Qasim Amin
Qasim Amin has been historically viewed as one of the Arab world's "first feminists", although he joined the discourse on women's rights quite late in its development,[4] and his "feminism" has been the subject of scholarly controversy.
Amin was a philosopher, a reformer, and a judge, besides being a member of Egypt's aristocratic class, and a central figure in the Nahda movement.
[6][5][7] Greatly influenced by the works of Darwin, Amin is quoted as saying: "If Egyptians did not modernize along European lines and if they were unable to compete successfully in the struggle for survival they would be eliminated".
[11] He believed that Egyptian women were the backbone of a strong nationalistic people and, therefore, their roles in society should drastically change to better the nation.
Qasim's father settled in Egypt and became the commander of Khedive Isma'il Pasha's army; he also held large feudal estates in both Alexandria and Diyarbekir.
[20] After his accomplishment in France, Amin became a part of the British Empire's civil servant class and, in 1885, he was appointed a jurist in the Mixed Courts, which had been created ten years earlier.
[27] Amin became a central figure of the Nahda movement that achieved prominence in Egypt during a period of "feminist consciousness" in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
[28] Abduh called for all Muslims to unite, to recognise the true message sent by Allah which gave women equal status, and to resist Western imperialism.
Amin accepted Abduh's philosophies as he too believed the traditionalists had created an inferior society by not following true Islamic laws.
Like Abduh, Amin advocated the right of females in society, and rejected the cultural values that kept Egyptian women in submission.
[29] To answer the conservatives who argued that abolition of the veil would have an influence on women's purity, Amin replied not from the perspective of gender equality but from the standpoint of following the superior Western civilization.
He wrote: "Do Egyptians imagine that the men of Europe, who have attained such completeness of intellect and feeling that they were able to discover the force of steam and electricity...these souls that daily risk their lives in the pursuit of knowledge and honour above the pleasure of life, ... these intellects and these souls that we so admire, could possibly fail to know the means of safeguarding woman and preserving her purity?
"[6] Some contemporary feminist scholars, notably Leila Ahmed, have challenged Amin's status as the supposed "father of Egyptian feminism".
Ahmed points out that in the gender-segregated society of the time, Amin could have had very little contact with Egyptian women other than immediate family, servants, and possibly prostitutes.
Amin believed that Egyptian women were denied their Quranic rights to handle their own business affairs and marry and divorce freely.
When women were enslaved in the home, without a voice and without an education, they tended to spend their time wastefully and bring forth children that would grow to be lazy, ignorant, and mistrustful.
Furthermore, Leila Ahmed, a novelist and reformer, suggests in her book Women and Gender in Islam that Amin's attempt to discredit the veil as a reason for Egyptian weakness is clearly a Western view.
[36] In addition, history professor, Mona Russell further challenges Amin's description of the new woman saying that it was "one of the fruits of modern society."
