Women & Islamic Cultures Family, Law and Politics

take the place of father and mother and tutor and

would be the locus of happiness shared by men. Thus,

it is not fitting that one nation be divided into numer-

ous parties on the basis of different opinions, because

partisanship begets contradictory pressures, envy and

rancour with consequent lack of security in the father-

land (1982, 11).

Here the exposition of the fatherland expresses
organicist political thought: the family brings har-
mony. But al-¢a™†àwìalso envisages a modern
democracy in which men are free and equal and
membership of the “family” incurs obligations.
The ideas flowing from the French Revolution
influenced Namık Kemal (1840–88), one of the
most important intellectual leaders of the Young
Ottomans in the later nineteenth century. He pop-
ularized the use of wa†anand these new meanings
“took hold in all the main Middle East languages”
(Keddie 1995, 243).
In his modernizing project for the Turkish
nation, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938) – Atatürk or
Father of the Turks – employed images of the
Father State (Devlet Baba) and the Motherland
(Anavatan). While the idea of the “father state”
had been employed under the Ottoman Empire, he
embraced the concept in a new way, in particular
by pairing it with the feminized “motherland.”
This was intended to provide a more overarching
sense of identity than the millets (nations) acknowl-
edged under Ottoman rule: these were usually con-
fessional groups, into which one was born,
distinguished by a particular language and ethnic
group (Delaney 1995, 179).
Delaney argues strongly for the translation of
vatan(wa†an) in Turkish as “motherland,” rather
than the “fatherland” implied by the French trans-
lations of the activists mentioned above. Tohidi
recounts a similar notion of homeland (ana vatan)
as meaning “motherland” in Azerbaijan (1998,
118). (In Indonesian, wa†anis given a non-gen-
dered gloss, but invokes the ideal of kinship – the
tanah tumpah darah, or “land where the blood was
spilled.”) Palestinian nationalists have invoked
gendered images of “the fertile mother-nation” and
“Palestine as the Father’s land” (Abdo 1994). In
Azerbaijan, and in Palestine, the image of the
mother nation or motherland conflates family and
national morality: as mother, her honor must be
defended and protected at all costs.
There is need for further scholarship on the
articulation of national ideals and the use of the
family trope, or derivative metaphors such as
“motherland” and “fatherland.” What are the
implications for the everyday performance of gen-
der, and of articulation of civic rights, of the invo-
cation of such metaphors? How does the idea of

overview 157

defending the honor of the motherland flow into

the vigilant and violent discipline of women that is

especially associated with fundamentalist national

regimes? How does the family metaphor condition

the moral imperatives surrounding women’s per-

formance of femininity?

The origin of familial thinking

The idea of the family as a model for harmony

tends to be historicized, the connection with ideas

of “blood relations” asserting it as an autochtho-

nous political theory. In discussing this move in

Indonesian political thinking, Reid comments, the

familial metaphor can be historically linked to “the

current of organicism in European political thought,

now discredited in the West because of its associa-

tion with fascism” (Reid 1998, 25). In Indonesia,

the historical trajectory can be traced, through the

Leiden Law school and its influence on constitu-

tional arrangements in the colonial period, and on

the thinking of Indonesian nationalist lawyers who

authored the 1945 constitution (which allows for

centralization of executive power). Reid also links

these ideas to the Japanese occupation during the

Second World War and their idea of the family state

(kazoku kokka).

Discussing the organicist familial model, Reid

writes:

The political features held to grow out of these princi-

ples are the organic unity of state and society, harmony

and consensus rather than open debate and majority

decision... the primacy of group needs over individ-

ual needs... and rejection of the standard elements of

liberal constitutionalism, such as separation of powers

and individual rights (1998, 25).

This ideology became a tool of political control for

the Suharto regime, which ruled through domina-

tion of a state party. Each social “interest” was rep-

resented and bound together in a political process

that disallowed open competition under the rubric

of (familial) harmony, while in practice enshrining

the rule of the father through a regime of state

terror.

Fundamentalism represents itself as delving into

the autochthonous roots of the nation, envisaged

through Islamic texts. It is interesting that the “post-

Confucian” Singapore, the theistic but not Islamic

Indonesian New Order, and both secular and fun-

damentalist Islamic movements can utilize family

metaphors as the basis of “nation.” There is room

for further explorations of the connections between

the construction of women, the family, and the

nation in fundamentalist and secular nationalist

thought, seeking out links to other philosophical

traditions and the force of those influences.