Ahmed Study Guide

Discussion Questions for Ahmed's "Discourses of the Veil":

Additionally, keep the following points in mind as you read.

• Qasim Amin's "The Liberation of the Woman," published in 1899.
  
  By 1890's, the state had already established schools for girls, so why the controversy?
  - because of the symbolic reform he advocated - the abolition of the veil.
  -beginning of feminism in Arab culture
  -first battle of the veil to agitate the Arab press
• p. 145 Encompassed issues of class and culture; colonizers and the colonized
• p. 145 ISSUES OF WOMEN AND CULTURE FIRST APPEARED AS INEXTRICABLY FUSED IN ARABIC DISCOURSE
• p. 145 Egypt supplied raw materials for the British.
• p. 146 Benefited certain classes within Egypt—European residents within Egypt, the Egyptian upper classes, and the new middle class of civil servants and intellectual elite.
• p. 146 Traditional knowledge became devalued; the ulama' were affected
• p. 147 Accentuation of class divisions; glass ceiling for lower middle class occupations
• p. 147 Fear that education could lead to dangerous nationalist sentiments
• p. 147 Issues of culture and attitudes toward Western ways intertwined with issues of class and access to economic resources, position, and status.
• pp. 147-148: Laws unjustly skewed in favor of the British colonizers
• p. 148- Class and economic divisions plus political and ideological divisions
• p. 148 - Spectrum of views—minority Arabs sometimes sided with the British
            —religious and secular nationalism
• p. 149: WOMEN AS UPHOLDERS OF CULTURE—CONTEST OVER CULTURE CENTERED ON WOMEN AND THE VEIL
• p. 149: Western narrative of women in Islam 
• p. 150: Female Western travelers sometimes had a more sympathetic view
• p. 150: Why are women central in this discourse of culture?
• p. 150-51: THE OTHER CULTURE as defined according to Victorian standards 
• p. 151: Colonialism appropriated the language of feminism and redirected it towards other men's cultures COLONIAL FEMINISM
• p. 152: Cromer's views on Islam, women and the veil.
• p. 153: Views on women's education
• p. 154-57: How were colonial binaries set up (for example, Muslims backward, lazy etc.; Egyptian women—ignorant and debased compared to the exact opposite in the West)
• p. 160: Why was it assumed that an assault on the veil by Amin reflected internalization of colonialist rhetoric?
• p. 161-162: What is the significance of Ahmed pointing out that the colonial rhetoric on women’s emancipation merely called for a substitution of Islamic style male dominance for that of Western style male dominance?
• p. 162: As Ahmed notes, more than thirty books and articles appeared in response to Amin’s provocative book?  Why do you think the book was considered so provocative in its day?