’s status.

Öz 1798 yılında Napolyon Bonapart komutasındaki Fransız ordusunun Mısır'ı işgaliyle başlayan modernleşme sürecinde kadın sorunu ivme kazanan konulardan biri olmuştur. Bu dönem, Batı ile temasları hız kazanan Arap toplumunda, her türlü baskıya maruz kalmış, başta eğitim olmak üzere birçok sorun ile boğuşan ve en önemlisi birey olma çabasındaki Mısır kadını için hak ve özgürlük taleplerinin yükseldiği bir dönemdir. El-Hub fî Zemeni'n-Nıft (Petrol Diyarında Aşk), Mısır'da kadın hareketinin öncülerinden ve en önemli temsilcilerinden kabul edilen Nevâl Es-Sâ'davî'nin 1993 yılında kaleme aldığı romanıdır. Aslında bir tıp doktoru olan Mısırlı yazar, eserlerinde Mısır kadınının sorunlarını ele almıştır. Ataerkil bir yapıya sahip olan Arap toplumunda kadınlar, İslam dini tarafından kendisine tanınan haklarına rağmen yanlış uygulamalar sonucunda toplumda tam anlamıyla söz sahibi olamamışlar, ötekileştirilip ayrıştırılmışlardır. Es-Sâ'davî, eserlerinde Mısır toplumunda kadının konumlandırılışı ile hakları ve özgürlükleri bağlamında sosyolojik ve kültürel değerlendirmeler yapmıştır. Petrol Diyarında Aşk adlı romanında Mısırlı feminist yazar, bu ataerkil ve baskıcı toplumdaki kadının konumunu irdelemiştir. Romanda kadını niteleyen, kadın için kullanılan bazı sembolik ifadeler göze çarpmaktadır. Kadının toplumda algılanışını aktaran bu romanda, "kara" kelimesinin kullanımı ve toplumsal göndermeleri kadın ekseninde incelenecektir. Abstract Women issues have become one of the subjects that gained momentum in the process of modernization which started with the invasion of Egypt by French army under command of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. This period, is a period when the rights and freedoms are raised for Egyptian women who have been exposed to all kinds of oppression, struggling with many problems, notably education, and the most important who is trying to be an individual in the Arab society where contacts with the West were accelerating. El-Hub fî Zemeni-n-Nıft (Love in the Kingdom of Oil), is a novel which was written up in 1993 by Nevâl Es-Sâ'dâvî, who is considered one of the most important representatives of the women's movement in Egypt. The Egyptian author, who was primarily a medical doctor, has managed the problems of the Egyptian women in his works. Despite the rights granted to them by the Islamic religion, women in patriarchal structured Arab society could not properly have a word in society as a result of misapplications and they were marginalized and separated. Es-Sâ'dâvî made sociological and cultural assessments in his works within the context of the positioning as well as rights and freedom of women in Egyptian society. In the novel of Love in the Kingdom of Oil, Egyptian feminist author examines the position of women in this patriarchal and oppressive society. Some symbolic expressions in the novel used for women and described them, are striking. Giving messages about the perception of women in society, this novel will be examined in terms of usage characteristics of the word "black", and the social positioning of women.

تناولت هذه الدراسة مسألة المرأة المأزومة وجوديا في روايات نوال السعداوي. وقد انطلقت الدراسة من ثلاثة تساؤلات هي: ما هي الوجودية؟ وما صلة الوجودية بقضايا المرأة؟ وما هي النماذج التي قدمتها نوال السعداوي في رواياتها للنساء المأزمومات وجوديا. وللإجابة على هذه التساؤلات اعتمدت الورقة البحثية منهج النقد الثقافي، وقسمت الدراسة إلى مبحثين رئيسيين: الأول الوجودية ويقدم تعريفا عامّا بالوجودية وأبرز أعلامها ومفاهيمها ويناقش أيضا صلة الوجودية بقضايا المرأة. والثاني: الشخصيات المأزومة وجوديا في روايات نوال السعداوي، ويتضمن دراسة شخصيتين في عملين روائيين. وقد خلصت الدراسة إلى أن الوجودية فلسفة تتلخص بأن وجود الإنسان سابق لماهيته، وأن هذه الفلسفة ذات ارتباط وثيق بقضايا المرأة؛ كونها تعاني من أزمة وجودية سببها أن حياتها بكل تفصيلاتها ليست من صنعها بل من صنع الرجل. وقد تناولت نوال السعداوي هذه المسألة في روايتين: "امرأتان في امرأة" وقدمت فيها نموذجا إيجابيا للمرأة التي تتخلص من أزمتها الوجودية، ورواية "الغائب" ومثلت نموذجا للمرأة التي تفشل في الانفصال عن القوالب النمطية وتؤثر البقاء فيها.

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AGAINST (MISUSING) TRADITION: NAWAL EL SAADAWI’S NOVEL THE FALL OF THE IMAM

In her 1987 novel Suqut al-Imam (The Fall of the Imam) Nawal El Saadawi presents and criticizes the reality in an unnamed theocratic state which has many similarities to Egypt.
She deals with the problem of misusing tradition to oppress women. The sources of tradition, which usually are texts, can be divided into three layers: religious, secular (AraboIslamic) and Egyptian pre-Islamic. Intertextual references to these old texts and traditions show constant sources of women’s oppression which has various changing forms. Tradition is fixed as constant, but is challenged by at least two factors: the passage of time and Bint Allah, the novel’s main character. The opposition constant vs. changing is shown in the author’s literary technique: some events are repeated and assume various anifestations,
some characters change into others, both evil and God have more than one face.

To approachthe problem of women's oppression internationally, this paper compares theideas of two feminist canonical writers, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) and NawalEl Saadawi (1931-). Despite the fact that Wollstonecraft and El Saadawi comefrom very dissimilar cultures, religions and epochs, they have tackled theissue of women's oppression, through their female heroines, in a strikinglysimilar way. Hence, principallythrough the application of the theories of both the American school of comparativeliterature and second-wave feminism, the current study attempts to manifest how therespective authors have utilized the same techniques to expose the reality of the patriarchal social system and its direct role in-women's oppression. It is concluded that the authors' socio-political contexts have influenced their writings considerably. The novelists have conveyed their own experiences through their writings to create an intimate text that in turn validated their ideologies. The paper also shows how El Saadawi's prose has been a feminist revolution in Arabic literature, similar to that of the eighteenth century English literature led by Wollstonecraft.

يهتم هذا البحث بدراسة الاغتراب الذي تعيشه المرأة في المجتمع الحديث من خلال النصين "المطبخ" لـ شوكون، و"امرأتان في امرأة" لنوال السعداوي، مستخدمًا المنهج البنيوي في محاولة للمقارنة بين النصين من خلال تتبع الملامح الأدبية داخلهما، والكيفية التي اتبعتها الكاتبتان لتوصيل المعنى من خلال البنية ذاتها، وعليه تنقسم الدراسة إلى ثلاث محاور رئيسة: أولا تتبع مسار تمرد البطلتين بين مسار دائري وآخر تصاعدي في محاولة للكشف عن الأدوات الأدبية داخل النصين، ثم دراسة الثنائيات الضدية والكشف عن أهم سماتها عند الكاتبتين، وأخيرًا دراسة الرموز والإسقاطات ذات الصلة بالاغتراب داخل بنية السرد.

本论文要探讨中国和埃及当代女性的“异化”现象，以徐坤小说《厨房》和纳瓦勒·萨达维小说《双面女》为例，期望通过两篇文本的比较，并使用结构主义理论，探究两位作家如何通过文本结构阐释文学观点与内涵。论文认为小说中女主人公的“异化”现象体现着在三个阶段，都体现于论文结构中的三个部分：首先，论文将阐释两位作家如何通过文本结构揭示了主人公的叛逆道路，然后分析在叛逆道路的过程中所存在的二元对立，最后将总结两位主人公叛逆的结果，主人公到底是否最终找到了自己。

This essay positions Egyptian physician, novelist, and activist Nawal El Saadawi's understudied novel God Dies by the Nile within a broader framework of Egyptian revolutionary movements. It analyzes representations of the peasantry—which, historically, symbolize Egyptian nationalism—and argues that British and American (neo)colonial intervention in Egyptian policies has legitimized patriarchal violence while disrupting the subaltern family unit through the misuse of religious rites; as a result, women, especially, become victims of sexual exploitation and forced labor. By focusing on the heroine's political awakening through her participation in a Zar ritual, a folklore exorcist practice, the paper highlights the importance of the ritual's failure in subverting the matrimony between Islam, patriarchy, and capitalism. The novel thus overturns preexisting beliefs concerning peasant oppression and foregrounds the significance of non-linguistic modes of political awakening, class-consciousness, concerted collective action, and, ultimately, national revolt.

يهتم البحث بدراسة الاغتراب الذي تعيشه المرأة في المجتمع الحديث من خلال النصين "المطبخ" لـ شوكون، و"امرأتان في امرأة" لنوال السعداوي، مستخدمًا المنهج البنيوي في محاولة للمقارنة بين النصين من خلال تتبع الملامح الأدبية داخلهما، والكيفية التي اتبعتها الكاتبتان لتوصيل المعنى من خلال البنية ذاتها، وعليه تنقسم الدراسة إلى ثلاث محاور رئيسة: أولا تتبع مسار تمرد البطلتين بين مسار دائري وآخر تصاعدي في محاولة للكشف عن الأدوات الأدبية داخل النصين، ثم دراسة الثنائيات الضدية والكشف عن أهم سماتها عند الكاتبتين، وأخيرًا دراسة الرموز والإسقاطات ذات الصلة بالاغتراب داخل بنية السرد.

Legends are molded by societies and their details are constantly altered, evolving with their narrators and listeners. The Egyptian legend of Isis and Osiris is no different. In the article entitled “Isis and the Mutilation of a Nation’s Memory”, light will be shed on the original legend that emerged as early as the 5th dynasty, and the appearance of Isis in different Egyptian Literary works and media will be traced. In 1930, Tawfiq al-Hakim, and despite his being considered a misogynist, wrote Isis, a three-act play that contrasts Isis with the Greek Penelope. Loosely based on Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the 1960 Egyptian movie Nahr al-Hob (Rive of Love) draws heavily on Isis, however, instead of glorifying Isis’ role as wife like al-Hakim, the movie highlights her romantic side and how love is capable of regenerating life and conquering death. Another important stage in the employment of the legend of Isis and Osiris is represented by Nawal El Saadawi—the feminist writer, physician and activist—who has a series of thirty-one autobiographical short narratives published in 1999 under the title of A Daughter of Isis: The Early Life of Nawal El Saadawi. In her work, writing becomes her means to transcribe history, to retrieve memories and pay homage to her mother whom she believes is a true embodiment of the spirit of Isis. There is no doubt that the act of remembering is central to the cultural production of knowledge about the past, molding the individual’s self knowledge. Recalling memories is a public matter formed by social situations and political contentions, fusing the private and public spheres, and creating an alternative history.  This paper, therefore, takes an interdisciplinary approach that engages both feminism and cultural memory in an attempt to discover the mutilated image of the role played by Isis, showing how the remnants of her story are evidence against how autocratic, patriarchal societies manipulate their peoples’ memories.