women primarily as mothers, calling on them to
take up their duty to raise the next generation of
Muslim believers.
The 1952 “Revolution” was actually a military
coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser who claimed to
embody the popular and revolutionary will of the
Egyptian people. As part of its avowed task to
make Egypt into a modern, independent nation by
mobilizing previously disenfranchised groups and
achieving social justice, the Nasser regime granted
women the right to vote and hold public office, the
right to work, and the right to obtain an education
on the same level as men. Although women gained
recognition as enfranchised citizens, however, like
other groups they lost political autonomy. In 1954,
political parties were abolished in favor of a series
of single party organizations. Many women who
were active in revolutionary organizations in the
1940s, such as Zaynab al-Ghazàlìand Injì Afla†ùn
were jailed, as were other Islamists and communists.
In the post-Infità™period, political Islam has
become the main framework of revolutionary
opposition to the Egyptian regime. Revolutionary
Islamist groups such as Takfìr wa-Hijra, Jihàd, and
the Jami≠at al-Islàmiyya trace their roots back to the
Muslim Brotherhood. What distinguishes these
radical groups from the majority of Islamist organ-
izations (which are reformist in nature) is that they
advocate the violent overthrow of the Egyptian
state. What revolutionary Islamist groups share
with reformist groups is a common conception of
women’s primary roles as mothers and spouses.
Within the context of Islamist struggle, however,
these are viewed as fundamentally political, not
social, roles. There has been significantly more
scholarship on the participation of women in the
project of Islamic reform (as opposed to Islamic
revolution). What information exists suggests that
women’s activities vary from organization to
organization. Female members of Jihàd have often
been used to carry explosives and messages be-
tween cells as well as forge links with other revolu-
tionary groups. For the most part, however, women
in revolutionary Islamist organizations have been
primarily charged with “reproducing” the female
ranks of the organization, by identifying wives for
male organization members and spreading da≠wa
(the call) through prayer meetings and study groups.Bibliography
S. Botman, The experience of women in the Communist
movement, in Women’s Studies International Forum
11:2 (1988), 117–26.
Z. al-Ghazàlì, Ayyàm min ™ayàtì, Cairo n.d.
A. Karam, Women, Islamisms and the state, New York
1998.648 political-social movements: revolutionary
A. Khater and C. Nelson, Al-harakah al-nisà±iyyah. The
women’s movement and political participation in mod-
ern Egypt, in Women’s Studies International Forum
11:2 (1988), 465–83.
A. L. al-Sayyid Marsot, The “revolutionary gentlewomen”
in Egypt, in L. Beck and N. Keddie (eds.), Women and
the Muslim world, Cambridge, Mass. 1978, 261–76.
L. Zayyat, The search. Personal papers, trans. S. Bennet,
London 1992.Laura BierIndonesiaIn 1942 colonial rule over Indonesia ended with
the defeat of the Dutch by the Japanese. When the
imperial army was conquered in 1945 Indonesia
declared its independence. A national liberation
war of four years followed. Women’s participation
in the nationalist and revolutionary movement was
considerable. Until 1965 Indonesia’s first president,
Sukarno, steered Indonesia on a nationalist and
socialist course. The Communist Party, the PKI,
gained considerable influence and became the third
largest communist party in the world. Islamic and
right-wing military forces resented this develop-
ment. A bloody putsch by left-wing colonels in
1965 was followed by a massacre of socialist
groups, spurred on by military-instigated accusa-
tions of sexual perversions allegedly committed by
young communist women. This led ultimately to
the establishment of a right-wing military regime
under general Suharto. Women played critical roles
in these developments. The women’s wing of the
PKI, Gerwani, became a women’s mass organiza-
tion until it was banned in 1966. Right-wing
women took to the streets after the putsch and
demanded the banning of Gerwani.National liberation
By the beginning of the twentieth century the
newly-educated indigenous elite of Indonesia began
to harbor nationalist sentiments. Inspired by the
brilliant letters of the young Javanese princess
Kartini (Kartini 1987), women began to chart their
own course, which combined demands for their
own rights, notably that of education with national
liberation. The first women’s organization was set
up in 1912. In the following years many more
organizations were formed, particularly in Java and
the Minangkabau, a region in Sumatra that is char-
acterized both by matrilineal customary law and a
strict adherence to Islam. Both religious (Muslim
and Catholic) and socialist women organized them-
selves. A major Islamic organization, Aisyiyah, was
set up in 1917 mainly to give women religious