Women & Islamic Cultures Family, Law and Politics

attend most institutions of higher learning. Al-

though frequently fighting their own battles against

patriarchy at home, they were actively engaged in

supporting the expansion of British patriarchy

abroad, in the name of women’s liberation.

In the wake of social, political, and spiritual

attacks on local culture, some Muslims living under

British rule came to adopt values promoted by the

imperial elite. However, many embraced ideals of

Westernization in an effort to combat imperial

authority. Qàsim Amìn, for example, became an

advocate for women’s education and the expansion

of women’s public participation in Egypt as a result

of his experiences in Europe. Ardently convinced of

the superiority of Western nations, he nonetheless

advocated the adoption of Western models in an

effort to regain independence (≠Amara 1976). Amìn,

and other subjects of the British, had something in

common with the imperialists. Like them, he used

local women’s social positions, their physical pres-

ences, and their religious values as indicators of the

worth of native attitudes. By embracing colonial

ideologies of Muslim women, Amìn and others

inadvertently reinforced them.

The result of British colonial practices on the

lives of the millions of Muslim women ruled by the

empire in the Middle East was mixed. As feminist

and nationalist movements emerged in colonized

lands, women struggled to shine a spotlight on the

patriarchies that oppressed their full participation

in society, both local and colonial. However, the

association between imperialism and Western fem-

inism, and the subsequent denigration of Islam by

British politicians, missionaries, and feminists, laid

the groundwork for deep distrust between colo-

nized people and those espousing their ideas about

women’s roles in native societies. Some women

embraced colonial notions, others cast them aside;

but throughout the British Empire, Muslim women

were used by colonizers and colonized as templates

for or against their particular sociopolitical agendas.

Arab nationalists were eager to rally women to

the cause of independence, and women in Egypt,

Palestine, and other Middle Eastern nations organ-

ized conferences and demonstrations calling for

more inclusive political and personal rights for

women in the context of independent nations free

from British rule. However, nationalist leaders, like

the imperialists, did not extend substantial rights to

women once the British relinquished control,

despite their use of women’s issues to bolster their

struggles for independence. This resulted, in part,

in the continued festering of the Woman Question,

promoted by imperialists during their rule of the

Middle East, deep into the postcolonial era. Such

72 colonialism and imperialism

reification of women’s existence continues to stand

as a potent and contentious point between Muslims

in former colonial nations and Westerners, long

since the end of British rule in Muslim countries.

Bibliography

L. Ahmed, Women and gender in Islam. Historical roots

of a modern debate, New Haven, Conn. 1992.

M. ≠Amara (ed.), al-A≠màl al-kàmila li Qàsim Amìn,

2 vols., Beirut 1976.

M. Badran, Feminists, Islam, and the nation. Gender and

the making of modern Egypt, Princeton, N.J. 1995.

N. Chaudhuri and M. Strobel (eds.), Western women and

imperialism. Complicity and resistance, Bloomington,

Ind. 1992.

E. Fleischmann, The nation and its “new” women. The

Palestinian women’s movement, 1920–1948, Berkeley

2003.

B. Melman, Women’s Orients. English women and the

Middle East, 1718–1918. Sexuality, religion and work,

Ann Arbor 1992, 1995^2.

E. W. Said, Orientalism, New York 1978.

Nancy L. Stockdale

Russian Colonial Domains of the

Caucasus and Central Asia

The social environment of Muslim women in the

Islamic parts of Russia, which included Azerbaijan

and today’s Central Asia (that is, Kazakhstan, Kyr-

gyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan)

during the Tsarist period (1865–1917) is a topic not

extensively studied. Despite this intellectual hin-

drance, there is some evidence that the Tsarist gov-

ernment reinforced the hierarchical, patriarchal

social structure of the Islamic lands by choosing not

to disturb ancient attitudes that had been held over

millennia.

The history of Central Asia and its surrounding

region has been shaped by Persian, Turkic, and to a

lesser extent, Mongolian and Arab cultures, which

at the beginning, or at least in time, respected the

cultural and religious practices of the population.

The emergence of Russia, a Christian, Slavic power,

however, appeared to change that and created a

major dilemma and concern for the Muslim popu-

lation. Unlike previous conquerors, this new power

was not going to integrate itself, culturally or reli-

giously, with the Muslim population. The leaders of

the Islamic areas made every effort to confront this

new power, ranging from military battles to intel-

lectual clashes, and to defend their cultural and reli-

gious independence. The final result was a social

and legal concession by the Russians not to inter-

fere in the Muslim population’s social and, at times,

legal practices.

This attitude developed partly as a result of the