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AMEWS

ISLAMIC FEMINISM? WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Preliminary Reflections by Omaima Abou-Bakr

A recent trend among scholars of Middle Eastern and women's studies is the preoccupation with what has been termed as the new phenomenon of 'Islamic feminism' and/or Muslim feminists. Attempts are being currently made to define it and delineate its parameters, and some are hailing it as the new astonishing wave of feminism in Muslim societies. So far the discussion has aroused more questions and misgivings than it has given way to a clearer picture of the situation.

PROBLEMS & QUERIES
1) Is the denomination part of a process of natural self-definition by Muslim women themselves today engaged in activities or research on women's rights as Islamically defined and justified, or is it a term created and propagated by Western or non-Muslim scholars to categorize, label, and name Muslim women? There is the unavoidable suspicion that this constitutes hegemonic naming of the 'other,' contributing further to the problematic pose of expert versus object of study. Feelings of unease have arisen among Muslim women themselves, scholars and professionals, towards this 'new' category.

In a recent telepress conference at AUC (March 31, 2001) with Duke University, in which Hoda El-Sadda and myself participated in the panel discussing Miriam Cooke's Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature (N.Y.: Routledge, 2001), Hoda expressed reservation over the "dynamics of naming" and coining or formulating concepts and terms: "To me, the term [Islamic feminism] says a lot about the observer, the person who coins, than about the object itself." In other words, how was the concept produced and how has it served the producers? The assumption is that concepts have a history, and a recognition of hegemonic histories is needed. She also questioned the usefulness of continually "foregrounding the Islamic spirit or influence as the regularly primary force in Middle Eastern societies, hence disregarding the complexities of social/political and economic transformations." In other words, the panel expressed concern over the possible divisive nature of this categorization, implying that if one is not directly dealing with Islamic teachings, Qur'anic verses, and Hadith, then she is outside the circle of Islamic/Muslim feminists. Yet, most contemporary Arab or Middle Eastern activists/feminists today are arguing for women's rights, social equality, and gender balance under the supposition of a culture-specific struggle - not really opposing themselves to Islamic doctrine - rather focusing on implementation and activation of human rights claimed to be granted by Islam. Furthermore, since the latter part of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, a considerable group of Arab and Muslim women writers, like A'isha Taymuriya, Zeinab Fawwaz, Nazira Zein al-Din, Malak Hifni Nasef, or even Qadriya Husayn, had framed their feminist consciousness and concerns within the Islamic value system. Very often each one of them explicitly measured contemporary social and cultural norms up against authentic Islamic moral standards and ideals. Even Hoda Sha'rawi, some insist, advocated women's rights within a taken-for-granted Islamic frame of reference.

My question for Cooke was: Would we now use 'Islamic feminists' to describe them, or would that be an anachronism, thus reserving this definition to a specific time period - namely post modern times and hence post Western schools of feminism and their full evolution and development? In Women Claim Islam Cooke argues that this is a strictly postmodern trend and especially of the late 1990s as a part but also a later development of rising Islamism, as well as a reaction against globalized modernity. Does this answer the question why we should only now use the term and not before?

2. If it is naming or self-naming that is being discussed, are there actually Muslim women today who clearly identify themselves as Islamic feminists? One Muslim woman activist and professional expressed her rejection of and opposition to the implication in this term that feminism is the norm and overarching world vision or ideology, with Islam, this great religion, attached as only a subsidiary or one version of it. This view also assumes that Islam is in fact humanistic and just, not in need of any Western school of feminism to teach it about women, and so the term 'feminism' attached to it is both redundant and offensive. Others (including myself) may want to look at it differently: the terms 'Islamic' or 'Muslim' attached to 'feminist' - as well as to gender-sensitive - are a necessary qualification in our present time, to clarify that the concern over women's conditions, rights, and roles is in the context of our cultures and their social, historical, and religious backgrounds. Hence, it qualifies our feminist agenda, drawing lines of demarcation among trends and orientations, not insulting the religion of Islam. Recent Muslim women researchers in this field are either openly using the category 'Islamic feminism' to describe their endeavor ("introducing a feminism which is 'Islamic' in its form and content," see Mai Yamani (ed.). Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives. London: Ithaca Press, 1996), or evading the term 'feminist' altogether and opting for 'Muslim scholar-activists' (see Gisela Webb (ed.), Windows of Faith: Muslim Women Scholar-Activists in North America. N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 2000.) This latter collection of articles is an excellent example of intelligent, up-to-date Islamic and feminist scholarship by Muslim women themselves, who have used this self-definition that is decidedly not Western (or hegemonic) and thus dodges any accusation of influence by Western secular feminism. Ironically, instead of spending time over the debate on the validity or legitimacy of using names and terminology, they actually put the concept into practice. In my opinion, whatever these writers want to call themselves, their well-crafted and astute essays on the implementation and utilization of women's Islamic rights, as well as their views on gender relations in the light of Islamic principles, reveal in fact both a feminist and a religious consciousness in action.

3) What is the role of polarization? Both Rita Gross (Feminism and Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996) and Miriam Cooke present the phenomenon of committed and practicing Muslim women who demonstrate a concern for rights and equality as a surprising new turn in the history of the religion and quite unexpected. In fact, it was Gross who first referred to the concept of Islamic feminism in passing in her chapter on feminism's impact on religious studies worldwide. (See also Kari Borreson and Kari Vogt (eds). Women's Studies of the Christian and Islamic Traditions. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993). Most studies such as these share the common view implied by Cooke when she presents Islam and feminism as indeed mutually exclusive. Despite her attempts to disagree with Haideh Moghissi's (Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis, London: Zed, 1999) view of their definite incompatibility, she still describes the phenomenon not just as a difficult attempt to reconcile two opposing allegiances, but rather achieving victory of one perspective over the other - specifically to champion feminism as a basically secular ideology over and above Islam, a religious faith. In other words, a 'faith position' and a commitment to 'women's rights' are polarized and set in bitter conflict. That's why Cooke's basic definition of Islamic feminism is Muslim women offering a "critique of Islamic history or hermeneutics," with an accentuation on a high-pitched dissatisfaction - if not bitterness - at the religion. This explains her choice of someone like Nawal al-Sa'dawi's literary output for analysis, despite her obvious attitude of bitterness and aggressiveness directed at the religious tradition.

Another area of polarization occurred in a recent talk delivered by Margot Badran at Georgetown University on the subject ("Exploring Islamic Feminism," November 30, 2000). Although I had access only to a summary, a recurrent and accentuated polarity seems to emerge between Islamic and secular feminism as lobbying for completely different demands. In my opinion, it would not serve the general cause of Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern women to highlight the fact that two such orientations are ideologically worlds apart and are to work separately in separate spheres. In agreement with the view of Mervat Hatem expressed in a private conversation, I would like to be able to say that Islamic feminists engaged in reforming religious discourses and practices concerning women are doing a greatly needed service to the rest of activists and feminists, complementing their work in development, civil rights, law reforms, reproductive health, circumcision, violence, discrimination, etc.

4) Is dismissal an issue? In a recent lecture delivered at the American University in Cairo (April 10, 2001), Deniz Kandiyoti was directly asked about Islamic feminism and she quickly dismissed it as an "Arab-centered debate," too "theoretical and textual," as opposed to "living Islam." She also opined that it is better to leave such a debate on the Qur'an and Hadith to religious scholars. I see this as another problematic polarization between a so-called 'textual' Islam and a 'living' Islam. "Islam is what we [i.e. Muslims] do," as Kandiyoti explains. Yet, what people do, they do as a result of deeply-ingrained customs/practices - wrongly or rightly based on what's perceived as Islamically ordained. For such unjust practices to be righted, 'textual' points of reference have to be addressed. Moreover, leaving the issue entirely to unsympathetic religious specialists is exactly the bone of contention here. Today's Muslim women scholars are making themselves the specialists now in order to balance a centuries-long tradition of male interpreters and scholars who had nothing to lose by emphasizing discriminating differences and glossing over egalitarian principles, or neglecting to extend these to wives, daughters, sisters, and women colleagues in the work place.

5) Another important question is whether this is an authentic identity or a strategy? Both Cooke and Badran view Islamic feminism as a speaking position determined by a given context, situation, and purpose of argument, and thus capable of changing alliances easily. Cooke analyzes Mernissi and Sa'dawi in this vein, as changing their perspectives depending on whom they are arguing against and what "rhetorical goal" they are advancing at the time (Cooke 74). This may explain why Cooke strangely considers Nawal al-Sa'dawi, who hastily makes use of a couple of Qur'anic verses or a hadith sometimes just to win an argument, as an Islamic feminist, in spite of Sa'dawi's well-known aversion to all monotheistic religions. While argumentation is the core of successful polemics claimed by Muslim women scholars/activists/ feminists today, one would not exaggerate the view that this methodology is a mere tactic or strategic weapon. This undermines the very premise of this field of study undertaken by women who identify themselves as genuinely committed to Islam - emotionally, culturally, and doctrinally; they view themselves as equal believers and thus take their relationship to Islam very seriously. Any self-respecting Muslim woman views this as a lasting principled position.

6) Finally, what is the link between Islamic feminism and hijab? Can a Muslim woman with a head cover be a feminist? The ever-curious issue of head cover/hijab seems to be the running motif and decisive factor in Elizabeth Fernea's In Search of Islamic Feminism (N.Y.: Double Day, 1998). In fact, the preoccupation with details of Egyptian Muslim women's dress seems to turn into an obsession as pointed out by Rania Abdel Rahman ("The Veil that Conceals yet Reveals," Letters from Memory, 1, June, 1998, 7-9) in her review of Fernea's book. The very negative presentation of "veils so heavy . . . they couldn't even see to walk," and the writer's pronounced impatience and irritability at these clothes ("but why put that dress on at all?") imply the contradiction between that dress and aspects of the "feminist dream," which seems to be an inherently Western dream (Abdel Rahman 9). As Rania also notices, Fernea sees a "world of difference" between the spotted black veil of a Western hat and the veils of Middle Eastern women. Fernea cannot get beyond that different look of hair-covered women. Is this kind of dress, culturally accepted by Muslim societies everywhere, really inimical to the radical spirit of feminism? Can feminist consciousness only exist in Middle Eastern women who look 'modern' and with up-to-date Western stylish clothes?

DEFINITIONS & GENERAL FEATURES
1) Islamic feminist research is undertaken by Muslim women scholars and activists who are not just "critiquing [i.e. attacking or deconstructing] Islamic history and hermeneutics," but are also providing alternatives and seeking solutions inspired by Islamic values. This is done through consciously producing an Islamic discourse that problematizes and addresses gender-justice. In other words, Islamic feminism figures more clearly on the level of knowledge production and discourse, and is research-oriented. Rather than emphasizing negativism towards the religion or simply using it as a temporary rhetorical position, Muslim feminists deal with the Islamic perspective as an encompassing overarching worldview of divine justice, compassion, egalitarianism and liberation from slavery or submission to any being other than God. Another very important Islamic principle that is insisted upon and utilized by Muslim women activists for their advantage is a Muslim woman's right to a direct relationship with Gad with no human mediators. (See Amani Saleh, "Feminist Epistemology: Towards an Islamic Perspective," Women and Civilization Newsletter, 1, Spring 2000, 7-11, as well as Aziza Hibri in Windows of Faith, both attempting to formulate a distinctively Islamic worldview that embraces their gender-awareness). Azza Karam (Women, Islamists and the State: Contemporary Feminisms in Egypt. London: Macmillan Press, 1998) in her study of women Islamists and feminisms in Egypt has defined "Muslim Feminism" as women activists using Islamic sources like the Qur'an and the Sunna "to show that the discourse of equality between men and women is valid, within Islam," since a "feminism that does not justify itself within Islam is bound to be rejected by the rest of society, and is therefore self-defeating" (11). Muslim women use the argument that defending women's rights is part of defending Islam itself against corruption of its own ideals, hence placing feminist demands within the wider context of a religious discussion or reform and countering criticisms of narrow 'womanist' bias, (an accusation often directed at all feminists by unsympathetic male clergy.)

2) Islamic feminist discourse is a Qur'an-centered one that distances itself from the entangled web of fiqh schools as well as existing socio-cultural realities of Muslim societies and their customs and traditions. The main concern is understanding the pure and essential message of Islam and its spirit. This can also be found in the model of the Prophet (PBUH) himself in his very treatment and compassion to his wives, daughters, and women companions, a treatment than cannot be too emphasized. Attention is being paid to instances in early Muslim history and community when women are reported to be extremely outspoken and to reveal what can be described as a feminist/oppositional consciousness (see Omaima Abou Bakr, "Reflections of a Muslim Woman on Gender," on the Islam 21 Project web site at
http://www.islam21.net/pages/keyissues/key2-8.htm, and Mohja Kashef in Windows of Faith).

3) A Qur'an-centered discourse undoubtedly involves re-interpretations of several controversial verses to elicit meanings of equality and gender justice in order to counter the traditional interpretations that highlighted preference and superiority of men over women. It is a matter of emphasis: whereas traditional interpretations of gender verses stressed complementarity of different social roles to justify an imbalanced relationship, Muslim feminists insist on reading these verses only in the light of the overarching, more determining verses of egalitarianism and equal public participation of believers, both men and women. Whereas the traditional perspective will never deny Islamic basic and spiritual equality between men and women, the principle will remain isolated in that sphere never extending to actual practice and application of that egalitarian spirit. Muslim women readers of the Qur'an today are addressing this matter of extending and applying the egalitarian verses to the spheres of family and society. Yamani describes the basic task of organized feminist movements in Muslim societies as "the amelioration of the status of women primarily by the utilization of Islamic rights" (1996, 2). (See also my upcoming study on the history of Qur'anic exegetical discourse of gender verses).

4) Another characteristic of women's Islamic feminist discourse is what I call 'turning the tables' on Muslim men. For the longest time, Muslim women have been subjected to male prescriptive discourses on Islamic rights and wrongs. I think that educated, knowledgeable, and well-equipped Muslim women researchers and scholars today have the tools to take men in Muslim societies to task on whether they adhere closely to Islamic principles, God's injunctions, and the Prophet's orders concerning women and the family. Are they performing their truly Islamic roles in the family, as husbands and fathers and brothers and sons? How should masculinity be understood within an Islamic frame of reference? How were masculinity and male roles understood by interpreters of the Qur'an, especially the numerous verses that clearly address only men in admonishment, threats, and warnings against abuse of power over women? It is high time to begin seriously exploring notions of masculinity in religious writings and place men in the center or as targets of prescriptive discourses . (See Omaima Abou-Bakr, "Men in the Exegetical Discourse of Medieval and Modern Interpreters," Presentation at the Qasim Ameen Conference in Cairo, October 1999.) An example of this type of subversion is a 1992 seminar held in Cairo at the International Institute of Islamic Thought where Heba Ra'uf, a writer, political scientist, and activist, is reported as criticizing men in Muslim societies for not daring to face up to current political authorities, while writing endlessly on women's fitna and seductive dangers as the only corruption to fight against. (Quoted in Lene Kofoed Rasmussen, "Muslim Woman and Intellectual in Twentieth Century Egyptian Public Debate," The Middle East in a Globalized World, (eds.) Utvik & Vikor, 2000). The point is made that men use women in their discourses as scapegoats for their failures in the political public arena.

Omaima Abou Bakr is associate professor in the Department of English at Cairo University, Egypt.

INSIDERS/OUTSIDER-EMIC/ETIC STUDY OF WOMEN AND GENDER IN THE NEW MILLENIUM
by Laura Rice

D
uring autumn 2000, more than 60 participants joined the Association for Middle East Women Studies (AMEWS) in an e-mail discussion, organized by Sherifa Zuhur, that explored socially situated knowledges and identity construction in the context of teaching and research about women and gender in the Middle East. Four panelists - Sondra Hale, Eleanor Doumato, Sherifa Zuhur, and Jennifer Olmsted - posted e-mail presentations, each describing the panelist's personal research or teaching context and exploring a particular instance of the insider/ outsider dynamic. Participants in the discussion had five days in which to comment on the panelist's intervention, followed by a summary statement by the panelist. At MESA in Orlando, the thematic convention, chaired by Amaney Jamal, continued with presentations by Sherifa Zuhur, Jennifer Olmsted, Laura Rice and Cynthia Nelson, followed by a round table discussion involving around 35 more participants. As in most contemporary explorations of identity and difference, the boundary between insider and outsiders was a sight inviting both conceptual instability and mutually structured definitions across it.

Boundaries, while they mark the end of one conceptual territory, signal as well the presence of new terrain, so they are always both delimitations and openings at one and the same time. In the presentations and throughout the larger discussions that evolved on e-mail and in the round table session, the unstable emic/etic border served as a heuristic device used to explore the practice of research and teaching across cultures.

H
ale addresses the differences and similarities in teaching about gender and women in two contexts: gender teaching in the Middle East, and teaching about the Middle East and Muslim women in the US. Her inquiry into the development of Women Studies as it occurred in the "Western" academy and the growth of women's/gender studies in the Middle East suggested that what may be a reasonable practice in one context may be problematic in another. Women's Studies in the US grew out of "modernist notions of emancipation and progress towards an end." Western programs began as "women-centered," based on journeys of personal discovery that involved variations of "feminist process;" its pedagogy combined with Moa Tse Tung style conscious-raising and criticism and self-criticism with the liberatory epistemology of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Hale questioned the appropriateness of importing a "Western feminist agenda of subverting the frame, unsettling the concepts, or blurring of the borders" into teaching situations in the Middle East where gender studies are more society- or community-orientated.

Hale noted that "Women's Studies in the West has become increasingly abstract and separated from community whereas Middle East gender studies may be more derived from community needs. What does this mean for the teaching strategies of the 'insiders/outsiders' or emic/etic approaches in our pedagogies, practice and, theory building?" Would a personalized, emotional, subject and non-authoritarian classroom be antithetical to the respect gender studies seeks to attain in the Middle East? Are techniques that empower the student and minimize or eliminate hierarchy (and thus the professor's authority position) problematic in the Middle East classroom? Hale comments that she was as concerned with the issues of racism as she was with those of class and gender: "[We need] to continue to develop various forms of liberatory pedagogy, but to develop ones that are appropriate/feasible/commendable/desirable for an 'outsider' like me to offer liberatory pedagogical strategies while in the Middle East?" Does "radical pedagogy" travel? Hale asked. Is "teaching as transgression" portable? "How revolutionary can we be when we are teaching other people's children?" "It is dangerous," she concluded, "for us to believe that the ultimate political and pedagogical goal is to raise consciousness about a person or a people's situation without contextualizing the 'condition.' So, if the ultimate goal is the 'emancipation' of women, for example, and we have failed to consider the question of emancipation from what, or the quality of that 'emancipation,' then our consciousness-raising strategies are culturally biased."

F
or historians, Doumato began, the insider vs. external observer is a false dichotomy: "no observer is wholly one or the other, and no observer is without a point of view." Both "outsider" narratives (e.g. Western travelers genres) and "insider" sources (e.g. court testimony) are multiple and may be skewed by legal fictions, proxies and gender bias. "The historian has to go with what there is," Doumato noted, "and there are simply very few narrative sources extant, especially pre- 20th century sources. The best the historian can hope is that all of what there is has been located, read, and weighted in relations to its time and context."

Holding no sources to be neutral, Doumato noted that in her experience, "the written work ultimately stands alone, apart from its authors." Using the example of the "orientalist" lens used by the authors of the 1911 Cairo Conference, she commented "indeed one can read the letters of, say, Eleanor Calverley, who was in Kuwait at the same time, and see the Cairo Conference as her blueprint, but if one only reads her husband's letters, or those of their contemporary Paul Harrison, one hears these authors' depth of knowledge and language facility, their sensitivity to, even empathy with, the people they are writing about…How does 'knowing where these people stand' help me to sift through their writings?" Doumato stated that historians need to focus their attention primarily on the written sources themselves and not the writer because trying to interpret what is written based on the writer's "positionality" presupposes, "first, that one can know what that is, and that people's positions don't change over time, and second, that his/her positionality so skews the writing that the reader must know where the author's coming from in order to decipher it."

Doumato's challenges to the insider/outsider binary generated a lively debate concerning the various ways in which "positionality" is central to intellectual work on women's lives. Among the issues raised were the idea that understanding positionality is crucial for those who lead hyphenated existences (e.g. "American-Muslim-Palestinian"); that historians' focus on the "material" is always framed by research questions, "based on their own training, orientation, and knowledge which differ from one location to another…. [Differences] may not always pertain to the reporter's power, but his/her vista;" that positionality or perspective is also central to the study of Muslim women because Islam is a world view, not just a religion: "Women who do not self-identify with Islam are also outsiders of Islam, even when we call them or they call themselves 'Muslim women.'"

S
peaking of her research in Lebanon, Zuhur noted her struggles with "the center/periphery dilemma or rural/ urban divide." Because the historian who works with oral interviews is "an observer and recorder, and also an interpreter and creator of discourse concerning women," Zuhur pointed out that "one cannot faithfully represent subjects of study unless one enters into dialogue with them." That dialogue sometimes demands a shift of emphasis in accordance "with the respondents' perceptions." In her own research on women in Beka'a valley, Zuhur found that women's lives were much more hybrid than traditional frameworks had recognized: research agendas "often reflect (consciously or unconsciously) a bifurcation of the worlds of women-'pure,' rural, traditional women, supposedly cut off from the globalization process, and representing all that should be transformed according to the proponents of modernity. On the other side, we read about urban women living in cosmopolitan and often hybrid world…If all women are now hybridized and globalized to some common meeting point of their world…the structure of my research impels me to return to the village/ town vs. city divide." This dichotomy is useful not because it is "true," but because interrogating the dichotomy surfaces both new insights and old misconceptions.

Zuhur found that women she interviewed were perceptive about politics, but that it was difficult for them to understand her interest in the gendered aspects of their lives. The most articulate respondents were not more conservative than their urban counterparts. "These women don't see themselves as the 'oppressed' in the language of Hizbollah (although they admire the party) or as the lowest stratum in society. Their air is clean and fresh, their diet and human relations with neighbors are preferable to those of the city poor. Those with the least income or wasta, the political representatives of the district, and those experiencing downward mobility do see themselves as 'neglected' by the central government. In the end, their location in space and history which has simultaneously defined, and been defined by the Shi'a identity tribal roots, and peasant farmer base matters. They are less hybridized and less cosmopolitan than their sisters and cousins in Beirut-but those adjectives do not aid in formulation solutions for improving the quality of their lives."

O
lmsted began a personal note: "Growing up as a US citizen (and a child of European Americans) in Beirut, Lebanon of course had a great influence on my world view and my identity. In my comments I would like to follow up on some of the issues raised earlier, while bringing in the perspective of a 'third culture kid' (or TCK), a label used by some sociologists studying children of 'ex-pats.' While such a label may be somewhat odd, suggesting a third culture, rather than the straddling of two cultures, which might be more accurate, I use it in part because this is the label chose by researcher working in this field…. I consider myself in many ways as an 'outsider' both in the US and the Middle East."

Olmsted returned to Doumato's question about "the value of investing energy into determining the personal background of the author of any particular source." Working in the field of economics where many of her colleagues "still believe that they can carry out 'value free' research," Olmsted focused on the importance of identifying the positionality of an author/ commentator, etc. She then expanded the discussion by noting that "while identifying someone's positionality may be used for various purposes-to provide context or reflection-but also to discredit or challenge someone's view-it can also be an act of empowerment. Her own experience serving as a researcher subject, being interviewed about her experiences as a TCK led to feeling "empowered, rather than marginalized." The researcher, who noted that TCKs had been seen as "abnormal" or traumatized by psychologists, found rather that TCKs often exhibit ability to emphasize, ability to pick up subtle cultural clues that others might miss, ability to be diplomatic.

Olmsted's opening up of a third space in the insider/outsider dynamic led many participants to share their own experiences of and observations about borders. Suad Joseph noted that the idea of the boundary was a hallmark "of western culture, of capitalism, of contractarian liberalism, of rational market, of private property…. Boundaries are everywhere in theses domains-boundaries around cultures, nations, states, institutions, cities, property and ultimately, and most profoundly, around the self. I have come to experience that not only is there nothing natural about boundaries, not only their invention and imposition constructed, in time and place [and thus always shifting], but also that boundaries must always do violence to invent and impose themselves. Whether that violence is symbolic, material, physical, emotional, -- there is a coercive process entailed. The outcomes of boundaries, we have come to accept, or hope, are, in many instances liberatory." Other respondents commented that bi-cultural people are like "double-exposed photographs." Whether or not the ex-pat experience led to increased multicultural awareness and encouraged an opening of mind was hotly debated. Many felt that ex-pat environments replicate colonial and neo-colonial attitudes. Others found that their own third space experience had led them to be more open-minded.

R
ice began by framing the presentation with the fact of her everyday life: "I spend a good part of every year in Tunisia, dividing my time between working with colleagues and at Tunisian universities and living in a rural area where many women my age are not literate: I have learned more from the second context (in which I am an outsider who is an insider by marriage) than in the first (where I am an insider [academic] who is an outsider by nationality). The other part of the year, I teach comparative literature courses in the US, often focusing on gender and international cultural studies."

Given this context, Rice questioned the way women's rights and secularism are linked in the US and perhaps in the larger discourse of human rights, and the ways women's issues can sometimes serve as a smoke screen for other less palatable agendas: "Books like Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire are sometimes seen by liberals as supportive of women's rights in the Middle East. My own reading is that this book is rather nine parts of deceit, a thinly veiled attack on Islamic culture in general. Each chapter begins with a warm heart-felt scene between the journalist Brooks and the locals only to end with some ridiculous or awful revelation about the culture."

While an advocate of global human rights, and secular in her own life, Rice suggested that we need to look more carefully at how the discourse of human rights, based on Enlightenment notions of decontextualized, disembodied reason and embodied secular individuals, creates insider and outsiders, disguised by false universalism of what the French call laicite. Civilizational identities that extend far beyond the boundaries that states set up are central to our lives; looking for "universals" is now less intellectually, politically and emotionally interesting than is understanding the ways the local and the global are articulated. Rice suggested that "as part of the deconstruction of the insider/outsider binary, the articulation of gender with a world that is in some ways 'statist' and in others 'global' should be considered. Perhaps we should interrogate the concept of the 'secular' not merely as it refers to the relation between religion and state, but also as it describes how a society or culture thinks itself and expresses itself. The need is for a discourse of human rights that does not privilege one civilizational ethos while excluding conceptions of those rights. Extremists can act as oppressors, but laicite does it damage, too."

N
elson noted that as an anthropologist interested in biography, she would look at the insider/outsider theme as it applies to the biography. Rather than sticking to a logical, systematic, academic approach, she would approach the world of biography in the spirit of Walt Whitman: "Life is being in and out of the game, both watching and wondering at it." In this context, she began by questioning the title of the session: "Insider/Outsider-Emic/Etic Study of Women and Gender in the New Millennium." She suggested the idea that "emic/etic" and "insider/outsider" were not equivalent conceptual frameworks. In her opinion, emic/etic, metaphors borrowed from the linguistics and put into operation in the theoretical mold of structuralism, referred to how you analyzed things. In her experience researching and writing biography, she found the emic/etic and insider/outsider frameworks were not as useful as the hermeneutic circle which allowed her to describe how we discover ourselves.

Her connection with Doria Shafik illustrated the way various kinds of insider/outsider positions occurred, each as the center of an hermeneutic circle. Nelson's discovery of Doria Shafik involved both 20 years before she became aware of Doria Shafik and the 13/14 years research she did on Shafik. One could say that they met in the interstice called "marginalization." In her time and place, Shafik was displaced in doing something different from other women of her class. For Nelson, a subjective tie of friendship with Shafik's daughters preceded Shafik's becoming an object of research; in fact, it led to it. Telling Nelson "We have been waiting for you," Shafik's daughters made available to her three impressionistic, unpublished, sometimes contradictory memoirs-papers they had not chosen to share with others who had approached them from the position of official researchers. The hermeneutic circle of Shafik's biography expanded out from the moment of Nelson's acquaintance with her daughters, to Shafik's memoirs, to her life (1908-1975), to network of Nelson's colleagues who shared with Shafik the experience of a given society and time.

The 1996 publication of Doria Shafik, Egyptian Feminist: A Woman Apart by Nelson, in English, provides us with another emblematic instance of the insider/outsider dynamic. Nelson found herself facing the problem of writing simultaneously for different audiences. Was she writing for herself, or writing for Doria Shafik? What were the clues of Shafik's intentionality? One might take the issue of language as central, here. She wrote books in both French and Arabic. Nelson is writing in English. Alternatively, there is the issue of voice and genre: Shafik wrote poetry, essays and feminist tracts. What were her alternative voices? What are ours? Who has Doria Shafik become of us? Is she being co-opted as an Arab woman activist and human rights worker in ways she never countenanced?

The discussion following the round table centered on the positionality of the researcher, the definition and context of secularism, the importance of the "reciprocal ethnography," and the examination of the ways established disciplines create and sustain power-based insider/outsider positions. The emic/etic distinction was found useful as a heuristic tool, because it often led to the deconstruction of insider/outsider binary.

Laura Rice is an associate professor of comparative literature in the Department of English at Oregon State University, USA.

Letter to support Iranian Feminist Historian/Lawyer Mehrangiz Kar and other Human Rights activists who were sentenced for participation in an international conference in Berlin. Charges were reduced a few weeks after the publication of this letter.