Egypt Muslim Sisters rise with conservative vision

Women's rights have sprung to the forefront of the debate in Egypt as members of an Islamist-dominated assembly wrestle over the writing of a new constitution for the country. The power of Islamists, who dominated parliament elections last winter and who seized the presidency with the election this year of the Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi, has worried secular and liberal Egyptians who fear they will restrict rights of women and minorities.

The women of the Brotherhood say the fundamentalist group is doing more than any other political movement in Egypt to promote women in a political scene where men have always held a near total monopoly. Confident and articulate, the women say they are pushing for a greater voice within the Brotherhood itself and its political party, the Freedom and Justice Party, where the leadership is entirely male.

The number of women in prominent positions in Egyptian politics remains tiny, as it was under the ousted secular president, Hosni Mubarak. But in the new Egypt, if a woman does hold a high post, she's most likely a member of an Islamist group. Morsi has appointed three women — two of them Islamists — to his 21-member team of advisers and aides. Of the six women on the 100-member assembly writing the constitution, three are Brotherhood members.

Their vision is a world apart from that of liberal women's rights activists, who fear that Islamist women in power will only carry out the Brotherhood agenda of implementing its conservative interpretation of Islamic law.

Azza el-Garf, one of the Brotherhood women on the constitution-writing panel, said the "first" role of women in Egypt is "inside the family, as a wife and mother," while politics or work comes second. "Women are responsible for raising the new generation ... this means the future of Egypt is in our hands," she told The Associated Press.

El-Garf, a 47-year-old mother of seven, said that a woman's role in her family need not contradict with her participation in politics, saying that she balances these two responsibilities. El-Garf joined the Brotherhood when she was 15 and has done social work and community organizing for the group.

Secular feminists, she argues, are out of step with Muslim-majority Egypt's conservative society.

"We speak on behalf of the street," said el-Garf, who like most Egyptian Muslim women wears a head scarf. "Egyptian people are very religious, devout people. If (the liberals) continue to separate religion from normal life, people will not listen to them."

El-Garf was one of three women from the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party elected to the first parliament formed after the revolution, which had fewer than a dozen female lawmakers among its nearly 500 members. The body has since been dissolved, but she plans to run in new parliamentary elections to take place once a new constitution is ratified.

Islamists who make up the majority on the constitution-writing assembly are racing to try to finish the document in the coming weeks to put it to a referendum. One of the biggest fights is over an Islamist-backed clause that would call for equality between men and women but only if it does not contradict Islamic law, or Shariah. Liberals say that condition will allow influential ultraconservatives to severely restrict women's rights. A seventh woman who was on the assembly — Manal el-Tibi, a non-Islamist activist — resigned in September in protest over that and other articles concerning women.