her son and daughter. However, in 1909 Shaarawi
entered a new period of activism and leadership.
She founded a secular women’s philanthropist
organization dedicated to providing medical care
to poor women and children, and she organized a
series of lectures for and by women. Five years later
she founded two additional organizations similarly
aimed at meeting the needs of different classes
of women: the Women’s Refinement Association
and the Ladies Literary Improvement Society. The
activities of these years prepared her well for her
next role as leader in the nationalist struggle for
independence. In 1919 she organized the first
women’s demonstration against British rule. She
worked closely with her husband and other leaders
of the nationalist Wafd Party, and she was named
president of the party’s Women’s Central Commit-
tee. However, upon the granting of limited inde-
pendence from Britain and the establishment of a
constitution in 1923, Sharawi and other women
activists were disappointed. Their demands for
suffrage were not met, nor were women’s rights sig-
nificantly improved under the new constitution.
Thereafter her activism became more markedly
feminist in character, and the same year she helped
to found the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU). At
the end of her return journey from an international
women’s conference, which she attended as the
EFU delegate, she publicly removed her face veil
as an act of protest. This remains the act for which
she is best known in Egypt today. In some ways, the
EFU served to reflect secular Egyptian nationalism
as Christian and Muslim middle- and upper-class
women worked together to achieve common aims.
Their concerns included securing women’s rights
to participate at all levels of Egyptian politics as
well as in the labor market and the educational sys-
tem, and demanding reforms to the personal status
codes. The members of the EFU continued to par-
ticipate in the struggle for full independence from
Britain. Shaarawi remained especially interested in
providing health care to poor women and children
throughout her life, as evidenced by the work of
the EFU and her private philanthropy.
Shaarawi utilized various methods to advance
her feminist causes, including founding two jour-
nals, the French language L’Egyptienne in 1925 and
the Arabic language Al-Misriyya in 1937. She was
also a strong supporter of international women’s
rights movements, serving on the executive board
of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance for
many years. She was instrumental in founding the
Arab Feminist Union in 1945, and she served as
that organization’s first president. She remained
an ardent Egyptian nationalist throughout her life
and was awarded the state’s highest decoration
in 1947, the year she died. Shaarawi’s legacy is
widely respected in egypt today. She is remem-
bered for having laid the foundation for women
to lead more publicly productive lives.
See also hUman rights; secUlarism.
Shauna HuffakerFurther reading: Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in
Islam (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992);
Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam and the Nation: Gender
and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, N.J.: Princ-
eton University Press, 1995); Huda Shaarawi, Harem
Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (1879–1924)
(London: Virago Press, 1986).Shaarawi, Muhammad al- (1911–1998)
Muslim teacher and television preacher
Al-Shaykh al-Shaarawi became famous in the
1970s as a master of qUran commentary on tele-
vision. It was not so much the profundity of his
exegesis that was attractive as it was the simplicity
of his style, which made his ideas accessible to the
wider public. By the time he died in 1998, he had
developed a huge following, where his sermons
were broadcast on television both in Egypt and
across the Arabic-speaking world.
Shaarawi played an important part in the a
wave of religious revival in Egypt in the 1970s.
During the previous period, until the death of
Jamal abd al nasir in 1970, Egypt’s government
had been intent on modernization and seculariza-
tion, which led to attempts to domesticate and
restrict the public role of religion. At the same
time, Nasir had ample reason to fear the challenge
posed by Islamists, especially those in the mUslimK 614 Shaarawi, Muhammad al-