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35 عمارات العبور - صلاح سالم - الدور الاول - شقة 3
القاهرة - جمهورية مصر العربية

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ملاحظة : تحجز المواعيد بالدفع مقدما مع السكرتارية
Women & Progress طباعة إرسال إلى صديق
Women & Progress
Tarek Heggy

This essay : values of Progress, Modernity, Democracy, Freedoms, belonging
to humanity, belief in pluralism, cultural tolerance, otherness, culture
of peace, refusal of all forms of fanatism or discrimination. These are
the corner stones of my writings and lectures. These purposes can not be
served unless we all feel most ashamed of the manner "Women" were/are
treated in many societies, where they are/were banned (to a shameful
degree) from most of their human rights. The "Man Dominated Culture" is
disgraceful to mankind. If men apologize to women for 1000 years, this
will be "insufficient". In the shade of above I wrote my article "Women
And Progress" that was first published at "Al- Ahram" on 15th August 2003
(in Arabic). Only recently I found time to translate into English. It
might sound "a given" to some westerns, but in the Middle East (and
elsewhere) we need thousand voices/wills to cause the required crack in
the prevailing medieval masculine culture.

  Part "I".

Although my writings have covered a wide range of subjects since my first
book was published in 1978, the central theme that links them all together
is the issue of progress. The seemingly unrelated topics to which I have
devoted numerous articles in various publications and entire chapters in
my books, ranging from educational development, to the need to adopt
modern management techniques in all fields, to defects in our thought
processes, are all tributaries of a single river flowing in the same
direction: towards defining the elements of progress and removing the
obstacles impeding its achievement.

One of the most important indicators of a society's progress is the status
it accords to women and how they are perceived in the prevailing cultural
climate. Indeed, that is perhaps one of the most accurate ways of
measuring the extent of a society's progress or backwardness. I have for
long championed the cause of equal rights for women, not only because I
firmly believe they are -at least- equal to men in all aspects of life,
but also because a society that subordinates women to men cannot hope to
make any headway on the path to progress. The institutionalized concept of
male superiority, the so-called machismo ethos, works not only against the
interests of women as a group but of society as a whole. In other words,
the worst thing about male chauvinism is not that it is reactionary and
completely out of step with the spirit of the age, or even that it is at
odds with basic human rights, but that it is an insurmountable obstacle in
the way of progress.

I have no doubt whatsoever that male chauvinism grows from the seeds of
male insecurity. A confident man who believes in himself, his intellect,
his abilities and with a strong sense of self does not need to assert his
superiority over women. The experience of dealing with thousands of young
men has taught me that the more modest their capabilities, the more
insistent they are on clinging to the chauvinistic culture that relegates
women to a lower status than men. It is understandable: those who fail at
the public level have nothing left but to assert themselves artificially
in their little private domain.
Strangely enough, the generations that grew up in the fifties and sixties,
like myself, are more progressive on this issue than later generations.
Several factors have contributed to this phenomenon. One is the spread of
reactionary interpretations of religious teachings, another is the more
high-profile role that was coming to be assumed by women. With more and
more women receiving an education and participating in the workforce, the
myth of male superiority was effectively shattered. To compensate for this
blow to their self-esteem, many young men sought refuge in a kind of
mythical victory, invoking their innate superiority on no other grounds
than their gender (how easy it is to find texts promoting the notion of
male superiority, a notion that flies in the face of science, reason,
culture, humanity, and civilization.)

As previously mentioned, many years spent closely observing the attitude
to women among the men I worked with confirmed the existence of an inverse
relationship between a man's lack of self-confidence and his willingness
to accept that women are equal to him in all respects, and that, indeed,
in some respects they rank higher. For if women are men's equals as human
beings, their value surpasses that of men in certain areas, notably as
mothers, the first teachers of humankind.

Some of the proponents of the male-superiority theory use specious
arguments to back their claim that women are somehow inferior to men,
often citing religious texts to justify their position. But there are
always other texts that assert the full humanity of women and the equality
of both sexes. At the end of the day, any text, even if it is divine,
requires a human agency to interpret it, and the real test is how the mind
elects to deal with it. Thus the source for the notion of male superiority
is not, as some people claim, religion, but the stages of human history in
general and of tribal/Bedouin history in particular when civilization and
humanistic values were at a low ebb. There is no greater proof that the
issue has nothing to do with religion than that none of the proponents of
this chauvinistic approach care to underscore some of the aspects of the
first marriage entered into by the prophet of Islam. Not only was it
exemplary in terms of the equal humanity of both partners, but in many
other aspects, like the wife having the right of divorce and the husband
not taking a second wife. But the reactionary chauvinists choose not to
see these examples or not to bring them to light, as if they never were.

The first person in history to receive the Nobel Prize more than once was
Madam Curie. That alone is enough to silence those who claim men are
superior to women, and it is far from being the only instance of public
recognition of a woman's excellent achievements. But diehard male
chauvinists dismiss the argument that brilliant women like Madame Curie,
who are light years ahead of them in intelligence, knowledge and success,
testify to the fallacy of the male superiority theory, and claim that such
women are exceptions that confirm the rule. In fact, the only reason women
were not allowed to realize their full potential earlier is that for
centuries they were subjugated by men, who then claimed they were unfit to
take part in, let alone win, the race. My experience as the CEO of a giant
multinational corporation employing thousands of men and women proved to
me not only that male staff members were in no way superior to their
female colleagues, either in education, performance, management or
leadership qualities, but that, if anything, the opposite was true.
Possibly because they were driven by a sense of challenge and the desire
to prove themselves, women often proved to be superior in many ways.

Last year, the first female judge was appointed to Egypt's Supreme
Constitutional Court. This is an important step in the right direction,
but needs to be followed up. The appointment of women to all levels of the
judicial system is the only way to end what is an affront to the norms of
civilized behaviour. If we start the process now, in twenty years' time we
can have a judicial system comprised of 50% women. This is a natural state
of affairs that should prevail in all aspects of life. A society that
restricts important positions to men uses up only half its potential in
the way of intelligence, performance, productivity and education; it is a
society running on half steam. Not surprisingly, a society that does not
make full use of all its assets remains in a state of underdevelopment,
for how can a person run on one foot?

Women's organizations have worked and continue to work tirelessly to
promote the status of women in society. Yet they are required to do even
more, to set in place a comprehensive plan designed to put an end to the
reactionary male chauvinist culture dominating our society - in the
family, in education, in religious institutions and in the media. A
campaign should be launched to drive home the point that the only source
of a man's blind belief in his innate superiority over the opposite sex is
a tremendous lack of self-confidence. Free people like to deal with free
people and the opposite is true. The only men I hear propounding
outlandish theories about their superiority over women and the inability
of women to hold leadership positions are frustrated men who are
themselves devoid of any qualities of leadership or elements of
superiority.

Any society that views women as unequal to men contrives to find
references and 'evidence' to support its perception, although the attitude
has no religious or legal basis, but is a purely cultural phenomenon. It
follows that the more developed a society's educational/cultural
environment, the less inclined its members are to subscribe to the
primitive belief that a person's worth is determined by gender. In a
developed society, people no longer need to ask a question that is
reactionary by its very nature, namely, are women equal to men? There are
clear examples that prove that the issue in its entirety is a cultural
one. Despite the existence of Qur'anic texts enjoining men to release a
wife who no longer wishes to continue the marital relationship, and
prohibiting them from keeping her against her will just to hurt her, the
legal system has for many years provided men with a legal device that
allows them to do the exact opposite: the infamous beit el ta'a, whose
only purpose is to enable a man to hold his wife against her will, and to
hurt her, both psychologically and financially. This is a flagrant example
that epitomizes the backward attitudes prevailing today, in total
disregard of several sources that could have been interpreted
progressively in the context of a more enlightened cultural environment.
Although the system of beit el ta'a was a disgraceful legal, social, and
cultural travesty, when the government enacted the khul'a law, empowering
women to exercise a human right that no fair-minded person can oppose, it
stuck in the throats of thousands of our men. How could the law deprive
them of a tool of brutal injustice that was in their hands? If they had a
reasonable amount of self-confidence, this long overdue legal development,
which represents a very important step forward, would not have bothered
them at all. One can only wonder how a man who wants the law to help him
keep his wife locked in a marriage against her will can reconcile his
attitude with such values as manliness, chivalry and honour. The long and
glorious history of Arab male chivalry, decency and pride is rendered
meaningless when one man keeps his wife in a marital relationship which
she does not want. The issue is also indicative of a state of cultural rot
when thousands of young men and women are completely opposed to the idea
of granting women the right to divorce, even though it was a right held by
the first wife of the prophet himself.

One of the most shocking aspects of the male supremacist mentality that
has taken hold in some societies is that it is not, as might have been
supposed, confined to the male segment of the population. Although men are
its source and beneficiaries, the myth is embraced wholeheartedly by many
girls and women, who raise their children to accept without question
propositions that run counter to all contemporary values of progress,
science and civilization.

The issue is addressed in greater detail in my forthcoming book, currently
being prepared for publication. Entitled The Tragedy of Women in our
Contemporary Reality, it talks of the impossibility of liberating women
from the yoke of the male supremacist culture, which is a form of slavery,
unless women themselves are at the vanguard of a movement to change
societal attitudes in line with the requirements of the age, to replace
the reactionary view of women as inferior beings with a view that accepts
them as equal to men in all respects. More, they should promote the notion
that although they constitute half the population, their actual value, as
mothers, is far greater than their numerical weight. It is tragic that in
this day and age, when the advanced world is concerned with knowledge,
development, civil liberties and human rights, we should still be asking
the shameful question: Are women equal to men?




                        Part (II).


A writer I hold in high esteem has reproached me for addressing the issue
of women’s rights from the perspective of progress rather than of human
rights. Actually, my position on the issue of gender equality is informed
by a conviction that both aspects are equally important. I have always
advocated the need to grant women full equality with men from both
perspectives: as a prerequisite for society’s progress and as a basic
human right. The two aspects are not mutually exclusive but complement one
another.

There can be no doubt that the Khula’a law, which allows a woman to
unilaterally repudiate a marriage, represents an important step forward.
But while we applaud its enactment, we must be aware that it will remain
vulnerable unless legal and constitutional guarantees are put in place to
foil attempts by reactionary forces to have it repealed. Nor should our
forward drive stop there. To sustain the momentum, more steps need to be
taken. For example, a provision should be included in the marriage
contract investing the wife with the right to obtain a divorce for
prejudice, whether material or moral. More generally, it is essential to
promote a cultural climate conducive to the adoption of a standard
marriage contract drafted along the lines of the one entered into by the
Prophet Mohamed and his first wife, Khadija bint Khuweilad, which
stipulated that she could terminate the contract at any time and that he
would not take a second wife.

Another equally important step forward has been the appointment of the
first female judge to Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court. But again our
appreciation for what is undoubtedly a commendable, if long overdue,
development should not blind us to the fact that it is only a small dent
in the armour of a strong patriarchal culture. The Ministry of Justice
needs to sustain this forward momentum by appointing at least 25% of
deputy public prosecutors from among women. It is only in this way, and
not by means of a decision from on high, that it can ensure a strong
presence for women throughout the judicial system.

It is not only the judicial system that needs to open its doors to women.
The executive branch is required to put a programme in place aimed at
appointing a large number of women as governors, deputy governors,
university presidents, faculty deans and city council heads, in short, to
all the public posts from which they are still excluded. In the absence of
a concerted effort in that direction, proponents of the male superiority
theory and other reactionary forces will have the opportunity to wipe out
the progressive steps recently taken to enhance the status of women.
Placing these forces before a fait accompli is the only way to prevent the
cultural setback our society would suffer if the Khula’a law is repealed
and the appointment of women to prominent positions is challenged.

Those who are today expounding reactionary ideas in the name of religion
are worthy successors of those who supported King Fouad in the nineteen
twenties in his bid for the Islamic Caliphate and who, in 1937, wanted his
son Farouk to be crowned in Al-Azhar not in Parliament. They also uphold
the legacy of those who attributed socialism to Islam in the nineteen
sixties only to say the exact opposite a few years later. They are
reminiscent too of those who, after years of telling us that war with
Israel was a religious duty for Moslems, suddenly decided in the seventies
that Islam enjoined us to make peace with that country, invoking a
religious text to support their new pacifism: “If they lean towards peace,
so too should you.” They are the same people who invoked religion to
justify the infamous practice of breaking the will of recalcitrant wives
by locking them up in the so-called ‘house of obedience, beit el ta’a,
then reversed their position.

To these people we say: we know as much about Islamic jurisprudence as you
do, and one of the first things we learnt is that it is defined as the
extrapolation of judicial rulings from available legal proof. In other
words, through a process of deductive reasoning that involves a human
agency. This was best expressed by the great Islamic jurist Abu Hanifa in
his description of Islamic jurisprudence as “a science of opinions, so
that if someone comes forward with a better opinion we accept it.” Abu
Hanifa accepted just over a hundred of the Prophet’s Hadiths as apostolic
precepts, while Ahmed ibn-Hanbal accepted hundreds of thousands. Moreover,
Abu Hanifa, known as the Supreme Imam, refused to base judicial rulings on
Hadiths ascribed to just one source. The conclusion to be drawn from a
thorough reading of the thousands of reference works on Islamic
jurisprudence is that it is a human science that was initially established
by great thinkers. These were followed by the strict traditionalists who
spurned deductive reasoning altogether and insisted on a dogmatic
adherence to Scripture. With their limited knowledge and lack of
intellectual abilities, these so-called ‘expositers’ invested the purely
human field of Islamic jurisprudence with a divine character.

The time has come to break the institutionalized concept of male
superiority that colours the general attitude to women in our society. To
that end, measures must be taken to safeguard the steps already taken in
that direction and to prevent anyone in future from engineering a cultural
setback. For, at the end of the day, the notion that men are innately
superior to women is deeply entrenched in the cultural tissue of society.
It is only by recognizing the existence of an organic link between
people’s cultural formation and the beliefs they hold that we can
understand and properly address the mentality that seeks to keep women at
the same lowly status to which they have been relegated throughout much of
our history. The use of religion to justify this view is a political cover
for fossilized societal attitudes deriving from four sources: Bedouin
customs, medieval values and a patriarchal culture that is deeply rooted
in tribal society. What can we expect of men who have drunk deeply from
these sources and who, moreover, have never drunk from the well of
universal human culture, men whose inability to master the linguistic
tools of the Renaissance keeps them isolated from the great masterpieces
of human creativity?

This cultural insularity makes the absence of objectivity on the issue of
women’s rights absolute. We are here before revisionism coupled with
primitiveness coloured by a tribal mentality and covered with a layer of
cultural isolation from the masterpieces of universal human culture. The
situation is rendered even more intractable by the fact that men are
clinging to the myth of their superiority over women out of a tremendous
lack of self-confidence, a sense that they must at all costs defend
themselves against what they see as a challenge to their supremacy.

 ** this essay was published widely in Europe, North America, Australia &
in a number of ME countries. To read its French version that was
published by many papers in France & in Canada you may like to click on
http://www.tarek-heggy.com/French-essays-main.htm


------------------------------------------------------------------
Tarek Heggy AUTHOR ON THE NET.


BIOGRAPHY :

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarek_Heggy (Bio in French).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarek_Heggy (Bio in English).

http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B7%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%82_%D8%AD%D8%AC%D9%8A
(Bio in Arabic).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARTICLES :

Examples of Tarek Heggy's writings in French :
http://www.tarek-heggy.com/French-essays-main.htm
Examples of Tarek Heggy's writings in English  :
http://www.tarek-heggy.com/English-essays-main.htm
Examplea of Tarek Heggy's writings in Italian  :
http://www.tarek-heggy.com/Italian_main.htm
Examples of Tarek Heggy's writings in Arabic :
http://www.ahewar.org/m.asp?i=2295
Examples of Tarek Heggy's writings in Hebrew   :
http://www.tarek-heggy.com/hebrew_main.htm
Examples of Tarek Heggy's writings in Russian  :
http://www.tarek-heggy.com/russion_main.htm

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tarek Heggy's TV interviews :

http://www.tarek-heggy-interviews.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=tarek%20heggy&hl=en&rls=gm&sourceid=gmail&output=search&tbs=vid:1&tbo=1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
OTHER ACIVITIES :

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22tarek+heggy%22&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8(Quotations).

http://cjs.utoronto.ca/awards/75 (Tarek Heggy's scholarship for MA & Ph.D in
Comparative Religions, Toronto university).


http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3459131.html (an
article on TH's ideas at the Hoover's institution "policy review").

http://www.tarek-heggy.com/photo-gallery.htm  (Photos)


http://www.tarek-heggy.com(Personal website).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Though Tarek Heggy's archives contain more than 250 interviews that were
conducted during the past 25 years, it is thought that these were the best
two interviews :  http://www.tarek-heggy.com/Elaf.htm +
http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32851 .
As far as Tarek Heggy's TV interviews, it is thought that the best of his
interviews are the collection that could be viewed via :
http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32851
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