INTRODUCTION
The 2011 uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia empowered a variety of new and old political actors to take part in reshaping the political system. In the early days after the uprisings, Islamist parties appeared to be the winners of the political transformation. The Islamist movements in Egypt and Tunisia formed political parties which competed for post-revolutionary elections. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood formed the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), and in Tunisia the Islamist movement revived the Ennahda Party. Both parties won the immediate elections and included women as candidates on their list and within their governments. However, unlike the Ennahda Party, which is still relevant in the political game in Tunisia eight years after the uprisings, the FJP in Egypt headed by President Muhammad Morsi was ousted in a military coup in July 2013. The Muslim Brotherhood was labeled as a terrorist group in 2013. While some Islamist Tunisian women and men presently hold government positions since the Arab Spring, a significant number of women and men of the Egyptian FJP and Muslim Brotherhood currently live in exile.
Despite the different outcomes for the Egyptian and Tunisian groups, in both cases we see an increase in political activism, participation, and representation of women in the parties. In the early decades after founding these Islamist movements, women did not play a political role. However, with the subsequent backlash against Islamist groups in Egypt and Tunisia in the 1990s and 2000s, women began playing constantly evolving roles within the movements. In earlier periods of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, women were not targeted by the government. However, men in the movement who were related to the women were imprisoned in high numbers. In contrast in Tunisia, both men and women were attacked and vilified by the government resulting in the politicization of Tunisian women more quickly than Egyptian women belonging to Islamist groups. The shared experience of oppression politicized women from both countries and prompted them to use the language of human rights, freedom, and democracy and to form solidarity and organize with nonreligious groups. In both cases, we see that government repression and backlash against Islamist movements is a shared experience and a central topic of identification of Islamist women.
The opening of political spaces for Islamists during and immediately after the uprisings created new spaces for women's activism within their movements and parties. During times of unrests in Egypt between 2011 and 2019, members of the Muslim Sisterhood, the women's wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, were active in the popular resistance movement. However, during the brief institutionalization of President Mohammad Morsi's government, they were also active in the formal political medium, defined as government institutions. Unlike the Muslim Sisterhood, who had some of their young members join the uprisings from the beginning, women of the Ennahda were more cautious. After living about 20 years under political repression, women of the Ennahda were hesitant to join the revolutionary demonstrations in Sidi Bou Sid and Tunis. With the successful ousting of Ben Ali, these activists' fears of prosecution were eased, and members of the Ennahda went to the street in greater numbers to demand their place in post-revolutionary politics. The uprisings mark a turning point in Ennahda's women activism as it enabled their public engagement in politics, society, and business. The Muslim Sisters and Ennahda have operated in various political contexts before, during, and after the uprisings. This article examines how the changes in these contexts have influenced their framing strategies over the years.
The political organizing of the Egyptian Muslim Sisterhood and Ennahda women in Tunisia before, during, and after the Arab uprisings provides a significant case for addressing the gap in the literature on Islamist women's agency, organizing, and framing under shifting political contexts. Both cases provide different political contexts, which have shaped the frames women used to promote their political agenda. These cases have also helped shed light on the organizing processes of women and their changing roles in their movements, as well as their relationships with the state throughout the past 50 years. Additionally, we discuss how female activists utilized frames of political and human rights and democracy to support their political agenda. This article adds to previous literature on Islamist women such as Clark and Schwedler (Reference Clark and Schwedler2003), which mainly provide structural analysis of women's inclusion in Islamist parties without paying sufficient attention to women's agency. Clark and Schwedler (Reference Clark and Schwedler2003) argue that strategic considerations, such as gaining votes and internal debates between moderates and hardliners, strongly influenced Islamist parties' decision to incorporate women candidates. In the article, they state that even though their argument is mostly structural, “it does not discount the role of agency, either of party reformers (accommodationists and contextualists) or of the women themselves” (Clark and Schwedler Reference Clark and Schwedler2003, 309). Despite this acknowledgement, the article does not provide sufficient analysis of women's agency as they respond and interact with structural changes. Our study highlights the agency aspect of Islamist women's inclusion in their respective parties. It shows how Islamist women have been active in their movements for decades working to promote faith and religiosity in society. Joining the political sphere is the result of their experience working for their movements and external factors such as changes in the political context. As we argue, in both cases, women became more visible and transitioned into decision-making bodies such as a parliament when both countries were on a path toward democracy. Islamist women strategically framed their work in terms of democracy, freedom, human rights, and women's rights because they knew their success was connected to this framework.
The article addresses the lack of scholarly attention to the Muslim Sisterhood and Ennahda women in relation to the agency they demonstrate in their sociopolitical activism. Only recently have we seen research emerging on the Muslim Sisterhood, which begins by touching upon the Sisters' political activism (see Biagini Reference Biagini2017). Similarly, research on women inside Ennahda is a rather new phenomenon. Only two studies written in 1980 have looked at why women were active in an Islamist movement (Belhassen Reference Belhassen1980; Keddie Reference Keddie1983). Issues of key interests such as organization, motivation, agenda, and biographical research on women as activists in Ennahda's movement have been largely overlooked. Instead, women of Ennahda are often portrayed and studied in opposition to secular women's rights activists (Feldman Reference Feldman2015; Grami Reference Grami2014; Gray Reference Gray2012).
Using interviews, social movement literature, and feminist literature, our paper sheds light on the strategic activism of the Egyptian Muslim Sisters and Ennahda women. We show that in accordance with the organizing of social movements in general, Islamist women's organizing often relies on various strategic frameworks, which are subject to change according to the political environment. Therefore, in analyzing Islamist women's activism, we look more broadly at how their political framing interacts with and shapes the political context.
METHODS
We use qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews with three members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim Sisterhood living in Turkey and Egypt and 24 activists residing in Tunisia. Due to safety concerns for both the researchers and the research participants after the Egyptian government labeled the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group in 2013, we had limited access to interviewees and resources in Egypt. Huda Abdel Al-Mona'eim, one of the activists with whom we conducted a phone interview, was arrested. To account for this, we relied on documents and texts in English and Arabic from both traditional news outlets, such as newspapers and broadcast media, and social media like Facebook. We used media sources such as IkwanWeb (Muslim Brotherhood's website), Al-Ahram (a prominent Egyptian newspaper), the FJP's website, and the Facebook page of Women Against the Coup (WAC), a women's rights group run by members of the Sisterhood and Asma Shokr, a prominent Sister.
This, however, is not the case in Tunisia. Due to a more open political context for Islamists, the party presents itself as open to academic inquiries, enabling us to reach female activists in the middle management of the party, such as the head and Deputy of the Office for Women and Family affairs. The research on Tunisia's Ennahda party is based on semi-structured interviews with female activists in official positions, interviews with mid-level activists, analyses of their social media appearance, as well as content analysis of publications of Ennahda party (e.g. al-Fajr). In general, activists and elected parliamentarians of the Ennahda party are open and accessible for interviews with researchers. The democratic transition of Tunisia provided a framework where Ennahda and its activists had an interest in public relations. However, access to mid-level activists only works through a recommendation by a senior party member. As other studies on the history of Ennahda (McCarthy Reference McCarthy2018; Wolf Reference Wolf2017) have shown, academic research on the movement relies heavily on interviews with its members and activists, since written or recorded publications are rare, and in the case of its female activists, almost nonexistent. This is due to the political persecution and illegality of the movement in Tunisia until 2011. Except for the writings and recordings of its exiled leadership, especially that of Rachid Ghannouchi, it was not until 2016 that more members of the Ennahda party began to write about their history and aspirations. The participation of Ennahda's women and their intellectual contribution to this development is still marginal. When asked about this phenomenon, Mehrezia Laabidi and Leila Oueslati both expressed their desire to write and articulate their positions on women and Islam, after their responsibilities as elected lawmakers end.
The majority of activists agreed for us to include their full names. We provided aliases for interviewees who expressed concerns for their safety. We mainly included interviews with female activists in order to address their marginalization in the academic literature and highlight their voices as well as emphasize their agency.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The rising tide of Islamism in the region resulted in a proliferation of Islamist movements and parties as well as the number of men and women with whom they are affiliated. To address this phenomenon, multiple sources of literature investigated women's relationships with Islamist parties. The evolution in Islamist thinking on women's political participation happened due to Islamists' strategic adaptation to their environment, including electoral politics (Schwedler Reference Schwedler2006; Wickham Reference Wickham2013). This participation in electoral politics led to ideological and practical changes in the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations (see Schwedler Reference Schwedler2011). Several scholars demonstrated how Islamist groups and parties have different positions on women due to these positions being influenced by women's activism and their relationship with state institutions (see Clark and Schwedler Reference Clark and Schwedler2003; Clark and Young Reference Clark and Young2008; Tajali Reference Tajali2017). While focusing on the enabling structures and external factors for the emergence of women activism in these parties, these studies neglect to discuss the impact of women's own agency as a factor. Therefore, this article includes the perspective and the agency of women's activists as a crucial factor to be taken into consideration in work on women activism in Islamist organizations. The following stirring commentary by Dina Zakaria, the previous spokeswoman for the FJP, sheds light on the agency of Islamist women:
So, women at that time took the decision that they are a part of everything. No one can tell them to stay at home because they are under threat. They insisted on participating regardless of if their husbands, their brothers, their family or other people who knew them told them to stay at home because they are in danger. The woman took the decision by herself that she will get down to the street to call for her right. So, and all men confessed, it happened in Raba'a, that most of the men on the stage, they said that we realize that women, Egyptian women are strong, they are even stronger than men and they proved that they are not only partners in the revolution, but they are the leaders of the situation (Author 1, Interview in Arabic, 11/2017, Istanbul)
This article adds to a growing body of literature shedding light on the agency of Muslim women by examining their social and political choices aimed at carving out more spaces for their participation in social, economic, and political systems (see Abu-Lughod Reference Abu-Lughod1993; Mahmood Reference Mahmood1998; Reference Mahmood2005; Sered Reference Sered1996). Our article adds to this research by examining and comparing the activism of Islamist women and their relationships to their movements and parties in different political contexts in Tunisia and Egypt. It addresses how additional research is needed in examining conservative women's movements and organizations in the MENA. A more detailed understanding of Islamist groups and parties cannot be achieved without examining the role Islamist women play in the movement. To varying degrees, these parties and groups have been attempting to incorporate more women into their parties due to different reasons. Studies comparing how the different Islamist movements and parties in the region operate are essential and necessary to help us understand the complexity of the relationship of these groups to gender and what conditions result in successful incorporation of women.
Mahmood (Reference Mahmood1998, Reference Mahmood2005) problematizes prior analyses of women's involvement in religious movements by demonstrating how women can use social constraints for emancipatory ends. Women's efforts in Islamic movements pave the way for new methods of expressing women's interests within the structures of these movements. Similarly, our work shows that even though Islamist women advocate an Islamist agenda, which is presumably oppressive to women, they are carving more leadership spaces for themselves in their respective movements. They are doing so by reinterpreting the religious texts and engaging in political activism to promote their movements publicly, regardless of the security risks. Despite the various restrictions on their participation as Islamists and as women, these women strategically engaged with the political structure, asserting their agency and creating wider openings in the structure of the movement for their political participation.
To address how Islamist women organized and responded to the changes in the political context, we examine their framing processes by relying on framing literature of social movements in general and women's movements in particular. We also examine recent literature on Islamic and Islamist women's participation and framing strategies. This strategic framing of Muslim women highlights their agency because they attempt to choose the most effective strategies in garnering support for their movement and pressuring political elites. In this article, we label the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda as Islamist groups. Islamism and political Islam are defined as an ideology that puts Islam in the center of its understanding of the ideal political and social order. Islamist movements and political parties vary widely in their application of this understanding, from embracing democracy to radical and militant movements.
Women's movements, like other social movements, take advantage of political changes and adapt their strategies appropriately (see Banaszak Reference Banaszak1996; Miethe Reference Miethe1999; Sawyers and Meyer Reference Sawyers and Meyer1999). Women's movements use various strategic methods of framing, alliances, and actions which change according to the political environment. Framing is a process that mediates between opportunity, organization, and action. It describes the shared meanings and definitions people bring to their situations (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald Reference McAdam, McCarthy and Zald1996, 5). Snow et al. (Reference Snow, Rochford, Worden and Benford1986) sees framing as a deliberate strategic action by people to create shared understandings of the world and themselves that justify and inspire collective action. Strategic decisions made by social movements likely influence framing. Also, severe confrontations between actors in the movement, the state, and any existing counter movements shape framing (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald Reference McAdam, McCarthy and Zald1996). Framing processes are an “essential aspect of social movement theory and entail actor agency, as movement activists strategically engage in interpretative action to label, identify, perceive, and articulate events in a way to assemble support for their cause” (Tajali Reference Tajali2015, 568).
The interplay between women's rights, Islam, and democracy influences the framing of secular and religious demands for women's rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regardless of their different understanding of women's rights. For example, in her study of Islamic women's rights activism in Iran and Turkey, Tajali finds that these activists articulate their demands strategically by framing it according to the discursive opportunity structure that fits their contexts and advances their goals (2015). She adds, this strategic framing represents women's agency because they might choose discursive frames based on their effectiveness in achieving their goals rather than their resonance with their core ideology (Tajali Reference Tajali2015). Tajali finds that the broader political and cultural contexts influenced the strategic framing of Iranian and Turkish Islamic women's groups. Depending on their contexts, these activists strategically choose to frame their demands either within the discourse of international human rights or that of their governments (Tajali Reference Tajali2015).
Tajali (Reference Tajali2015) observes how both Islamic and secular women's groups in Turkey articulate their demands for increasing women's access to political leadership through international agreements and human rights conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Tajali suggests, “many Islamic women's rights activists in Turkey strategically frame their demands for head-scarfed women's right to political representation in secular terms in an effort to appeal to secular sectors of society, while also pressuring pro-religious elites” (2015, 573). Opportunities on the international level such as CEDAW, the EU integration process, and Turkey's secular framework influence this framing (Tajali Reference Tajali2015). In contrast, due to Iran's theocratic government, women's rights groups with different ideological leanings use religious terms to frame and support their demands for women's increased political participation (Tajali Reference Tajali2015). Tajali's work demonstrates how women's framing strategies shift according to political opportunity structure available at the time. When female activists are faced with a secular regime, they deploy a secular framework by leaning on international conventions such as CEDAW. However, when they are facing a religious regime, they deploy a religious framework by leaning on the more moderate interpretation of the Quran and Sharia Law. In their experimental study, which addresses the influence of progressive reinterpretations of the Quran on public opinion about women's role in public life in Egypt, Masoud et al. (Reference Masoud, Amaney and Elizabeth2016) find “that Islamic discourse, so often used to justify the political exclusion of women, can also be used to help empower them” (Masoud et al. Reference Masoud, Amaney and Elizabeth2016, 1). Therefore, in analyzing women's activism, it is necessary to look more broadly at how their political framing interacts with and shapes the political context.
As we show in the following sections, women in the Muslim Sisterhood and the Ennahda party framed their demands between 2010 and 2019 using the language of human rights, women's rights, and socioeconomic rights, emphasizing one more than the other depending on the “master frame” at the time.
THE MUSLIM SISTERHOOD IN EGYPT
The engagement of some members of the Muslim Sisterhood in the political process is a good example of how ignoring Islamist women's political agency could mask certain important political processes. There is not much scholarly work on the Sisterhood because some view them as synonymous or subsidiary to the Brotherhood. In contrast, we find that the Sisters' decades of political consciousness and organizing experience during periods of opening and backlash against the Muslim Brotherhood provided them with the necessary skills to play a stronger role within the organization and the resistance against the current Egyptian regime. The Sisterhood played a significant role in strengthening the Muslim Brotherhood's support base among Egyptians and promoting their Islamist agenda, contributing to their success in the 2012 elections. Additionally, the Sisters utilized the political opening for opposition groups in 2012 to carve out more space for their engagement as political candidates, which later positioned them to mobilize dissent against President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi's regime.
Socioeconomic rights and democracy were their focus during the uprisings due to the centrality of these themes to the protestors. Women's rights became a central issue after the elections of Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood due to the concerns of the liberals and the international community about these parties' position on women's rights. The pressure from secular groups on Islamist women to clarify their position on women and reconcile their religious views with women's rights pushed women to use religious framing to carve more spaces for and justify women's democratic participation. After the military coup in Egypt, human and women's rights became the popular frame due to President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi's government's imprisonment and torture of some of the Brotherhood's members and the people associated with them.
THE MUSLIM SISTERHOOD BEFORE THE ARAB UPRISINGS
The Muslim Brotherhood first emerged in 1928 in Egypt as a social movement (Tadros Reference Tadros2011). A few years after founding the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al- Banna founded the Sisterhood in 1932. The group's primary goal was to instill strong Islamic values among the women “through lectures and women-only gatherings” (Abdel-Latif Reference Abdel-Latif2008, 3). The role of the Sisters was initially limited to social work, such as sheltering low-income families, preaching, and organizing religious lectures for girls. The organization's main goal was to educate women on religion and their duties and rights as Muslim women. Their educational efforts also emphasized the importance of raising pious children (Talhami Reference Talhami1996). However, when the Brotherhood secured an unprecedented 88 seats in the 2005 elections, President Hosni Mubarak's government declared the Brotherhood a “security threat,” leading the Sisters to shift their attention to mobilizing political and financial support for the imprisoned Brothers and their families. Moreover, 21 Sisters were nominated in 2005 in the initial list of candidates; however, only one woman received enough votes to become a member of the parliament. Fifteen Sisters also ran as independents in the 2010 parliamentary elections on behalf of the Brotherhood (Aboul Komsan Reference Aboul Komsan2011).
The Muslim Brotherhood's participation in politics since Gamal Abdel Nasser's era (1950s) prompted them to act strategically in forging alliances with various opposition groups, including secular civil society organizations active in student and professional associations, in the political system. Modernizing their position on women's issues in society and politics was essential for the Muslim Brotherhood to ally with any of the other political players in Egypt. This shift in position regarding women enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to appeal to and collaborate with other ideological segments in Egyptian society. The Muslim Brotherhood issued its first statement on women as voters and candidates in 1994 declaring that women could run as candidates.
The backlash against the Muslim Brotherhood between 1980 until 2011 forced the Sisters to join the lines of civil society and focus on social welfare. Though the Muslim Sisterhood initially limited its activities to social work, such as sheltering poor families, they increasingly focused on mobilizing political and financial support for imprisoned Brothers deemed a “security threat” by the Hosni Mubarak regime. The Sisters also played an instrumental role in running media campaigns for the Muslim Brotherhood during national parliamentary elections in 2005 and 2010, building on women's access to people via mosques and welfare organizations. The position of women in the Muslim Brotherhood began to marginally evolve during this period due to ideological changes within the Brotherhood. To neutralize the influence of the Islamists who were gaining moral authority and shaping the discourse on morality in Egyptian society, Hosni Mubarak co-opted women's issues to gain the support of secular groups. As a response to this strategy and as an attempt to gain votes during parliamentary elections after 1995, the Muslim Brotherhood became more accepting of women's political participation and proposed female candidates in the following elections. However, this transformation restricted the Sisters' roles to the political activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and did not include them in the internal hierarchy of the Muslim Brotherhood, which remained male.
Part of the Brotherhood's strength can be attributed to the Sisters. The Sisters increased the support for the Muslim Brotherhood through their access to people via mosques and welfare organizations (Tadros Reference Tadros2011). The domestic roles of female activists in the Muslim Brotherhood as mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters helped them mobilize some women, mainly because Egyptian society values the institution of the family with motherhood at its center. Some of the Sisters mobilized as mothers and wives of the men who the security forces arrested or killed. These identities gave women's participation legitimacy while also preserving the movement and its structure under President Hosni Mubarak's regime. Their gender also enabled the Sisters to mobilize with less fear of the state. Arresting and attacking women had been a red line for President Hosni Mubarak's government (Author 1, Interviews 2017), as the state had historically associated women with the nation (Mhajne and Whetstone Reference Mhajne and Whetstone2018). An attack on women, regardless of their political affiliation, is considered to be culturally taboo in Egypt and at times even viewed as an attack on Egypt itself (Mhajne and Whetstone Reference Mhajne and Whetstone2018).
During President Hosni Mubarak's regime, the Sisters used the language of socioeconomic rights and freedom to justify their political engagement and increase the support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The platform of Sisters who were candidates did not emphasize any gender-specific rights on the social or political level. It did not stray away from focusing on social issues. Candidates such as Wafaa Mashhour and Makarem al-Deiri emphasized Islamic education as their main priority. When asked about her priorities if she were to win, al-Deiri replied,
Education will always be my main interest. We want educational reform on an Islamic basis. The government wants teaching to be a rote, mechanistic job, not to be carried out by people with their own ideas and convictions (as cited in Hazou Reference Hazou2005).
However, the Sisters used reinterpretation of the religious text to articulate internal demands for increased women's participation in the movement. The Sisters and Brothers hold similar views when it comes to women's rights. Most of the Sisters argue women and men have equal rights but different roles, especially when it comes to the family (Abdel-Latif Reference Abdel-Latif2008). They all seem to agree that Islam grants women an important position; however, some feel the Muslim Brotherhood's interpretations conform to the view of the conservative Egyptian society and are therefore less empowering for women. For instance, Heba Raouf, a self-identified Egyptian Islamist scholar of political theory and women's rights activist, is a well-known Egyptian Islamic feminist (even though she may not identify this way) associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. She expressed Islamic feminist sentiment in an interview with El-Gawhary (Reference El-Gawhary, Joseph and Slyomovics2011),
I declare myself an Islamist, but this doesn't mean that I accept the dominant discourse about women inside the Islamist movement. My studies focus on the need for a new interpretation of Quran and Sunna. We should benefit from the fiqh and the contributions of previous generations of Islamic scholars. This doesn't mean that we have to stick to their interpretations of Islamic sources while we ignore the sociology of knowledge (100).
The nomination of al-Halafawi empowered activists to question their marginal status in the movement and seek a place in the Brotherhood structures. The activists' demands varied from requesting women gain more control over the administration of the Sisterhood's Division, to fighting for women membership in the Shura Council and the Guidance Bureau (Abdel-Latif Reference Abdel-Latif2008). Activists such as 35-year-old Rasha Ahmed wrote a letter to the Brothers' Supreme Guide in 2007 questioning women's status in the movement. The title of the letter was “A letter to the Supreme Guide.” She wrote: “No one can deny the Sisters played a key role in bringing the Brotherhood's candidates to parliament … If the Sisters carry out difficult roles like the men, why don't they have an equal right to choose the officials in the group?” (as cited in Gehad Reference Gehad2013).
The status of female activists in the Muslim Brotherhood movement is not static. The struggle of female activists to carve a place inside the movement's power structures reflects a close interaction between structure and agency. The activism from within the Sisterhood to promote their structural representation within the Brotherhood, combined with the political environment, has allowed for women to gain more public political roles as candidates and political activists. Their entrance into political elections in 2000, 2005, and 2010 (even though none of the women candidates made it to the general assembly) has been facilitated by the Brotherhood's wish to contest political power in Egypt in the strongest possible way. This entrance has also been preceded by the successful activism women have demonstrated at the grassroots level.
Muslim Sisterhood's Activities During the Uprisings
On February 11, 2011, the uprisings in Egypt forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign. His resignation marked a period of expansive political opening for the Brotherhood, its women members, and various other political groups. The Muslim Sisters participated in the events of the January 25 uprisings. They stationed themselves at security checkpoints and patted down women entrants. They provided activists with food, shelter, medical supplies, and aid. Their engagement and visibility in the public spaces of the uprisings, as well as their rich history of welfare work, helped the Sisters to mobilize Egyptians to support the political party of the Muslim Brotherhood, the FJP. The years the Sisters spent focusing on social welfare and building connections with various fractions of the Egyptian society provided them with skills in outreach and constituency building. These skills enabled the Sisters in 2011 to transform their strong social base into a political constituency.
With the opening of the political space for Islamists between February 2011 and June 2013, the political engagement of Muslim Sisterhood activists expanded even further, both through public activism and within the Muslim Brotherhood structure. Some members of the Muslim Sisterhood were included in the FJP, which was formed after the uprisings. They ran for office, won elections, and held high positions in President Mohamed Morsi's government. For example, after the presidential elections in June 2012, the FJP leadership appointed Omayma Kamel to be a member of the Constituent Assembly delegated with drawing up the constitution, and she also served as a presidential aide to President Mohamed Morsi. Moreover, the FJP leadership appointed Dina Zakaria as the spokeswoman for the FJP.
As of 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood opened the space for women not affiliated with FJP to be elected as heads of the regional women's committees of the Muslim Brotherhood. These committees communicated directly with the Guidance Bureau, the highest decision-making body within the movement. However, women still did not hold any senior positions in the FJP or the Muslim Brotherhood. Sabah Al-Sakkari, a member of the party's secretariat who attempted to run for the FJP chairmanship in 2012, failed to obtain the required number of signatures to compete in the elections. The increased visibility and influence of women affiliated with the FJP forced the Sisters to clarify their position on women's issues to liberal and conservative Egyptians. The liberals needed assurance that women's rights were protected and the conservatives needed a justification for women's involvement in politics. Therefore, unlike previous election platforms which did not address women's roles in politics, Sakkari stressed, “In my platform, I pay special attention to women and youths, who I believe should get the chance to occupy the highest positions in the party. Women, in particular, are very important since the progress of any society is closely related to them” (as quoted in Al Arabiya 2012a).
To respond to concerns about Islamist parties' position on women's rights, the Muslim Sisters used religious framing to show that women's rights are protected in Islam. For example, when Sakkari was asked about her opinion on allowing women to run for presidency, she responded “what [Muslim scholars] all agreed on is that a woman cannot be a Caliph, but there is nothing to prove that she cannot rule over one state within the Muslim nation” (as quoted in Al Arabiya 2012a). She stated she would run for the presidency of Egypt if members of the FJP approved her nomination. Moreover, the prominent Sister Aza Al-Garf, a previous member of the lower house of parliament, said, “Women should have a practical role in all organizations; after all they interact daily with most of the community's elements” (as quoted in Ikhwanweb 2012b). Additionally, Asmaa El-Erian, 21, the daughter of a Muslim Brotherhood leader, Essam El-Erian promoted Sharia Law. She added, “The Islamic Sharia does not conflict with freedom and democracy” (as quoted in Alexander and Fam Reference Alexander and Fam2011). El-Erian's also stated how she envisions greater participation of women in politics. However, she supported the Brotherhood's position that the presidency should strictly be a male position. She justified her position by saying, “men are more strict and firm” (Alexander and Fam Reference Alexander and Fam2011). She rejected the demands of some activists to end a man's freedom to have four wives because “God has allowed polygamy…Maybe many people don't prefer it, but it is not religiously forbidden” (as quoted in Alexander and Fam Reference Alexander and Fam2011).
The statements of Al-Sakkari show how women's issues and rights became central not only to the Brothers but also to the Sisters during their campaign and after the elections. They also demonstrate the view of women's rights held by the Sisters. The Sisters asked for more political representation for women in politics. However, various Sisters supported “the insertion of a conditionality on women's rights within the constitution and were the most vehement opponents of the insertion of any article that would expand women's rights in relation to bodily integrity” (Tadros Reference Tadros2014, 21). Additionally, the Sisters rejected the proposal of “an article setting a minimum age of marriage for women as well as any constitutional clause that would condemn all forms of violence against women, arguing that both could be potentially tackled through legislation and did not have to be mentioned in the constitution” (Tadros Reference Tadros2014, 21).
The attempt to address and frame women's rights in a religious framework is not new or specific to Egypt and Tunisia. They “develop a different and original paradigm for women's rights derived from Islamic principles, based on the centrality of the family and the concept of complementarity (instead of full equality) between the sexes” (Debuysere Reference Debuysere2016, 229). Islamist women were reluctant to accept all clauses of the main international conventions on women's rights during the Muslim Brotherhood's government. Certain clauses of the CEDAW, often those dealing with equality in marriage and family relations (e.g. article 16), raise questions in Islamist circles.
For these women, the only form of women rights worth fighting for is the one which guarantees rights within an Islamist framework without defying any of the norms set forth by Islamic jurisprudence. Islamist women seek to better implement Islamic Sharia within Egyptian society toward a more Islamic state and society.
Activism During President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi Regime (7/2013–1/2018)
The current period, which began on June 2013, has been marked by an alliance between the military and secular-liberal political parties. Between August and November 2012, President Mohammad Morsi, the head of the FJP, began losing the support of some leftist and liberal factions within civil society eventually leading to his ouster by the military on July 3, 2013. Following the backlash against the Muslim Brotherhood due to the military coup in Egypt on July 2013, more than 50,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood movement have been imprisoned, including the senior leadership. These vacancies created a political opening for female activists in the movement and have pushed them to play a more prominent role within the organization.
Since the military crackdown, the Brotherhood has been mobilizing women. With most Brotherhood leaders in jail or exile, women have been placed in the center of the organization's battle for survival. Hoda abdel Moniem abdul-Aziz, a woman leader in the FJP, commented that the more oppressive the police crackdown, the more women would respond, “Our blood is on the street, members of our organization have been killed. We went through the worst. We are not afraid of the police as long as we stick to our principles” (as quoted in Ketchley and Biggs Reference Ketchley and Biggs2014). Indeed, women supporters of President Mohammad Morsi have played an active role in demonstrations against the military ouster of the democratically elected president. For instance, in November 2013, an Egyptian court sentenced 21 women supporters of President Mohammad Morsi to 11 years in jail each. However, the sentences were later suspended (Ketchley and Biggs Reference Ketchley and Biggs2014).
Additionally, Huda abdel Moniem led the Revolutionary Coalition for Egyptian Women (RCEW), comprised of nine Egyptian anti-coup women's groups that aimed to end the “military coup” (World Bulletin 2014b). Huda Abdel-Moneim indicated that “The alliance aims to encourage more activity by women in resisting the military coup” (as quoted in World Bulletin 2014b). According to the coalition's founding statement, “The coalition aims to mobilize women in the upcoming period to resist the coup and provide them with a unique experience fighting injustice” (as quoted in World Bulletin 2014b). Moreover, the alliance would attempt to document human rights violations against women (World Bulletin 2014b). The group had a significant presence in the pro-President Mohammad Morsi protests camps at Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Nahda Square, with hundreds of women joining the demonstrations (Al Bawaba 2013b). Moreover, the RCEW drew attention to the gendered violence of the military regime and used gendered language to delegitimize the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) and appeal to secular groups that allied with the military. For instance, on December 15, 2014 RCEW issued a statement saying,
Monday (Dec 15, 2014) marks the anniversary of the Cabinet building clashes, where security apparatuses committed many violations against girls and women of Egypt. The images of the “lynched” girl, the peaceful protester dragged on the ground by heavily armed policemen, are still remembered by every Egyptian and every revolutionary who came out demanding freedom four years ago… Let us not forget, it was the military council which lay the seeds of the coup, assaulted the “lynched” girl, violated the sanctity of Egyptian girls for the first time with the so-called virginity tests of female activists and revolutionaries, inside a military prison, and then went on to use sniper fire to terrorize and kill girls, and shamefully arrested girls and women—all of which are heinous crimes we are still suffering now (as quoted in Ikhwanweb 2014a).
This focus on gender and gendered violence as a central concern continued in a statement issued by Hoda Abdel-Moneim, spokeswoman for RCEW, on January 24, 2015 condemning the military junta and the coup killing of “Sondos Reda Abu-Bakr, a 17 years old peaceful woman demonstrator, when junta forces attacked a non-violent anti-coup march in Asafra district in Alexandria” (as quoted in Ikhwanweb 2014a). She continues, “In fact, every day—as we witness more junta and coup crimes against girls and women of Egypt, everyone appreciates the greatness and nobility of the legitimate elected President, whose message to the people of Egypt empowered and promoted respect for women. This prompts everyone to support President Mohammad Morsi and endeavor to restore the legitimacy he symbolizes, whatever the price” (as quoted in Ikhwanweb 2014a).
Another organization founded by members of the Sisterhood was the WAC, the first of several women-only resistance movements established following the 2013 coup and crackdown on the movement. It remains the most active organization for women's mobilization across Egypt. Initially, women would take part in demonstrations and report to the media and human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch on human rights violations.
Eventually, in July 2016, the Cairo Court of Urgent Matters banned WAC's activities inside Egypt (Aswat Masriya 2016). Now, the organization operates from abroad. Some of its founders, such as Asmaa Shokr, live in exile in Turkey with their families. Since this relocation, they have organized women-only marches in Egypt (Rifai Reference Rifai2013) and in exile (Ali Reference Ali2017). Such female activists made violence against women a central theme for sustaining the support for their mobilization. Female activists affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood began providing data on cases of violence against women (see Al-Islam Reference Al-Islam2016) as early as November 2013 (see Alquds Newspaper 2013a). Additionally, to increase the impact of their activism and role in the opposition, they allied with prominent leftist organizations resisting the coup, such as the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre. This provided the activists with training in international human rights (Malky Reference Malky2015).
Female activists have also reached out to international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Monitor and Insaniya. Their main work abroad focuses on communicating the reports of human rights abuses against the opposition in Egypt, which is significantly comprised of the Muslim Brotherhood, to the wider international community through social media, interviews with media outlets, and sharing their reports with international NGOs. The data for such reports is being collected by women who are still in Egypt. Moreover, Asmaa Shokr stated in a phone interview with me (Author 1, Interview in Arabic with Asmaa Shokr, 11/2017, Istanbul) that they are considering registering their WAC organization with the United Nations and wanting to expand its work to cover women's issues beyond Egypt.
The growing mobilizations of the Muslim Brotherhood's female activists against the state led to their targeting on July 19, 2013. In Mansoura, security forces killed three female activists who participated in an anti-government demonstration. A report by the independent Front for the Defense of Egyptian Protesters (FDEP) listed the names of 24 women who have been killed since August 14, 2013. Sixteen of them died in the Rabaa Al-Adawiya dispersal. Among them was Asmaa El-Beltagy, 17, daughter of leading Brotherhood figure Mohamed El-Beltagy (Gehad Reference Gehad2013). The cost women have paid for their participation “has led some to demand a bigger long-term role within the wider Muslim Brotherhood group” (Kingsley Reference Kingsley2014). For example, Fatima, a member of the Brotherhood, proposed, “It can't be like before, when we were blindly loyal…We are getting detained, we're getting attacked in the streets—so we must have some say” (as quoted in Kingsley Reference Kingsley2014).
The activism of the Sisters did not go unnoticed by the male members of the Muslim Brotherhood. This visibility of the Sisters' political and social activism, as well as the state's targeting of the Sisters, made it difficult for the Muslim Brotherhood's male leadership to disregard female activists as equal partners. A Muslim Sister stated, “This group started sitting directly with the official in charge of women in the Guidance Bureau. This is present now as a link between base and summit… They are treating women now as the ones who can take the pulse of what can and cannot be done. This is an excellent step for women” (as quoted in Noueihed Reference Noueihed2014).
These results highlight the shift in the framing that Islamist women use to promote their activism and gain the most favorable results within the current political context. This shift was guided by the dominant frame at the moment/language of rights, as well as openings and backlash in government and civil society. The pragmatic strategies of Islamist women in the Muslim Brotherhood have been crucial for its survival during periods of backlash. The organizing experience women have gained promoting the Muslim Brotherhood's work and preserving its structure, coupled with being less targeted for imprisonment, enabled the Sisters to have higher public voices domestically and internationally. It also led them to push for more representation in the movement itself and to force the Muslim Brotherhood to take them more seriously.
WOMEN IN THE ENNAHDA MOVEMENT IN TUNISIA
Although women have been active in the Tunisian Islamist movement, scholarly work has largely ignored the political agency of Ennahda women and their contribution in the development of the movement. Instead, previous research focused mainly on the male leadership of the movement, highlighting aspects such as the intellectual development of Rachid Ghannouchi as the leading political thinker of the movement. Therefore, shifting the focus on biographies of its female members sheds a new light on the history of the movement itself and the development of an Islamist women activism. It is of particular importance to show that Ennahda women in 2011 were not just “dolls” to meet the gender quota on electoral lists but, in the decades leading up to the revolution, developed political consciousness and organizing experience during periods of opening and repression, and therefore political agency. As it is the case with the Egyptian Muslim Sisterhood, Ennahda women learned in these times necessary skills which allowed them to play a strong role within the 2011-founded political party Ennahda, contributing to their success in the elections and, due to a strong presence on the electoral lists, in the Tunisian Parliament. The new role in public politics also provided the Ennahda women with political weight to take on leading positions in the party, ministries, as well as national and international organizations.
In their narratives, women of Ennahda heavily rely on frames of socioeconomic rights, human rights and freedoms, and democracy. This is especially due to the experienced political repression and the strategic need to build national and international alliances to support their legitimacy as political actor in a free society. After the revolution of 2011, Ennahda had to prove that these frames were not just simple rhetoric. In that process, women's rights became a focal point for debate between Ennahda's critics and their female activists, where Ennahda had to clarify their position on gender equality internally and in their contribution to writing Tunisia's new constitution.
Activism Before the 2011 Uprisings
Inspired by Islamist thinking in the Muslim world, Rachid Ghannouchi, Hamida Ennaifer, and Abdel Farrah Mourou created an Islamist movement in the early 1970s as an alternative to Habib Bourguiba's Tunisian secular modernism. It was not until the formation of al-Ǧamāʿa al-islāmīya bi-Tūnis in 1972 that women started to become members of the movement. However, the number of female activists only proliferated after the politicization of the al-Ǧamāʿa al-islāmīya and the transition into and foundation of the Islamic political organization “Movement de la Tendance Islamique (MTI)” in 1981. In the early stages, the Islamist movement in Tunisia did not understand itself as political but as a religious movement which sought to Islamize society through education and missionary work (da'wa). The politicization of the movement happened in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of first positive engagement with the government, which aimed to counter leftist political groups by co-opting Islamic values, promises of more democracy, and the later repression of political parties, especially the Islamists. Once the group around its leader Rachid Ghannouchi decided to become a political movement, women's rights, as Mounira Charrad argues, became a focal point of debate and a bargaining chip for the political legalization between the Tunisian government and the Islamist movement. While initially opposing the gender legislation in the form of the Personal Status Code from 1956, the Islamist movement eased their opposition to this law whenever a window for political participation opened up (Charrad Reference Charrad1997).
Ennahda activists portray their early engagement in the movement not merely as political activism, but rather as religious activism. One of the main axes of work of the Islamic movement was the field of education and missionary work (da'wa), where men and women educated each other separately on Islamic teaching, philosophy, and thought. Therefore, women began their activism through teaching and educating friends and children in their neighborhoods or villages in local mosques, schools, and later in chapters in Tunisian universities. The focus of early activism was to revive Muslim culture and traditions through education to counter the secular modernist reforms of the Tunisian president and a growing “western” lifestyle as well as recreate the Muslim society. As Ennahda parliamentarian member Basma Jebali stated, “The activities I took part in included the spread of Islam and the teaching of the Holy Quran to children. These activities were mainly educational, and not political” (Author 2, Interview in Arabic, January 2016, Tunis). Since the universities and the Islamic Zaytouna education network were under the control of the government, Ennahda women organized study circles (halqa) in mosques and at home. Wasila Zoghlami, Ennahda Deputy and senior activist, stated, “Since I was 15 years old, I attended conferences in the mosque. I was learning and then sharing my knowledge with the people around me.” (Author 2, Interview in Arabic, January 2016, Tunis).
While women were minimally active in the beginning, this changed in the late 70s and early 80s when Islamism in the MENA was revitalized in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, which resulted in the increased popularity of Ennahda on university campuses in Tunisia. During this period, Ennahda women's activism increased, providing them with experience in organizational and educational work. Although the movement was not yet an official organization, female activists became visible in the public sphere due to their missionary work in schools and universities. Their activism attracted many new male and women members who recently left the villages to pursue higher education in the big coastal cities of Tunis, Sfax, and Sousse.
In accordance with the experiences of the Muslim Sisterhood in Egypt, the experience of marginalization, state repression, and violence were formative for the political activism of female activists in the Ennahda and laid the groundwork for their framing as actors for democracy, human rights, and political freedom. Initially, women in the Ennahda party framed their early activism in religious terms and steered away from politics. However, this changed when the state started targeting women wearing the Hijab. This attack on an important religious marker for women created a shared identity among Islamist women. The politization of Ennahda's female activists continued to grow with the continuing political repression and experience of violence. To raise awareness for their situation in Tunisia and to build strategic alliances with national and international actors, the frames of democracy, human rights, and political freedom became a vital framework for their political activism and a frame of reference for their political legitimacy.
Most of the Ennahda women politicians we interviewed stated that the experience of violence was the main reason behind their political activism. The Ennahda Deputy Jamila Ksiksi recalled
I was a little girl, about 12 or 13 years old. I was wearing my mother's Hijab. I left the house and went on the street where I came across a police officer. He stopped me and asked, “why are you wearing that thing?” He slapped and insulted me. I was shocked. I ran home and told my father about the incident. I asked him why he did that. He told me that he is sorry, but the president of the country—that was at that time Habib Bourguiba—he doesn't like religion (Author 2, Interview in Arabic, January 2017, Tunis).
Activists used this incident to highlight the antidemocratic nature of the secularist regime of President Habib Bourguiba, which targeted the personal choices and religious freedom of these women. The state's targeting of the Hijab helped paint Islamists as victims of Tunisia's secular regime. This victimization fueled Ennahda women's activism. This incident happened in the 1980s, before the systematic repression of Islamist movements in Tunisia.
The increased support and influence of Islamists, as well as their strong presence on campuses, resulted in a government crackdown in the 1980s which affected men and women equally. While wearing the Hijab was banned, it was also used to identify and target women affiliated with the Islamist movement. Dalila Baba, Ennahda Deputy and senior activist, recounted, “We faced a lot of pressure and harassment by the authorities since we wear veils. They forced us to remove our veils which was against our beliefs” (Author 2, Interview in Arabic, January 2016, Tunis). The veil is presented as a contested symbol between those who see themselves as faithful believers and the modernist secular nation-state. While Bourguiba and Ben Ali see the Hijab as a symbol of backwardness, Islamism, and terrorism, female activists of Ennahda present the Hijab as a symbol of individual freedom, choice, and human rights. As Basma Jebali, expressed,
I have been wearing my Hijab since I was 14 years old. It was by choice for me. During the early 1990s, Ben Ali's regime was at its highest dictatorship. He even banned the Hijab from all public facilities. (…) Some of my female colleges got arrested during that time. (…) I continued my studies, but I was forced eventually to take off my Hijab. (…) That incident affected me deeply on a personal level, not to forget the oppressive approach adapted by the ruling regime, which jeopardized our liberties and freedoms. There was no freedom of expression and no freedom of gathering. (Author 2, Interview in Arabic, January 2016, Tunis).
Due to the crackdown on women wearing the Hijab, female activists in the Ḥarakat al-ittiǧah al-islāmī and its Student Union (UGTE) started framing their activism in support of freedom and opposition to oppression, rather than in religious terms. As Basma Jebali elaborated, “Later, I joined the student activities and affairs, mainly focusing on Al-Nahda students. I was also a member of UGTE to defend student's rights and freedoms” (Author 2, Interview in Arabic, January 2016, Tunis). The regime therefore was portrayed as implementing oppressive checks against liberties and freedoms for over a decade.
However, with President Habib Bourguiba's successor, Zine Abedine Ben Ali, there emerged an increased effort to fight back against the movement. The leaders of Ennahda, both men and women, were forced to go to exile. From 1990 until the uprisings of 2011, Ennahda's activism mainly happened in European exile. European exile played a vital role in the development of the party. Ennahda members see the debates with Europeans' political thoughts as a reason for taking a different path than other Islamist trends and parties in the MENA. Secondly, Ennahda members who moved into the European exile had the chance to stay connected and form informal networks, laying the ground for a future Ennahda generation. Many of the leading female activists who lived in Europe are playing leadership roles in Ennahda party and in the government such as Mehrezia LaabidiFootnote 1, Imen Ben MohamedFootnote 2, Dalila BabaFootnote 3, and Sayyida Ounissi.Footnote 4
Activism During and After the Uprisings
Although Ennahda did not take part as an organization in the revolutionary uprisings of December 2010 and January 2011, many female members of the movement took to the streets. Activists of Ennahda framed their demands in the concepts of political freedom, human rights, and democracy. These concepts became the frame of reference in which Ennahda's female activists situated themselves and became the foundation of their narrative of being a legitimate political force that, because of their history and experiences, would guarantee these values. Using concepts of democracy, human rights, and political freedom had also a strategic dimension, to counter fears of secular-leaning parts of the society and international actors of building an Islamic state and to preempt the fate of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
The long-term activist and Deputy, Mounia Ibrahim, recalled, “I left my house that day—although I recently had a surgery—but I was determined to take part in this historic event, despite the risks” (Author 2, Interview with Mounia Ibrahim in Arabic, January 2016, Tunis). It did not take long for Ennahda activists to become increasingly more visible after the ousted president Zine Abedine Ben Ali fled the country. Some women needed an added incentive to engage in public activism due to their exhaustion from constant government repression. In an interview with the Deputy Mounia Ibrahim, she said,
We all suffered a lot due to the old unfair practices imposed on us by the old ruling regime. Therefore, all of us, the women members, were extremely exhausted due to the pain we faced (…) I remember, as part of the restructuring process, I had to go house to house to talk in person to Ennahda female members to encourage them to reintegrate with the party after the revolution as it offered us a new beginning. (Author 2, Interview in Arabic, January 2016, Tunis).
The fear among the first generation of activists who experienced oppression became critical drivers for strategic and organizational change in the movement. However, for many first-generation activists, the new political situation opened up the possibility for them to become legitimate political actors. For example, Deputy Mounia Ibrahim stated,
I consider myself someone who contributed to that change. My contribution dated to the 80s when my political journey started. I felt I needed to continue playing my role and fulfill my responsibility towards my political struggle… (Author 2, Interview in Arabic, January 2016, Tunis).
After the uprisings, Ennahda women were included in key government positions. For example, in 2011, 41 women of Ennahda got elected into the Tunisian constitutional assembly (marsad.tn). Despite the increased representation of Islamist women, their new-found visibility and power made them a target for attacks and critique by secular women's rights organizations and activists. They were portrayed as “puppets” and “silent sisters” suggesting they did not possess their own “agency” (e.g. Grami Reference Grami2014).
The international community and various Tunisian secular groups had concerns regarding Ennahda's position on women's rights. These concerns were exacerbated during the debates around article 28 of the draft constitution in June 2012. The article dealt with the protection of women's rights and their roles in the family. In the draft article, the Commission for Rights and Freedom proposed the term “complementary” instead of “equality” when referring to women's roles in the family. This draft triggered a big discussion in Tunisia and on social media. Ennahda women found themselves having to clarify their positions on women's rights to ease the fears of the Tunisian and international communities regarding the protection of these rights. After realizing the outcome of this draft and the growing mistrust in society toward Ennahda party and their government, spokespersons such as Mounia Ibrahim quickly denounced “the article as a naïve misstep, the combined product of a rushed drafting process and their own failure to anticipate just how controversial the draft would be” (as cited in Marks Reference Marks2014, 23). Ennahda deputies immediately changed the wording to “musawa” (equality), but as Marks (Reference Marks2014) argues, the damage and the uncertainty about Ennahda attitude toward women's rights had occurred.
Due to the increased visibility in the public sphere and the pressure from national and international secular groups, women of Ennahda deployed the language of freedom, democracy, human rights, and women's rights to ease these fears. Since the uprisings, women of Ennahda got involved in civil society organizations working on issues of women's rights from an Islamic point of view.Footnote 5 Democracy in general became a solid frame of reference for female Ennahda activists, not only as a value and set of rights but also because of its institutions that are portrayed as capable of bringing a divided country together. Describing the division in the country as a result of Ben Ali's policies, Mounia Ibrahim declared,
The process of writing the constitution was complicated. When we set down at the parliament initially, each political party had the impression that they will be writing the constitution for themselves and their electors alone. Everyone stood by their opinions furiously (Author 2, Interview in Arabic with Mounia Ibrahim, January 2016, Tunis).
The constitutional assembly was the first public space where Islamists, the political elite, and the left could come together and debate the future of the country. However, it is also described as a learning process composed of procedures such as healing, building trust, and creating unity. As Mounia Ibrahim contended,
It took us a year and a half to conclude that we are not writing the constitution for solely ourselves but rather for all Tunisians…We realized that to come with a constitution that represents all Tunisians, each one of us has to compromise. Finding common grounds eventually enabled us to create something together. We needed to understand that the constitution was meant for Tunisia and all its citizens and not only for a specific category or a political current (Author 2, Interview in Arabic, January 2016, Tunis).
Ibrahim highlights how learning about the political “other” was a crucial part of writing the constitution and realizing the necessity of writing for the whole country and not only for their constituencies. Learning about the other is portrayed as accepting the plurality of the country. She added,
“The fact we ended up spending a lot of time working in the parliament gave us the chance to know each other better and discover that we are only humans after all. This made us get closer to each other on a human level. We eat together, we laugh together, we work together. Eventually, our trust in each other was restored gradually. This was very important to us” (Author 2, Interview in Arabic with Mounia Ibrahim, January 2016, Tunis).
At the core of the story about the constitutional process exist democratic institutions enabling a secure public space for interaction and debate. Ennahda's women politicians use many different references to democracy in the form of political participation, voting, representation, and unification. Democracy and right discourses predominate the political discourse of Ennahda's female activists and outweigh references to religion.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON TUNISIA AND EGYPT
This comparative research on Islamist Women's Activism in Tunisia and Egypt sheds light onto women's framing and organizing efforts in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia's Ennahda. The progression in women's political activism and their role in their movements demonstrate that different political contexts shaped Islamist women's activism and framing strategies. The secular government's backlash and repression of Islamist movements in each country served as a catalyst for women's politicization and mobilization within these movements. The Tunisian government in the 70s and 80s targeted Islamist and religious symbols. By specifically targeting the Hijab, they targeted religious and Islamist women. This violence against religious women politicized Islamist Tunisian women before the uprisings. Their earlier engagement in politics and public visibility resulted in their exile to Europe and their ability to reconcile international secular discourses with religious ones. Unlike the Tunisian government in the 70s and 80s, the Egyptian government did not have issues with religious expression. They attempted to compete with Islamists over who is the true representative of Islam. Article Two of the Egyptian constitution particularly strengthened the Islamist narrative in its discussion of the relationship between religion and the state. It stipulated that Sharia is the principal source of legislation. This article embraced religious symbols and markers such as the Hijab. After all, not every religious person is an Islamist. Before the Arab Spring, the Egyptian government avoided targeting women because they were culturally considered a “red-line” with the Muslim Sisters mainly spreading Da'wa and engaging in social work and charity. The government did not view them as a threat. The violence before the uprisings was primarily directed at male members of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, this changed after the uprisings and its aftermath because Islamist women became visible in the political arena as influential protestors, activists, organizers, leaders, and politicians. President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi's violent backlash against the Muslim Brotherhood and the FJP extended to the Sisters. The targeting of political dissidents in general and women in particular made it appealing for the Sisters to use international frames of human and women's rights to discredit the Egyptian government.
In line with Tajali's work (2015), Islamist women's framing strategies, in terms of the ways they articulated their demands and to whom, changed during significant regime shifts. The religious, national, and international contexts shape the strategic framing choices of Islamist activists. The activists used religious frames to push for more women's participation within their movement, justify Islamist women's involvement to conservative factions of society, and to reassure non-Islamists that women's rights are protected. International Women's rights and human rights frames were used to delegitimize secular governments and to build a more comprehensive network of solidarity with non-Islamist activists domestically and internationally. The political openings of the post-Arab Spring era enabled greater political visibility of Islamist female activists in each context, during which they resorted to the framing of democracy, human rights, women's rights, and freedom. However, the Muslim Sisters in Egypt also used these frames after the military coup of 2013 to delegitimize President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi's government, which claimed to be a proponent of women's rights.
Despite the different outcomes for the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda in terms of their political context in the years since the uprisings, female activists in both cases were essential “agents” in their groups, actively choosing between varying frames to promote their political agenda. Activists utilized religious frameworks to increase and justify their political participation and positions on women's issues. These religious frames were used to empower women's civic engagement in the democratic system. Similarly, these strategies have opened the space for Islamist women in these movements and made them visible as important political actors in society. The female activists' choices impacted the political trajectory of the Islamists and allowed these women to play new roles in the government and the movement. Thus, their agency dynamically affected the political context with which they continue to contend.
By acknowledging the role of women as activists in Islamist political movements, this article makes an essential contribution to the fields of gender, religion, and politics in the Middle East and North Africa. Very little research has been conducted on Islamist female activists free from orientalist and essentialist perspectives. In this regard, this article highlights the voices of key Islamist women as well as their experiences in extremely complex political and social contexts, thereby demonstrating how Islamist women are not merely docile followers of their movement, but active in adapting and adjusting their framing to serve their movements. Instead, they also engage with the religious text to make the crucial case for women's participation in politics.
