Will you love me, Brother?

 

"Signs to people who reflect" by scholesyfynn 

By Erika Biagini 

Women are central to Islamist movements, the success of their political projects as well as their ability to survive state-led repression. In Islamist movements, women are not only those who give birth and nurture the new generations of activists, but they are also the ones who convey to them and their immediate communities the values, ideology and culture that their movements espouse. Women are also among the activists involved in the setting up and running of the large networks of Islamist social and religious associations, and are usually the first in line at polling stations in times of elections to cast their vote for Islamist candidates. Crucially, they are those who sustain Islamists in times of repression, guaranteeing their survival. Women do so by looking after the prisoners and their families, collecting funds for the movement and advocating for the prisoners’ freedom, when they are not the ones who are put behind bars or who lose their lives in the name of establishing an Islamic society. 

Since the 2013 military-led coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from government in Egypt, the Muslim Sisterhood, the female wing of the movement, has also been playing these roles, thus guaranteeing the Brotherhood’s survival. Women have taken part and led street protests, have taken care of the Brotherhood’s prisoners and their families, increased awareness of the human rights violations that Islamists are being subjected to via national and international organizations, have led hunger strike campaigns in support of the prisoners, coordinated networks of lawyers to follow up the prisoners’ legal cases, provided support to the victims of regime violence, raised funds for the movement, and today they are bringing up a new generation of Brotherhood activists. Several hundreds have lost their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons to a revolution that was violently crashed by the new military regime, and many have fallen victims of state-led violence themselves. The Muslim Sisters, therefore, are not only crucial to the survival of the Muslim Brotherhood movement but also to its ability to re-emerge from repression in the future.    

This crucial, albeit often invisible and of background role that women play in Islamist movements is predicated upon a patriarchal division of labour that demands women to support their movements’ production and reproduction so that men can practice politics and risk repression. This rests on heteronormative constructions of protective masculinity and selfless femininity that sanction women’s abiding with male authority in the family and public spheres of society. A patriarchal culture also sustains Islamist organizations. When included in Islamist movements, women are channelled towards roles that reflect what Islamists believe to be natural feminine qualities such as selflessness, nurturing and caring, and therefore towards supportive, rather than leadership and decision-making roles. Compliance with a patriarchal culture is also enforced in Islamist organization because it is a prerequisite for women’s advancement in the movement’s ranks. Crucially, patriarchy sustains the order of things in the ideal Islamic society that Islamists aspire to establish. It follows that patriarchy is not only central to Islamists’ families and identity politics, but also that women’s abiding with patriarchy epitomizes their commitment to the Islamist political project. These arrangements inevitably demand that women put aside their personal desires and aspirations when these challenge Islamist movements’ patriarchal culture.

While scholars have extensively assessed the centrality of the patriarchal family to Islamist movements and their identity politics, less attention has been paid to how changes within the family may affect the movement overall. That is, given that the patriarchal family is the primary unit upon which Islamist movements build their collective identity and organize their activism, division of roles, and structures, what would be the consequences for Islamist organizations should women demand and eventually obtain greater power-sharing within the family? 

I reflect on this question in one of my latest articles published in the journal Partecipazione e Conflitto (Participation and Conflict), titled “What’s love got to do with it? Women, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and organizational identity.” In it, I reflect upon the demands of a young group of Muslim Sisterhood activists for love from their husbands in marriage relationships, what these demands tell us about women’s desires for themselves and the movement, and what it would imply for the Brotherhood organization as a whole should women be successful in being loved. My analysis reveals that the women’s demand for love suggests their desire to embody identities that transcend being mothers and wives. These are identities that women have created for themselves in the process of partaking in Egypt’s revolutionary struggle and the resistance of Islamists since the 2013 repression, and that embody roles and aspirations that challenge those that Islamists envisage for women. Women’s demands for love from their husbands epitomize their desire to establish a marriage relationship characterized by greater power sharing, where husbands love women unconditionally and support their aspirations, even when these contravene the traditional patriarchal order predicated by Islamist movements and ideology.  

Women’s demands for equal opportunities and greater power sharing in Islamist movements emerged more forcefully since the 1990s, when Islamists committed to participation in pluralist political systems, causing women to become important constituencies of Islamist parties and movements. In most cases, women’s political inclusion did not translate into women’s gains in terms of leadership and decision-making, despite women’s support and activism being crucial to the Islamists’ electoral successes since then. The 2010-11 Arab Uprisings reignited demands for greater power sharing by groups that have been traditionally marginalised in the political process of Arab societies, such as the youth, the working class, the women, religious and gender minorities. While in Egypt after the 2011 uprising both women and the youth were central to the ability of the Brotherhood to be elected into parliament and the presidency, Islamists failed to grant women and the youth real power sharing. Both constituencies benefited from greater participation, but this was subordinated to the conditions set by Islamist male leaders. 

Regardless, the uprisings represented a moment of hope, new possibility and greater freedom for the generations that struggled to bring about change from within their own particular contexts, including women in Islamist movements. Muslim Sisterhood activists mobilised for political change but also imbued their activism with demands for decision-making roles and personal freedoms. Though counterintuitive, the 2013 repression of Islamists in Egypt opened up new opportunities for women to play roles usually denied to them by the Islamist movement, allowing them to build new identities as activists and agents of change pursuing self-determination. While the revolution was violently crashed by the new military regime, the same cannot be said for the experiences, demands and ideals that the revolution brought into being for the activists who took part in it. While hope has often translated into disappointment, revolutionary experiences, including gender revolutions, cannot be easily brought down by military regimes, no matter how brutal they are. Since the counter-revolution took hold of Egypt, Islamist women, like many other Egyptian revolutionaries, have been focusing on their personal lives to bring forward the changes they had hoped for. 

The Muslim Sisterhood’s demands for love in marriage relationships speak precisely to their desire to advance gender change focusing on those material and emotional spaces that remain under their control. Other avenues being barred to them since the return of an authoritarian military regime in Egypt, women have directed their efforts to the sphere of the family to obtain those powers and freedoms they were calling for during the wave of revolutionary change that swept the country. Their claim for love suggests women’s desire to pursue personal ambitions, careers and aspirations that are usually unavailable to them in Islamist movements, and often in Egyptian society writ large. It also suggests women’s desire to live by the identities they have created for themselves during the revolutionary struggle. The Sisters’ demand for love, in this context, translates into women’s demands from their husbands to support their desires and aspirations unconditionally, regardless of whether what women wish to pursue conflicts with their traditional duties in the family, or with the role Islamists ascribe to them in their movements. Their demand for love, therefore, embodies women’s struggle for greater pluralism in Islamist organizations and for emancipation, so that they can be the selves they have created for themselves outside their identities as mothers and wives.

I use this analysis to reflect upon the implications of the Sisterhood’s demands for greater power sharing in marriage for the Islamist movement as a whole. Gender being a relational category, women obtaining greater power sharing in the family sphere and the freedom to live by their own chosen identities, while also being supported by their husbands and by the movement in the process, also implies a change in the Brotherhood’s patriarchal culture.  This would require that the Brotherhood meet women’s demands to make the movement more pluralist, open to women and the youth, and to their demands and aspirations. It would imply male Islamist leaders entering into a power sharing agreement with the women activists, and eventually abandoning outdated practices and traditions against which the youth of the uprisings mobilized. Ultimately, the Sisterhood’s demands for love imply a change in the Brotherhood’s identity and in the patriarchal culture that sustains it, so as to fully recognise women in their plurality of identities and their worth.

Currently, the Brotherhood is facing considerable challenges to reunite and rebuild what has become a movement divided not only across ideological but also geographical lines.  Women remain a crucial Brotherhood constituency and one that is central not only to its ability to sustain itself under repression but also to re-emerge from it in the future. The Brotherhood would therefore benefit from taking women’s claims, desires and aspirations into serious consideration and to embrace gender changes as it works to reunite and regain relevance as the oldest socio-political Islamist movement in the Middle East and North Africa, as evolution and renewal are the preconditions for the survival of all socio-political forces across historical times and contexts. 

About the author

Erika Biagini is Assistant Professor in Security Studies in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. Her area of expertise lies at the intersection of Islamism, gender and politics. She lived in Egypt, where she conducted research on the Muslim Brotherhood and the activism of its female members, the Muslim Sisterhood, in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising. Her current research interests address the areas of subjectivity, identity and feminist politics among Islamist women activists, the gender politics and sexuality of Islamist movements and the evolution of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood since the 2013 repression. Her work appeared in international peer-reviewed journals such as Mediterranean Politics, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Égypte/Monde Arabe, Partecipazione e Conflitto, Middle East Law and Governance, Middle East Critique. She is currently working on her first book, addressing the evolution of the activism and gender politics of the Egyptian Muslim Sisterhood since the Arab Uprisings