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, 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". 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 (purdah) which was forced upon them by "the man's decision to imprison his wife" and given the chance to become educated.

Books by Qasim Amin

• The Liberation of Women
• The New Woman

See also

• Islamic feminism
• Women and Islam
• Hoda Shaarawi
• Nawal el-Saadawi
• Leila Ahmed

References

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Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 18:25:03 PDT (GMT -0700)
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