Capitalism and fundamentalism -
and women's voices suppressed
by Nawal El-Sa'adawi
I
am writing this paper sitting at my kitchen table in Cairo. It is 11 January
2004. The grey light of dawn has not yet spread over the sky. I was awakened
by the call to prayer shouted out over the sleeping city by tens of microphones
hanging from the minarets of mosques in the popular district of Shoubra
where the majority are Christian followers of the Orthodox Coptic Church.
The number of these microphones has multiplied steadily during the past
three decades with the rapid rise in the number of mosques built with money
from
the petrol rich Gulf countries or from Egyptians who have spent many years
working there. They constitute the middle and upper class conservative
backbone of the Islamic fundamentalist movement in Egypt and the Arab countries,
its
main economic and political force.
The call to prayer, when I first heard it as a child, was beautiful to
hear. It wafted over the city in soft and sometimes musical tones. Now
it has become
a cacophony of strident voices, a threatening call shot through with violence.
The call to prayer, the sermons and religious teachings pouring out in
an incessant stream of loud and angry voices from 90,000 microphones spread
over the country encroaching on people's right to rest and to silence are
a form of war. This is one of the many wars unleashed on millions of peaceful
people since Sadat came to power in 1971 and reopened the doors to American
neo- imperialism.
It was Sadat, in agreement with the US administration of Nixon and Kissinger,
who encouraged and supported the political movement of Islamic fundamentalism,
helped it to flourish and grow. It was Sadat who reversed the policies
of Nasser, and paved the way for the World Bank, for foreign multi- national
capital, and for Islamic fundamentalism.
He needed an internal ally, the support of a political, economic, and cultural
Islamic movement to fight against the democratic and more socially oriented
parties and movements which opposed his policies. It was in this way that
during his regime international capital, spearheaded by the US in alliance
with the ruling class, reimposed its domination on women, men and children
and paved its way under the guise of restoring the values and practices
of Islam, of Islamic traditions and of the family unit as basic to the
health
and prosperity of society. The multinationals and their intermediaries
hid behind the cloak of Islam, of a revived religious fundamentalism. This
was
a war on the mind of people, a campaign launched to control and domesticate
their thinking, a religious brainwashing required to facilitate and hide
what capital was planning to do with their land and with their lives.
This war on the mind is a global phenomenon. The growing influence exercised
by political fundamentalist movements is a development that has taken place
in many countries in both the East and the West.
The invasion of Iraq in 1991 led to more than 150,000 deaths, most of them
women and children. The 13 years of economic embargo enforced on that country,
mainly under American and British pressure, led to two million deaths,
most of them children and women, always the first victims of scarcity and
hunger
in patriarchal societies. Continued Israeli military aggression against
civilian populations in Palestine is taking a heavy toll on the lives and
health of
women and children.
To prevent women from fighting back against war and increased exploitation
their organisations must be dissolved when they arise, as has happened
so often. More effective is to prevent them from arising by draconian laws
such
as the law on associations promulgated two years ago in Egypt. But perhaps
best of all is to prevent them from thinking of change, of organising for
change, of seeking ways to resist. Hence the repeated banning of books
and articles, TV programmes discussing the situation of women, criticising
religious
fundamentalist thought, exposing patriarchal values and practices, extolling
democracy ( real democracy and not the electoral farce of capitalist pluralism
) or defending the rights of women. Hence also the vicious attacks, the
accusations of apostasy, the threats of physical assassination and the
campaigns of character assassination launched against public figures, writers,
journalists
or activists, whether women or men, who dare to defend the rights of women.
It is a ferocious war waged against the minds of both women and men, but
especially women because it is only women who can liberate women and in
so doing constitute a tremendous force for the liberation of society as
a whole.
In this war women are besieged by a double pincer assault; that of corporate
consumerism and the free market on the one hand, and religious political
fundamentalism on the other; ostensibly at odds they actually combine to
maintain the subjugation of women, to control their minds and their bodies
by patriarchal imprisonment, veiling and domestication.
In our own region, though, the most dangerous and pervasive forces in the
war on women's minds are those of political religious fundamentalism. It
serves to conceal, to perpetuate, to reinforce and to rationalise the economic,
political, social and cultural exploitation of international corporate
capital and US imperialism.
Countries like ours are described as poor or backward or Third World. We
are not poor. Arab countries are among the richest countries of the world
due to their immense natural and human resources. But their riches in labour,
mineral, fossil or other resources continue to be poured into the pipe
lines of foreign plunder by the capitalist, corporate World Bank, World
Trade Organisation
free market mechanisms of unequal trade balances, foreign debt, speculation,
currency devaluation and exchange, structural adjustment and investment
policies.
A military and economic war, a trade in arms, in human beings, an economic
genocide continues to drain the life blood of our lands.
In Egypt poverty has increased at an alarming rate as a result of open
door free market policies, and privatisation of industry as well as of
many services.
Over 40 per cent of the population, mainly women and children, live under
the poverty line of $2 a day. The feminisation of poverty is visible everywhere.
Five million women are occupied as small producers in workshops, in services,
trade etc. Their monthly income often does not exceed $40 per month for
a working day of 10 hours. Their lot is almost always worse than that of
men
because they are unorganised and have little political power or representation.
They constitute only two per cent of the members in the People's Assembly
and only one per cent of the members of local assemblies, district and
village councils.
In my own life-time I have lived through seven wars and now I am the horrified
witness of Israeli massacres in Palestine and the American and British
massacres carried out by the occupation forces in Iraq. Women and children
are the
weakest section of our populations, the first and the most numerous victims
of these massacres. In my village Kafr Tahla many women continue to wear
mourning for fathers, brothers, husbands or other relatives killed in war.
Many of them find it hard to feed themselves after the loss of a bread
winner.
Wars have become terribly destructive due to the development of sophisticated
technologically advanced weapons. The worst are called weapons of mass
destruction but there are so called conventional weapons which are almost
as bad (two
ton bombs, laser directed one ton rockets, cluster bombs, bombs that suck
up the oxygen around them where they explode, rockets coated with depleted
uranium etc..). Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons threaten the lives
of millions of people.
Yet perhaps the most lethal and the most dangerous weapons of all are those
that brainwash, anaesthetise or paralyse the mind: the media, the educational
systems and above all the religious fundamentalist teachings which create
a "false consciousness" among men and among women. False consciousness
makes women obedient instruments of their own oppression, and transmitters
of this false consciousness to future generations of children, of girls
and boys. It is lethal because what it does to women's minds is not visible.
Unlike physical female genital mutilation it is an invisible gender mutilation
which destroys the dynamism, the capacity to understand what is happening,
to react and resist, to change, to participate in making changes. It destroys
the essential creativity of the human mind. It instills fear, obedience,
resignation, illusions, an inability to decide or else it leads women to
make decisions, to take positions, to defend values and ideas inimical
to
their own interests, to the health and development of their life. It makes
women their own enemy, incapable of discerning friend from foe.
During the first half of January 2004 a violent conflict burst out over
the veiling of young girls in the public schools of France. The French
authorities
had announced that in defence of their traditional secular system they
were preparing to pass a law which banned young girls and boys from wearing
visible
religious accessories or apparel which denoted their belonging to a particular
religious faith. This ban would include such things as the Christian crucifix,
the Jewish skull-cap and the Islamic veil.
Following this announcement a wave of protests broke out in the Arab world.
The argument was that wearing the veil by girls and women who were Muslims
was ordained by divine law and no woman or girl could be forced to disobey
what Allah had commended her to do. Religious dignitaries and sheikhs,
Islamic thinkers and scholars, heads of political parties or movements
like the Muslim
Brotherhood and Jihad, parliamentarians and journalists joined in the general
clamour as though some terrible catastrophe had befallen the Islamic faith
and its followers although in the Qur'an there is absolutely nothing to
indicate that the wearing of the veil is a divine command. So why this
furore over
a piece of material which is wrapped around the head of women and conceals
it? Why should the head of women in particular be considered so dangerous
that it must be made to disappear?
This is no more than the age old patriarchal struggle over women's heads,
the fear that they might begin to think and throw off the bonds of slavery,
of an inferiority enforced on them in all religions and in all societies.
For the Muslim men who raised their voice in protest this was an integral
part of their struggle to maintain men's control over women, men's control
over their minds. This was above all the desire of Islamic fundamentalists
to preserve the political power they exercise in society, a cornerstone
of which has always been power over women.
But in this political fray there were other players using women's rights
or lack of rights to their own ends. Chirac had his eyes on the polls,
on future elections. The American administration raised the banner of human
rights, of women's right to choose. Bush is preparing for the next election
and also found in this conflict a suitable occasion to hit back at the
French
government with which he has been at odds since the war on Iraq. Besides,
one of Bush's declared aims in waging war first against Afghanistan, then
against Iraq was "the liberation of women". The British government
took the same position, probably in an attempt to retrieve some of Blair's
lost popularity amongst many people in England, including the Muslim community.
Strangest of all however was the spectacle of young women in the streets
of Paris and Cairo and other cities demonstrating against the French government's
announcement in defence of their right to wear the veil, and of God's divine
commandments in defence of this symbol of their servitude. This is a signal
example of how "false consciousness" makes women enemies of their
freedom, enemies of themselves, an example of how they are used in the political
game being played by the Islamic fundamentalist movement in its bid for power.
During the month of September 2003 I met a group of Iraqi women in New
York and was astounded when they expressed their happiness at the "liberation
of Iraq" and its occupation by American troops. Perhaps they or their
families had suffered at the hands of Saddam Hussein and his tyrannical regime
but how could they fail to realise that the Iraqi people, and with them Iraqi
women and children, would suffer at the hands of a colonial military occupation.
Was it fear, this essential component of women's subservience in a world
growing ever more violent, or was it the false ideas installed by a media
system ruled over by men like Rupert Murdoch and Silvio Berlusconi, by the
neo-fascists of the Bush era.
The slogan raised by the girls and young women who demonstrated against
the announcement made by the government of France was "the veil is a doctrine
not a symbol."
Another argument used as a part of the brain washing process is to consider
the veil an integral part of the identity of Islamic women and a reflection
of their struggle against Western imperialism, against its values, and
against the cultural invasion of the Arab and Islamic countries.
Yet in these demonstrations the young women and girls who marched in them
wearing the veil were often clothed in tight fitting jeans, their faces
covered with layers of make-up, their lips painted bright red, the lashes
around
their eyes thickened black or blue with heavy mascara. They walked along
the streets swaying in high-heeled shoes, drinking out of bottles of Coca
Cola or Sprite.. Their demonstration was a proof of the link between Western
capitalist consumerism and Islamic fundamentalism, how in both money and
trade ride supreme, bend to the rule of corporate globalisation. It was
an illustration of how a "false consciousness" is shot with contradiction.
* The above is extracted from a paper the writer presented at the World
Social Forum in Mumbai
Cathi Llewellyn-Davis
Regional Liaison Officer for Caroline Lucas MEP
Braziers Park, Ipsden, Oxfordshire OX10 6AN
07986 111378
