Queen Hatshepsut

Did you know the editor of women in Egypt

Qassem Amin

(1863-1908) agreed that his personality and his emotional and intellectual life were the result of his influence on his environment, Egyptian environment, and its natural, social and cultural characteristics, as well as on the environment and the French environment in which he lived from 1881 to 1885. Strong faith, a strong culture teacher and an Egyptian conscience, but a European thinker as well.

Qasim Amin and Egypt suffered the consequences of their political defeat by the British occupation in 1882, but they also lived in the throes of moral renaissance and religious, political and cultural renewal movements, led by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Mohammad Abdo and Saad Zaghloul. Amin was a law student when he approached the Jamal al-Din al-Afghani circle and his intellectual school, which flourished in Egypt. The reformist Afghan project was the slogan "Islam in the face of colonialism abroad and oppression at home" and "Egypt for the Egyptians" and thus was the spiritual father of the Egyptian National Party. Qasim Amin Mohammed Abdo also met and became his own interpreter when he was exiled to Paris. Thus, Qasim Amin traveled to Europe and was influenced by this Egyptian intellectual structure, its symbols and its call for social and religious reform. In France, Qasim Amin had to be influenced by the thought of her great revolution, as well as by the 1830-1848 and 1870 revolutions and principles, especially the principle of freedom, which met with its sanctification and defense of freedom.

His life enabled the French society to monitor its behavior, values, social relations and institutions, although those who dated his life agreed in what they considered to be one of the characteristics of his personality and personality. He was a shy and shy person, a character that led some to believe that this nature may have prevented him from integrating into this society and entering into relations A document with him and the assimilation of his lifestyle and behavior and habits, which made him more conservative in the evaluation of the phenomena and relations of this community and habits, even from a character like Rafaa Tahtawi, who preceded him to France in 55 years, and grew up in a Azhar environment and yet was more receptive to the customs and values ​​of the French, This is what explains the criticism and sharp criticism in some of the positions that Qasim Amin gave to the behavior and values ​​of French society when he wrote his book "The Egyptians", which he established during his stay in Paris in 1894 and his books on national and religious motives in response to a book written by a French nobleman, Duke of Dakar is "Egypt and the Egyptians" , And its implications for the Egyptian society and its relations and about Islam as a doctrine that directs its behavior. The contemplator of the spirit in which Qasim Amin wrote his response and his defense of the Egyptians and their Islamic religion demonstrates, on the one hand, his strong sensitivity and passion, and on the other hand his deep sensitivity to his Egyptian environment and his strong Muslim faith. However, Kassem Amin's defense of his society did not mean that he was unaware of the weaknesses in his social and political construction, which would develop and crystallize when he wrote his book, which will be associated with his name as a thinker and social reformer. .

In fact, if Raida Kassem Amin intellectual and social was linked to his book «Women's Liberation», which will be subjected to criticism and attack from several levels and fronts, and that this book will be an intellectual development of the stage where the «Egyptians», that «the liberation of women» came in favor and criticism of what The book "Egyptians" includes views and attitudes about women and their main issues: Hijab, society, separation, divorce, polygamy, as well as its vision of French society, values ​​and customs, and Arab civilization and civilization in general. In the Egyptians, Kassem Amin did not see in Egyptian society any discrimination between men and women in regard to mixing. As long as men are not allowed to mix in women's society, it is normal for this prohibition to apply to women. It also defends the principles of "noble virtue" and upholds the principles of married life and its foundations in the eastern society in exchange for the disintegration of European family and marital life. Qassem Amin criticizes the Western "Egyptians" in spite of what may appear to be manifestations of urbanization and progress that startle some at first, but soon turn into disgust at the manifestations of moral decomposition from the eastern perspective. And compares the achievements of Western civilization in the advances in inventions, and its failure to come out of "reformers" and broadcast virtue, and it is forgotten that it neglected to raise hearts and destroyed old beliefs, and beautiful dreams that not only delight life, but also Tmrh fancy and curb desires, Which claimed that the sky is empty and that the earth is the only paradise possible and that man comes from the monkey and that wisdom means to satisfy desires.

However, Kassem Amin's theories are clear that they were reviewed and developed five years after the emergence of the "Egyptians". In contrast to his defense of the headscarf in its broad sense, which includes women's exclusion from the home and their lack of mixing with men, we find it in the "liberation of women" which opposes it strongly and enumerates its disadvantages for women and their physical, psychological, mental and moral health. After he attacked Western civilization and its manifestations and relations of moral and social decomposition, we find it in the "liberation of women" does not find a way to treat the diseases of Egyptian society and the East of the dependence and inability and lack of ambition and social movement, but "raise our children to know the affairs of Western civilization and stand on Its origins and branches and their effects, considering that it is impossible to be reformed in our situation if

He was not founded on modern science. Qasim Amin refutes the views of those who acknowledge the progress of European civilization in science and industry, but they say that it is corrupt and harmful to morals and ethics and that it carries and transmits corruption in every place it entered, a view that Qasim Amin said in the Egyptians. But here he refutes this belief, and the statement that we are superior to Westerners in literature, behavior and education is like what mothers wish to enlighten their children. He goes on to realize that he is not aware of what the Europeans achieved in the field of ethics and behavior, but rather of "mixing them up and testing them in the face of their affairs and in their own countries, even to stop their status of literary characteristics, and despite the recognition of the manifestations of corruption in the strata of European society - especially the lower and upper - but that did not weaken the virtues Which is the cornerstone of nation-building.

In the face of this contradiction or contradiction, we find no explanation except in the development of Qasim Amin. It is important here to call upon the character of Qasim Amin and his sensitivity and emotional depth, as well as the depth of his religious faith, which made him feel the personal insult of criticism and defamation of the French Duke to his community and religious faith, which led him to get fever. This psychological and mental state under which Qasim Amin wrote his response to the French duke justifies the claim that he wrote for the national and religious diet, and that in defending his society against the accusations against him, he was not unaware of the weaknesses and shortcomings in Egyptian social life.