Qasim Amin

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Qasim Amin (1863-1908) was an Egyptian jurist and one of the founders of the Egyptian National Movement and Cairo University. Born to an upper Egyptian mother and an Ottoman father who had served as an administrator in Kurdistan then Egypt^[1], Amin is perhaps most noted as an early advocate of women's rights in Egyptian society.

Amin pointed out the plight of aristocratic Egyptian women who could be kept as a "prisoner in her own house and worse off than a slave".^[2] He made this criticism from a basis of Islamic scholarship and said that women should develop intellectually in order to be competent to bring up the nation's children. This would happen only if they were freed from the seclusion which was forced upon them by "the man's decision to imprison his wife" and given the chance to become educated.^[3]

[edit] Books by Qasim Amin

• The Liberation of Women
• The New Woman

[edit] See also

• Islamic feminism
• Huda Shaarawi
• Nawal el-Saadawi
• Leila Ahmed

[edit] References

1 ↑  Amin, Qasim. The Liberation of Women: Two Documents in the History of Egyptian feminism. Tr. Samiha Sidhom Peterson. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000, p. xi.

3 ↑  Qasim Amin by Ted Thornton, from History of the Middle East Database, retrieved 29 December 2004 from http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/qasim_amin.htm

4 ↑  A Century After Qasim Amin: Fictive Kinship and Historical Uses of “Tahrir al-Mara '”, Malek Abisaab and Rula Jurdi Abisaab, Al Jadid, Vol. 6, no. 32 (Summer 2000), retrieved 29 December 2004 from http://www.aljadid.com/features/ACenturyAfterQasimAmin.html.