Leila Ahmed

Leila Ahmed(Arabic:لیلى أحمد;born 29 May 1940)is anEgyptian-Americanscholar of women's studies and religion.In 1992 she published her bookWomen and Gender in Islam,which is regarded as a pioneering historical analysis of the position of women in Arab Muslim societies.She became the first professor of women's studies in religion atHarvard Divinity Schoolin 1999, and has held the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity chair since 2003. She was later awarded the Victor S. Thomas Research Professor of Divinity in 2020.

Leila Ahmed
ليلى أحمد
Leila Ahmed in 2013
Born	(1940-05-29)29 May 1940 Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt
Education	University of Cambridge(BA,MA,PhD)
Occupations	Professor scholar
Awards	Grawemeyer Awardin Religion forA Quiet Revolution

Biography

Born in theHeliopolisdistrict ofCairoto a middle-classEgyptianfather and an upper classTurkishmother in 1940,Ahmed's childhood was shaped both by Muslim Egyptian values and the liberal orientation of Egypt's aristocracy under theancien régime.The Ahmed family became politically ostracized following theFree Officers Movementin 1952. Her father, a civil engineer, was a vocal opponent ofGamal Abdel Nasser's construction of theAswan High Damon ecological principles.

She earned her undergraduate and doctorate degrees fromUniversity of Cambridgeduring the 1960s before moving to theUnited Statesto teach and write, where she was appointed to professorship in Women's Studies and Near Eastern studiesat theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst,and the position of director in said programsin 1981. A professorship inWomen's StudiesandReligionat theHarvard Divinity Schoolfollowed in 1999, where she currently teaches.

Views

Veiling

In 2013, Ahmed, who had previously opposed the veil, received theUniversity of LouisvilleGrawemeyer Awardin Religion for her analysis of theveilingof Muslim women in the United States, in which she describes how some women wore the veil as a symbol of activism for justice and social change.As such, she no longer believes that the resurgence of the veil was solely driven by patriarchy, a view she held when she was younger, as she noted how many women in the United States wore it as a symbol of their Islamic identity, social justice, and to raise other women's awareness of society's sexist messages about women's bodies and dress. However, she believes that the veil has no universal meaning and is still driven by forces of patriarchy in other places around the world.

From a description of Ahmed's work provided by Yale University Press London: "Ahmed observed that Islamism, with its commitments to activism in the service of the poor and in pursuit of social justice, is the strain of Islam most easily and naturally merging with western democracies' own tradition of activism in the cause of justice and social change. It is often Islamists, even more than secular Muslims, who are at the forefront of such contemporary activist struggles as civil rights and women's rights. Ahmed's surprising conclusions represent a near reversal of her thinking on this topic."

Work

A Border Passage(1999)

In her 1999 memoirA Border Passage,Ahmed describes her multiculturalCaireneupbringing and her adult life as an expatriate and an immigrant in Europe and the United States. She tells of how she was introduced toIslamthrough her grandmother during her childhood, and she came to distinguish it from "official Islam" as practiced and preached by a largely male religious elite. This realization would later form the basis of her first acclaimed book,Women and Gender in Islam(1992), a now-classic work onIslamic history,Muslim feminism,and the historical role ofwomen in Islamas well as Muslim discourses about women.

Ahmed speaks of her experience inEuropeandthe United Statesas one that was often fraught with tension and confusion as she tried to reconcile her Muslim Egyptian identity with Western values. Faced withracismandanti-Muslimprejudice, and after deconstructing traditionalist male-centered beliefs in her own culture, she set out to dispel equally damaging myths and misconceptions held by the West about Islam and Muslim women.

Ahmed has been a strong critic of Arab nationalism in Egypt and theMiddle East.She devotes an entire chapter in her autobiography to the question ofArab nationalism,and the political factors and efforts which went into constructing anArab identityfor Egypt after the army'scoup d'état.According to Ahmed's research, the idea thatEgyptianswere "Arab" was virtually unheard of well into the 20th century. She describesArab nationalism,like many other forms ofpan-nationalism,as a type ofcultural imperialism.This cultural imperialism eats away at the diversity and cultural creativity of not only theArabic-speaking national majorities (who often speak widely divergentvernaculars), but also the non-Arabic speaking minorities throughout the Middle East andNorth Africa.

Women and Gender in Islam(1992)

In her germinal work,Women and Gender in Islam(1992), Ahmed argues that the oppressive practices to which women in theMiddle Eastare subjected are caused by the prevalence of patriarchal interpretations of Islam rather than Islam itself. She maintains that as Islam evolved, two divergent voices emerged in the religion:

1. An ethical structure that advocates the moral and spiritual equality of all human beings;
2. A hierarchical structure as the basis of male/female relations; a gender-based/sexual hierarchy.

Islamic doctrine developed within anandrocentric,misogynistsociety, that ofAbbasidIraq,the customs of which were largely inherited from theSasanian Empireafter its conquest.This society emphasised and institutionalised the gendered hierarchical voice and silenced the voice of equity and justice. Islam as a religion therefore became a discourse of the politically dominant elite, i.e.; male society. There were early signs of resistance to establishment Islam. For example, the thoughts ofSufiandQarmatiansgroups, philosophers such asIbn al-Arabiand the liberal stance of powerful families and individuals towards their daughters in respect of marriage and education (e.g.; imposing a monogamy clause in marriage contracts or one for providing private education).

Despite such resistance, establishment Islam experienced little serious challenge until early 19th-century colonial encroachment. European colonialisms' remit was essentially economic; however, female emancipation was used as an argument to legitimate geopolitical incursion. Colonial feminism was a Western discourse of dominance which, "introduced the notion that an intrinsic connection existed between the issue of culture and the status of women, and… that progress for women could be achieved only through abandoning the native culture."

Inevitably, the initial reaction to this was a rejection of Western values by politicalIslamists.This rejection saw the conflation of Islam and culture where Islamic authenticity became defined in terms of cultural authenticity and, specifically, the role of women within Islam. This led to a reaffirmation of indigenous customs relating to women and restoration of the customs and laws of past Islamic societies. The underlying assumption was that there is an authentic interpretation of Islam that is based on the texts and institutions developed in Abbasid Iraq. According to such assumptions, the meaning of gender and the position of women within Islam is "unambiguous and ascertainable in some precise and absolute sense."

Since this initial reaction, Muslim women scholars have argued that the values of the Abbasid era in Iraq are not universal to Islam — rather they were specific to a particular time, culture and people. Islamic texts and institutions need to be separated from patriarchal culture and reappraised in terms of merit, and listening to the voice of equality and justice. Ahmed concludes by exhorting feminists, both Muslim and Western, to undertake this task by critically engaging with, challenging and redefining the Middle East regions' diverse religious and cultural heritage.

Now considered a classic,Women and Gender in Islamwas republished by Yale University Press in 2021 in its Veritas paperback series with a foreword by Kecia Ali.

Bibliography

Books and book chapters

• Edward W. Lane: A study of his life and works and of British ideas of the Middle East in the Nineteenth century.London: Longman (1978)
• "A Traditional Ceremony in an Islamic Milieu in Malaysia", inMuslim Women(1984)
• "Between Two Worlds: The Formation of a Turn-of-the-Century Egyptian Feminist", inLife/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography(1988)
• "Arab Women: 1995", inThe Next Arab Decade: Alternative Futures(1988)
• "Feminism and Cross-Cultural Inquiry: The terms of discourse in Islam" InComing to Terms: Feminism, Theory and Politics.Ed. Elizabeth Weed. New York: Routledge (1989)
• Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate.New Haven: Yale University Press (1992, 2021)
• A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman's Journey.New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux (1999)
• A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence, from the Middle East to America.New Haven. Yale University Press (2011)

Articles

• "Women in the rise of Islam."The new Voices of Islam: Rethinking Politics and Modernity: a Reader.Ed. Mehran Kamrava. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. 177–200.
• "The Discourse of the Veil."Post Colonialisms: an Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism.Ed. Gaurav Desai and Supriya Nair. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 315–338.
• "The Veil Debate Again: a View from America in the Early Twenty-first Century".On Shifting Ground: Muslim Women in the Global Era.Ed. Fereshteh Nourale-Simone. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005.
• "Gender and literacy in Islam."Nothing Sacred: Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror.Ed. Betsy Reed. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002.
• "The Women of Islam".Transition83 (2000): 78–97.
• "Early Islam and the position of Women: the problem of interpretation."Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender.Ed. Nikki R. Keddie, Beth Baron. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
• "Arab Culture and Writing Woman's Bodies."Gender Issues9.1 (March 1, 1989): 41–55.
• "Women and the Advent of Islam."Signs11.4 (Summer, 1986): 665–691.
• "Feminism and Feminist Movements in the Middle East, a Preliminary Exploration: Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen."Women and Islam.Ed. Ellen Skinner. Virginia: Pergamon Press: 1982. 153.
• "Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem."Feminist Studies8.3 (Autumn, 1982): 521–534.
• Ahmed, Leila, Krishna Ahooja-Patel, Charlotte Bunch, Nilufer Cagatay, Ursula Funk, Dafna N. Izraeli, Margaret McIntosh, Helen I. Safa, and Aline K. Wong. "Comments on Tinker's 'A Feminist view of Copenhagen".Signs6.4 (Summer, 1981): 771–790.
• "Encounter with American Feminism: A Muslim Woman's View of Two Conferences".Women's Studies Newsletter8.3 (Summer, 1980): 7–9.

Filmography

• Ahmed was an advisor to the award-winning, PBS-broadcast documentaryMuhammad: Legacy of a Prophet(2002), produced byUnity Productions Foundation.

External links

• Ahmed's faculty profile at Harvard Divinity School
• Interview with Ahmed ( "Muslim Women and Other Misunderstandings)Archived2015-09-24 at theWayback MachineatOn Being(radio show) on December 7, 2006
• Professor Leila Ahmed, Ph.D., speaks in the Distinguished Lecture SeriesMarch 22, 2010
• A Border Passage: From Cairo to America -- A Woman's Journey, Leila Ahmed, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
• Profile of Leila AhmedBy Julia Lieblich, The Associated Press, August 12, 1999