No spring for Arab women - Interview with Marieme Helie Lucas
A spring without women: Interview with Marieme Helie Lucas
Friday 17 August 2012, by siawi3
- Source : An edited version of this interview was published by FeministIndia
- http://feministsindia.com/no-
Interview by Team FI, August 14, 2012
-Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian feminist, sociologist, political theorist and author known for her work against religious fundamentalism. Helie Lucas was born in Algeria to a ‘family of feminists’ and had been active in the liberation struggle of Algeria. She founded the Women Living Under Muslim Laws international network (WLUML) in 1984. The former international coordinator of WLUML, Helie Lucas also founded Secularism is a Women’s Issue (SIAWI) in 2005.
FI: Women have played a crucial role in the Arab uprising that started in late 2010. After almost year and half, it is being said that women are the biggest losers in this revolution. According to you what has gone wrong?
Nothing went ‘wrong’: it was clear from the start that this ‘revolution’ was neither a socialist one nor a feminist one. In both the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, it was limited to overthrowing the government in place. Although it was initiated by ordinary people who took to the streets for reasons of poverty and hopelessness, in fact it has become a victory of the extreme right political forces that work under the guise of religion.
After the near-eradication of the Left parties/movements and workers’ unions that went on for decades, and were either completely ignored or largely under reported by the international media, the only organized political forces in Tunisia and in Egypt were the religious fundamentalists ones. They took over the protest movement.
It is interesting to note that, contrary to their lack of proper reporting when the Left forces were under attack, the international media did denounce government’s repression against fundamentalist movements: in that sense, they not only fed the world with a very unbalanced political analysis, but they also promoted Far Right religious movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood exclusively as victims of the state, and not as perpetrators of grave violations of the rights of civilians and notably of women’s rights.
As the Muslim Right did previously in other countries such as Iran and Algeria, fundamentalist groups and parties in Egypt and Tunisia manipulated the legitimate discontent that sparked under regimes that did not cater to people’s most basic needs. Certainly, Algeria in the nineties is a very good example of their strategy. We can consider that Algeria was the lab for what is now going on in other countries in the region.
The Tunisian and Egyptian regimes were neither more nor less ‘undemocratic’ than the vast majority of governments in the world today – as is confirmed by the magnitude of the movement of the ‘Indignés’ which, for over a year, has been protesting their own rulers’ policies in many countries in Europe and North America. However the argument of lack of democracy what was broadly used to legitimate overthrowing these governments, regardless of whom and what will replace the existing regimes. It is hard to believe that politicians and journalists the world over celebrated ‘ the people’ who was making a ‘revolution’, without ever probing which were the components the of political forces within ‘the people’’ - conceived of in liberal terms as an atomized mass of individuals -, what political trend was increasingly speaking in its name and what were the changes such forces proposed beyond the overthrowing of the rulers.
This is a political mistake that was denounced by many Algerians who experienced exactly the same steps: a youth revolt in 1988, not initiated by fundamentalist groups but immediately hijacked by them, a demand for new elections as the only way to ensure ‘ democracy’, i.e. fundamentalists’ demand that supposedly religious laws labelled ‘sharia’ be enforced on the whole population. The cancellation of the legislative elections in December 1991 was not the beginning of fundamentalist violence in Algeria as media wrongly reported: violence had been going on since the sixties and increasing with each decade; but it was followed by an even more violent decade of extreme fundamentalist violence on the entire population, that made about 200 000 victims in the nineties: while intellectuals, journalists, artists, were targeted individually and slaughtered, while entire villages were burnt down and eradicated by armed fundamentalists, women were fundamentalists’ preferential target – they were beheaded, burnt, mutilated, tortured, raped, forcibly impregnated in order to produce ‘good Muslims’, and, whether veiled or unveiled, assassinated in large numbers throughout the decade.
This experience of living under fundamentalists’ rule, and the intimate knowledge of their political strategies is the reason why Algerian women saw clearly from the start what was in the making in Tunisia and Egypt. However our analysis and our warning signals to the world remained unheard; moreover, when we pointed at the fundamentalist agenda, we were accused of being some hidden supporters of the old regimes…. There is a need to reflect on democracy as a concept and on elections being the only criteria of evaluation of democracy: if we do not, we will end up celebrating Hitler as the champion of democracy, for the very reason that he was elected by ‘the people’.
The fact is that, in Tunisia and Egypt, ordinary people were in the streets demanding changes and that populist Far Right forces hijacked the movement to their political benefit. They were smart enough not to appear too visibly at the start of the protest; however, they were there indeed, and they had enough cadres and money (which definitely helped in organizing for tents, distribution of food to the protesters, etc…) to control and to give a political content to the initial protest. Both in the case of Tunisia and in the case of Egypt, demands were initially limited to: ‘Enough!’, ‘Get out of here’ that were the main slogans of protesters. In other words, demonstrators demanded a change but were not clear about formulating the exact content of this change in political terms. Legitimate popular struggles and uprisings can pave the way to extreme Right populist parties - in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, to religious fundamentalist parties, i.e. extreme Right working under the guise of religion.
FI:-In countries like Egypt and Tunisia, it is believed that women have in fact enjoyed noteworthy legal rights under the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes. -How true is this?
- Women’s rights activists and secularists worry that the chances of Tunisia’s ruling Islamist Renaissance Party implementing a sharia law in the country is a possibility. In Egypt the quota system that had guaranteed women’s representation in parliament has been revoked by the new government. There are allegations that Muslim Brotherhood dominated parliament may lower age of marriage to 14. Women’s rights activists in the countries like Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia etc who are already struggling with religious conservative leadership are worried that latest developments in the region can have negative impact in their struggle for equal rights.
Do you see a reversal in women’s rights in these countries in the wake of this re-emergence of conservative religious political culture?
Unfortunately, women refuse to see the danger till it is too late. A simple list of the crimes committed by Tunisian fundamentalists between the fall of Benali and the eve of the elections shows what they intended to promote: violent attacks of peaceful women’s demonstrations, sexual assaults during these demonstrations, death threats to secularists, beating of men who drank alcohol in bars, threats on women who went to the beach who were forcibly sent home at gun point, threats on women who were not ‘properly covered’, forbidding legal electoral meetings of the Tunisian Communist Party, attempts at burning of a theatre hall and a TV station that scheduled films they deemed un-Islamic, legal actions in court against secularists for ‘offending Islam’, armed fundamentalist squadrons checking into private homes if there were alcohol in the house, etc…
All this happened BEFORE the elections in Tunisia, before the fundamentalist party was elected. Why worry only now? We should have worried already at that time, and taken action against fundamentalists then and there. Since the elections many more crimes were committed such as forced veiling of women, illegal occupation of Tunis University, forbidding unveiled women teachers to deliver their lecture, etc… What fundamentalists did in Algeria - the nearest country to Tunisia - during the nineties, should have been enough of a warning for Tunisians..
Read the full interview: http://www.siawi.org/
Friday 17 August 2012, by siawi3
- Source : An edited version of this interview was published by FeministIndia
- http://feministsindia.com/no-
Interview by Team FI, August 14, 2012
-Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian feminist, sociologist, political theorist and author known for her work against religious fundamentalism. Helie Lucas was born in Algeria to a ‘family of feminists’ and had been active in the liberation struggle of Algeria. She founded the Women Living Under Muslim Laws international network (WLUML) in 1984. The former international coordinator of WLUML, Helie Lucas also founded Secularism is a Women’s Issue (SIAWI) in 2005.
FI: Women have played a crucial role in the Arab uprising that started in late 2010. After almost year and half, it is being said that women are the biggest losers in this revolution. According to you what has gone wrong?
Nothing went ‘wrong’: it was clear from the start that this ‘revolution’ was neither a socialist one nor a feminist one. In both the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, it was limited to overthrowing the government in place. Although it was initiated by ordinary people who took to the streets for reasons of poverty and hopelessness, in fact it has become a victory of the extreme right political forces that work under the guise of religion.
After the near-eradication of the Left parties/movements and workers’ unions that went on for decades, and were either completely ignored or largely under reported by the international media, the only organized political forces in Tunisia and in Egypt were the religious fundamentalists ones. They took over the protest movement.
It is interesting to note that, contrary to their lack of proper reporting when the Left forces were under attack, the international media did denounce government’s repression against fundamentalist movements: in that sense, they not only fed the world with a very unbalanced political analysis, but they also promoted Far Right religious movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood exclusively as victims of the state, and not as perpetrators of grave violations of the rights of civilians and notably of women’s rights.
As the Muslim Right did previously in other countries such as Iran and Algeria, fundamentalist groups and parties in Egypt and Tunisia manipulated the legitimate discontent that sparked under regimes that did not cater to people’s most basic needs. Certainly, Algeria in the nineties is a very good example of their strategy. We can consider that Algeria was the lab for what is now going on in other countries in the region.
The Tunisian and Egyptian regimes were neither more nor less ‘undemocratic’ than the vast majority of governments in the world today – as is confirmed by the magnitude of the movement of the ‘Indignés’ which, for over a year, has been protesting their own rulers’ policies in many countries in Europe and North America. However the argument of lack of democracy what was broadly used to legitimate overthrowing these governments, regardless of whom and what will replace the existing regimes. It is hard to believe that politicians and journalists the world over celebrated ‘ the people’ who was making a ‘revolution’, without ever probing which were the components the of political forces within ‘the people’’ - conceived of in liberal terms as an atomized mass of individuals -, what political trend was increasingly speaking in its name and what were the changes such forces proposed beyond the overthrowing of the rulers.
This is a political mistake that was denounced by many Algerians who experienced exactly the same steps: a youth revolt in 1988, not initiated by fundamentalist groups but immediately hijacked by them, a demand for new elections as the only way to ensure ‘ democracy’, i.e. fundamentalists’ demand that supposedly religious laws labelled ‘sharia’ be enforced on the whole population. The cancellation of the legislative elections in December 1991 was not the beginning of fundamentalist violence in Algeria as media wrongly reported: violence had been going on since the sixties and increasing with each decade; but it was followed by an even more violent decade of extreme fundamentalist violence on the entire population, that made about 200 000 victims in the nineties: while intellectuals, journalists, artists, were targeted individually and slaughtered, while entire villages were burnt down and eradicated by armed fundamentalists, women were fundamentalists’ preferential target – they were beheaded, burnt, mutilated, tortured, raped, forcibly impregnated in order to produce ‘good Muslims’, and, whether veiled or unveiled, assassinated in large numbers throughout the decade.
This experience of living under fundamentalists’ rule, and the intimate knowledge of their political strategies is the reason why Algerian women saw clearly from the start what was in the making in Tunisia and Egypt. However our analysis and our warning signals to the world remained unheard; moreover, when we pointed at the fundamentalist agenda, we were accused of being some hidden supporters of the old regimes…. There is a need to reflect on democracy as a concept and on elections being the only criteria of evaluation of democracy: if we do not, we will end up celebrating Hitler as the champion of democracy, for the very reason that he was elected by ‘the people’.
The fact is that, in Tunisia and Egypt, ordinary people were in the streets demanding changes and that populist Far Right forces hijacked the movement to their political benefit. They were smart enough not to appear too visibly at the start of the protest; however, they were there indeed, and they had enough cadres and money (which definitely helped in organizing for tents, distribution of food to the protesters, etc…) to control and to give a political content to the initial protest. Both in the case of Tunisia and in the case of Egypt, demands were initially limited to: ‘Enough!’, ‘Get out of here’ that were the main slogans of protesters. In other words, demonstrators demanded a change but were not clear about formulating the exact content of this change in political terms. Legitimate popular struggles and uprisings can pave the way to extreme Right populist parties - in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, to religious fundamentalist parties, i.e. extreme Right working under the guise of religion.
FI:-In countries like Egypt and Tunisia, it is believed that women have in fact enjoyed noteworthy legal rights under the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes. -How true is this?
- Women’s rights activists and secularists worry that the chances of Tunisia’s ruling Islamist Renaissance Party implementing a sharia law in the country is a possibility. In Egypt the quota system that had guaranteed women’s representation in parliament has been revoked by the new government. There are allegations that Muslim Brotherhood dominated parliament may lower age of marriage to 14. Women’s rights activists in the countries like Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia etc who are already struggling with religious conservative leadership are worried that latest developments in the region can have negative impact in their struggle for equal rights.
Do you see a reversal in women’s rights in these countries in the wake of this re-emergence of conservative religious political culture?
Unfortunately, women refuse to see the danger till it is too late. A simple list of the crimes committed by Tunisian fundamentalists between the fall of Benali and the eve of the elections shows what they intended to promote: violent attacks of peaceful women’s demonstrations, sexual assaults during these demonstrations, death threats to secularists, beating of men who drank alcohol in bars, threats on women who went to the beach who were forcibly sent home at gun point, threats on women who were not ‘properly covered’, forbidding legal electoral meetings of the Tunisian Communist Party, attempts at burning of a theatre hall and a TV station that scheduled films they deemed un-Islamic, legal actions in court against secularists for ‘offending Islam’, armed fundamentalist squadrons checking into private homes if there were alcohol in the house, etc…
All this happened BEFORE the elections in Tunisia, before the fundamentalist party was elected. Why worry only now? We should have worried already at that time, and taken action against fundamentalists then and there. Since the elections many more crimes were committed such as forced veiling of women, illegal occupation of Tunis University, forbidding unveiled women teachers to deliver their lecture, etc… What fundamentalists did in Algeria - the nearest country to Tunisia - during the nineties, should have been enough of a warning for Tunisians..
Read the full interview: http://www.siawi.org/
