The Muslim Women’s Association was taken from alGhazali’s hands in 1965 and merged with a rival association of the same name founded by a former member of her group. At that time she supported the Iranian Revolution, but in a later interview (13 September 1988) she said that both the Shiism of the regime and the tactics of violence against its citizens had led her to conclude that it was not really an Islamic state. She defined the Muslim Brotherhood as the association of all Muslims and said that Muslims who did not belong to it were deficient, although she did not go so far as to call them unbelievers. Later, however, she justified the threat of violence against unbelievers in order to bring them forcibly “from darkness to light,” comparing such tactics to snatching poison from the hands of a child (interview with the author, June 1981). In her book she condemns tactics of murder, torture, and terrorism and denies that the Muslim Brotherhood wanted to usurp power (p. Nonetheless, she denies that the Muslim Brotherhood intended to assassinate Nasser, for “killing the unjust ruler does not do away with the problem” of a society that needs to be entirely reeducated in Islamic values. She believes that the superpowers were involved in singling her out to Nasser as a threat, and indeed she affirms that Islam’s mission means the annihilation of the power of the United States and the Soviet Union (p. She sees herself as the object of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s personal hatred, for she and her colleague `Abd alFattah Isma’il “robbed” him of the generation that had been raised on his propaganda (p. She 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.
She describes her prison experiences, which included suffering many heinous forms of torture, in a book entitled Ayydm min hayati (Days from My Life Cairo and Beirut, 1977). Imprisoned for her activities in 1965, she was sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor but was released under Anwar el-Sadat’s presidency in 1971. During the 1950s the Muslim Women’s Association cooperated with the Muslim Sisters to provide for families who had lost wealth and family members as a result of Nasser’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.Īl-Ghazali was instrumental in regrouping the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1960s. He accepted her oath and said that the Muslim Women’s Association could remain independent. She refused until 1949, shortly before al-Banna’s assassination, when, sensing that it was critical for all Muslims to unite behind al-Banna’s leadership, she gave him her oath of allegiance and offered him her association. The similar goals of the Muslim Brotherhood were noted by its founder, Hasan al-Banna’, who requested that al-Ghazali’s association merge with the Muslim Sisters, the women’s branch of his organization. The association also took a political stance, demanding that Egypt be ruled by the Qur’an. Besides offering lessons for women, the association published a magazine, maintained an orphanage, offered assistance to poor families, and mediated family disputes. Her weekly lectures to women at the Ibn Tulun Mosque drew a crowd of three thousand, which grew to five thousand during the holy months of the year (interview with the author, 13 September 1988). At the age of eighteen she founded the Jama’at al-Sayyidat al-Muslimat (Muslim Women’s Association), which, she claims, had a membership of three million throughout the country by the time it was dissolved by government order in 1964. Although for a short time she joined Huda Sha’rawi’s Egyptian Feminist Union, she came to see this as a mistaken path for women, believing that women’s rights were guaranteed in Islam.
Her father encouraged her to become an Islamic leader, citing the example of Nusaybah bint Ka’b alMaziniyah, a woman who fought alongside the Prophet in the Battle of Uhud. The daughter of an al-Azhar-educated independent religious teacher and cotton merchant, she was privately tutored in Islamic studies in the home in addition to attending public school through the secondary level, and she obtained certificates in hadith, preaching, and Qur’anic exegesis. 1917), prominent writer and teacher of the Muslim Brotherhood, founder of the Muslim Women’s Association (1936-1964).
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