Islamist discourses

The Islamist discourse of the attack on the women’s movement emerged from a larger Islamist literature, with particular features from Islamism in Palestine (Sh'hada 1999: 51) The main document of the movement spearheading the Islamist attack was a pamphlet entitled ‘The Arab Woman and the Conspiracy of the Secular Women’.

The booklet used the common formula of labelling the women’s movement as an arm of the American and European conspiracy to destroy Islamic civilization. As Hammami and Johnson note, the women’s movement, along with leftists and secularists in general, are termed dissemblers or hypocrites (munafiquun) - people who are most dangerous because they are seemingly part of the social fabric but are actually playing the role of destroying it from within. Palestine is seen as the target of many Western conspiracies, which it was able to withstand due to the strength of social and familial ties (al-Hoda in Hammami and Johnson 1999: 333). These ties are precisely what the women’s movement are trying to destroy through the model parliament. The writers quote Khader’s book extensively, as well as other published material by the parliament. The message of immorality and Western corruption was disseminated in Friday sermons by imams sympathetic to Hamas throughout the West Bank. In Gaza, the public campaign against the parliament was much more muted, reflecting the main division within the Hamas leadership, as well as the fact that mosques in Gaza are more closely controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

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Source: Welchman Lynn. Women's Rights and Islamic Family Law: Perspectives on Reform. Zed Books,2004. — 328 p.. 2004

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Islamist discourses

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