WHO IS ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI?

Zaynab Al-Ghazali (January 2, 1917 - August 8, 2005) was a prominent Egyptian Islamist and arguably the most famous woman Islamist internationally. She was the founder of the Muslim Women's Association (Jamaa'at al-Sayyidaat al-Muslimaat), and was closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwanul Muslimin).

Her father was an Al-Azhar-educated independent religious teacher and cotton merchant. He encouraged her to become an Islamic leader citing the example of Nusaybah bint Ka'ab al-Maziniyah, a woman fought alongside Muhammad in the Battle of Uhud. For a short time during her teens, she joined the Egyptian Feminist Union only to conclude that "Islam gave women rights in the family granted by no other society.

Women may talk of liberation in Christian society, Jewish society, or pagan society, but in Islamic society it is a grave error to speak of the liberation of women" (Hoffman 1985: 235). At the age of eighteen, she founded the Jamaa'at al-Sayyidaat al-Muslimaat (Muslim Women's Association), which she claimed had a membership of three million throughout the country by the time it was dissolved by government order in 1964.

Hasan Al-Banna, the founder of the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood), invited al-Ghazali to merge her organisation with his, an invitation she refused as she wished to retain automony. However, she did eventually take an oath of personal loyalty to al Banna. (Mahmood 2005: 68) The fact that her organisation was not formally affiliated with the Ikhwan was to prove useful after the Ikhwan was banned, as for a time al Ghazali was able to continue to distribute their literature and host their meetings in her home.

Her weekly lectures to women at the Ibn Tulun Mosque drew a crowd of three thousand, which grew to five thousand during holy months of the year. Besides offering lessons for women, the association published a magazine, maintained an orphanage, offered assistance to poor families, and mediated family disputes. The association also took a political stance, demanding that Egypt be ruled by the Qur'an.

Al Ghazali's own life stands in contradiction to some of her professed beliefs. (Ahmed 1992: 199) Although she wrote that it was a "crime" for a woman to seek a divorce, she made no secret of the fact that she had divorced her first husband because of his discomfort at her public career. Her memoir describes how she told her husband that her oath of loyalty to Hassan al Banna meant that her devotion to the Islamist cause would always come before her marriage, and if ever the two should conflict, the marriage would end:

"If that day comes [when] a clash is apparent between your personal interests and economic activities on the one hand, and my Islamic work on the other, and that I find my married life is standing in the way of Da'wah and the establishment of an Islamic state, then, each of us should go our own way. I cannot ask you today to share with me this struggle, but it is my right on you not to stop me from jihad in the way of Allah. Moreover, you should not ask me about my activities with other Mujahideen, and let trust be full between us. A full trust between a man and a woman, a woman who, at he age of 18, gave her full life to Allah and Da'wah. In the event of any clash between the marriage contract's interest and that of Da'wah, our marriage will end, but Da'wah will always remain rooted in me." (al Ghazali 2006)

In justifying her own exceptionality to her stated belief in a woman's rightful role, al Ghazali described her own childlessness as a "blessing" that would not usually be seen as such, because it freed her to participate in public life.(Hoffman 1988). Her second husband died while she was in prison, having divorced her after government threats to confiscate his property. al Ghazali's family were angered at this perceived disloyalty, but al Ghazali herself remained loyal to him, writing in her memoir that she asked for his photograph to be reinstated in their home when told that it had been removed.

After the assassination of Hasan al-Banna in 1949, Al-Ghazali was instrumental in regrouping the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1960s. Imprisoned for her activities in 1965, she was sentenced to twenty-five year of hard labor but was released under Anwar Sadat's Presidency in 1971. She describes her prison's experience, which included sufferings of many heinous forms of torture, in a book entitled Ayyam min hayyati (Days from my life), published in English under the title Return of the Pharaoh. The "Pharaoh" referred to is President Nasser. al Ghazali depicts herself as enduring torture with strength beyond that of most men, and she attests to both miracles and visions that strengthened her and enabled her to survive.

After her release from prison, al-Ghazali resumed teaching and writing for the revival of Muslim Brotherhood's magazine, Al-Dawah. She was editor of a women's and children's section in Al-Dawah, in which she encouraged women to become educated, but to be obedient to their husbands and stay at home while rearing their children.

Zaynab al-Ghazali was also a prolific writer, contributing regularly to major Islamic journals and magazines on Islamic and women's issues. Although the Islamic movement throughout the Muslim world today has attracted large number of young women, especially since 1970s, Zaynab al-Ghazali stands out thus for as the only woman to distinguish herself as one of its major leaders.

References:
Al Ghazali Return of the Pharaoh The Islamic Foundation 2006
Hoffman, Valerie. "An Islamic Activist: Zaynab alGhazali." In Women and the Family in the Middle East, edited by Elizabeth W. Fernea. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.
Mahmood, Saba Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Princeton University Press 2005