Neither could Cromer’s colonial policies in Egypt, which were aimed at developing the country’s economy no further than as a supplier of raw materials for factories based in England, be described as advancing women’s rights. Because he believed that government-subsidized education could foster nationalism, Cromer instituted school tuition fees, even though education was previously provided at government expense. The result: in 1881, the year before the British occupation began, 70 percent of Egyptian students received government assistance for tuition and other expenses. Ten years later, 73 percent of students received nothing. This severely curtailed educational opportunities for girls as well as boys.²⁴

British occupation denied women opportunities for education on another front. Before British rule, Egyptian women had been offered equal medical training with men at the School for Hakimas. But the British limited women’s training to midwifery. Once again, Cromer claimed cultural superiority: "I am aware that in exceptional cases women like to be treated by female doctors, but I conceive that throughout the civilized world, attendance by medical men is still the rule."²⁵

Nevertheless, then–as now–imperialists were able to gain endorsements for their aims, under the guise of advancing women’s rights. Ahmed argues:

Hostility to Islamic culture also found supporters inside the colonized countries, primarily among the rising upper- and upper-middle classes who benefited economically during colonialism. In 1899, The Liberation of Women appeared in Egypt, calling for banning the veil. Its author, Qassim Amin, a French-educated lawyer, was far less in favor of women’s rights than the book’s title suggests. Amin made clear he was "not among those who demand equality in education," instead recommending only primary education as necessary for women to fulfill their duties as wives and mothers. He based arguments on the need for assimilation with European culture, and described Egyptians as "lazy and always fleeing work."²⁷

This phenomenon was by no means restricted to Egypt under colonial rule. During the twentieth century, other countries in the Muslim world imposed "Europeanization" on their own populations–banning aspects of Islamic culture and dress. In 1925, Kamal Ataturk, ruler of post-Ottoman Turkey, imposed the Hat Law, banning the traditional fez cap for men, under the penalty of death. In 1928, Reza Khan, Iran’s shah, passed a law mandating European attire for men after seizing power. In 1936, he banned the hijab for Iranian women.²⁸

Islam and resistance to imperialism

But if much of the upper class benefited from imperialism and aimed to emulate European culture, less prosperous sections of society rebelled–by defending Islam. The result was a strengthening of Islam as an expression of cultural identity, in opposition to the colonizers. Muslim organizations embraced and defended Islamic religious customs as a counterweight to imperialism. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, sought a return to a purified form of Islam–and a rejection of British domination. Its early members expressed that they were "weary of this life of humiliation and domination…. We see that the Arabs and Muslims have no status…and no dignity…. They are not more than mere hirelings belonging to foreigners."²⁹

The growth of Islam, however, was just one form of resistance to colonialism and imperialism. By mid-century, the impact of Islamic movements was supplanted by the growing influence of Pan-Arabism, as secular nationalist–including communist–parties grew in size, and Pan-Arab leaders asserted and finally won independence, breaking the hold of colonialism. Pan-Arabism grew throughout the region after Abdel Nasser seized power in Egypt in 1952. To consolidate his own power, however, Nasser dissolved and banned all political parties in Egypt in 1953, brutally suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood.³⁰

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union provided funding and support to a variety of anti-colonial movements and nationalist regimes around the world, including Nasser’s. This support did not reflect a genuine political commitment to national self-determination, but rather resulted from the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and USSR–an imperialist competition to dominate whole regions of the world. Russia’s hypocrisy became most obvious after its 1979 invasion and decade-long occupation of Afghanistan.

But the resurgence of Islam in recent decades also coincided with the relative decline in the strength and influence of Pan-Arab nationalism. Pan-Arabism declined for a number of reasons–among them, its failure to confront either class inequality within Arab societies or to pose a fundamental challenge to imperialism itself. During the 1970s–decades after winning independence–entrenched and corrupted local ruling classes, from Pahlavi’s Iran to Sadat’s Egypt, amassed personal fortunes by continuing to collaborate with imperialist powers–while continuing to emulate European cultural norms.

It is worth noting that the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi regime was preceded by a mass strike wave that raised a broad range of working-class and anti-imperialist demands–women’s rights among them. A prolonged strike by oil workers in October 1978, for example, listed as one of its eleven demands "an end to discrimination against women staff employees and workers."³¹ The subsequent "Islamic Revolution" involved the consolidation of Ayatollah Khomeini’s repressive regime–and the dismantling of Iranian workers’ organizations coupled with the imposition of reactionary religious law from above. The Iranian revolution was, therefore, far from a fanatical religious uprising.³²

The fall of Stalinist rule in the USSR and Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 1990s dealt an enormous blow to nationalist movements allied with the Soviet Union, and discredited Stalinism. The fall of the Soviet Union put an end to the Cold War–but the collapse of the USSR allowed the subsequent strengthening of U.S. imperialism, beginning with the 1991 Gulf War. The current Bush administration’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the Bush Doctrine’s assertion of "preemptive war" were not a break from, but an acceleration of, a process that was well under way in the early 1990s, years before September 11.³³

Political forms of Islam can gain in strength and influence–as an expression of opposition to imperialism–in the absence of a strong secular alternative. The decline of Pan-Arabism, coupled with a strengthening of U.S. imperialism in the 1990s, produced a widening identification with Islam as an ideological counterweight to U.S. imperialism throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and has grown further since the U.S. launched the "war on terrorism" following September 11.

Moreover, the U.S. and its staunchest Middle East ally, Israel, played a key role in building up the very "Islamic extremists" that their war on terrorism targets today. In the 1980s, Israel provided funding that helped to launch the Islamic-based Palestinian opposition movement, Hamas, in the hope of weakening the extensive influence of the secular-nationalist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) "One can be pretty sure that this strategy received strong encouragement from Washington, which has also seen the advantage of financing and supporting the most vicious and narrow-minded Islamic terrorists on account of their antinationalist and antisocialist credentials," wrote New York Press columnist George Szamuely.³⁴

The U.S. provided $3 million for the buildup of an Islamic fighting force, known as the Mujahideen, to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s. As journalist Ken Silverstein noted, "few within the government had any illusions about the forces that the United States was backing. The Mujahideen fighters espoused a radical brand of Islam–some commanders were known to have thrown acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil–and committed horrific human rights violations in their war against the Red Army."³⁵

As BBC foreign correspondent Matt Frei summarized,

In the context of imperialism–and the racism that justifies imperialist domination–it is wrong to view the hijab, or other aspects of Islamic culture, only as symbols of women’s oppression. Today, the hijab is worn voluntarily by millions of Muslim women around the world as a symbol of cultural pride, often in overt opposition to Western imperialism. After Chirac announced the ban on headscarves, tens of thousands of women wearing the hijab marched in protest across France, chanting slogans such as, "Not our fathers nor our husbands, we chose the headscarf." In London, thousands of young women wearing hijabs also marched, chanting against "racist laws." Their voices should not be ignored.³⁷

Veiled or unveiled, women’s oppression is universal

There is no contradiction between supporting Muslim women protesting the ban on headscarves in France and championing Afghan women in their fight against laws mandating the burqa. Women should have the right to dress as they choose wherever they live, without government interference. This should be a basic human right.

Moreover, feminists who allowed the Bush administration to equate the lifting of the Islamic veil with liberation, and those who now argue that the France’s hijab ban is a step toward women’s equality, perform a disservice to the fight for genuine women’s liberation, East and West. Journalist Natasha Walter recently expressed the common view among Western feminists: "Many women in the west find the headscarf deeply problematic. One of the reasons we find it so hateful is because the whole trajectory of feminism in the west has been tied up with the freedom to uncover ourselves."³⁸

But the "freedom to uncover" can bring women no closer to genuine equality in a sexist society. In societies the world over, "uncovering" merely leads to greater sexual objectification. In the U.S., eating disorders have reached epidemic proportions among young women, cosmetic surgery is one of the fastest-growing branches of modern medicine, and Hooters is a national restaurant chain. Jiggle movies like "Charlie’s Angels" and "Tomb Raider" offer some of the best opportunities for career advancement for female actresses in Hollywood. And cartoon shows such as "Stripperella"–starring Erotica Jones, "a stripper by night and a superhero by later night"–target an ever-younger audience. Soon to join the primetime lineup is "Hef’s Superbunnies," a cartoon about Playboy Playmates who fight evil.³⁹

Turkish society illustrates why "secularism" and "Westernization" do not automatically lead to women’s liberation. Although Turkey’s population is overwhelmingly Muslim, its government bans the hijab for women in educational institutions and government offices. But Turkey has imported Western sexist culture as well, including an endless barrage of demeaning sexist imagery. As political economist Behzad Yaghmaian described on a recent visit to Turkey, "Pictures of half-naked women were exhibited on billboards and in daily newspapers."

Yaghmaian described a woman student from Istanbul University, who said, "Hijab sends an important message that a person does not have to see my body to have a conversation with me."⁴⁰ This sentiment is valid and should not be dismissed by feminists. As a young Egyptian woman told reporters some years ago, she prefers the hijab because, "Many men treat women as objects, look at their beauty; the Islamic dress allows a woman to be looked upon as a human being and not an object."⁴¹

Nor is there truth to the common claim that Islam is more reactionary, more violent, or more oppressive to women than Christianity. Indeed, this claim is absurd, considering the 200-year history of the Christian Crusades wreaking death and destruction against Muslims and Jews. Pope Urban II launched the first crusade in a speech in 1095, calling on Christians to wage a "holy war" against Islamic "infidels."⁴²

In more recent history, the practice of burning of thousands of "witches" at the stake was practiced among the most self-righteous Christians in Europe, and in the U.S., as recently as four centuries ago. And in current history, Christian fundamentalists have used the excuse of September 11 to incite hatred and violence against Muslims. Shortly after September 11, evangelist Franklin Graham, now in charge of his father’s organization, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, declared: "The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion." George W. Bush himself frequently invokes his Christian "Almighty" as justification for the occupation of Iraq.⁴³

It is impossible to generalize about the beliefs of Islam any more than about the beliefs of Christianity or Judaism, since there are as many different interpretations of the Koran as there are competing interpretations of Biblical scripture.

It is possible, however, to document that in neither form nor substance is women’s oppression unique to Islam. As Ahmed notes in her carefully-researched book, Women and Gender in Islam, "[A] fierce misogyny was a distinct ingredient of Mediterranean and eventually Christian thought in the centuries immediately preceding the rise of Islam," In addition, "The veil was apparently in use in Sasanian society, and segregation of the sexes and use of the veil were heavily in evidence in the Christian Middle East and Mediterranean regions at the time of the rise of Islam" in the seventh century A.D.⁴⁴ Egyptian feminist Nawal el Saadawi has argued, "the most restrictive elements towards women can be found first in Judaism in the Old Testament, then in Christianity, and then in the Quran." Furthermore, el Saadawi argued, the "veiling of women isn’t a specifically Islamic practice but an ancient cultural heritage with analogies in sister religions."⁴⁵

Religions did not create oppressive human relationships in class society, but have functioned historically to enforce ideology that strengthens already-existing inequalities within the social order.

Beliefs in supernatural forces, including male and female gods, preceded the rise of religion–as an attempt to comprehend forces of nature and their relation to human society. But organized religion could only have risen with the existence of settled communities, just as religious scriptures required the technology of writing. Organized religion rose hand in hand with the rise of class society, and its role evolved in tandem with the development of exploitation as the dominant relation of production.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued that the shift away from the communal life of earlier hunter-gatherer societies and toward settled agriculture gave way to the rise of class society. Technological developments such as the plow and the domestication of cattle sharply increased the productivity of agriculture–for those owning land, plows, and cattle. For the first time in human history, it was possible for some people to accumulate wealth, creating a division between rich and poor.

It is important to understand that these changes did not take place overnight, or in identical succession across all societies. Nevertheless, large swathes of human society were transformed in similar ways over a period of thousands of years, with the rise of the first class societies some 6,000 years ago (first in Mesopotamia, followed a few hundred years later by Egypt, Iran, the Indus Valley, and China).⁴⁶

Nor did the rise of class society take place without struggle and extreme brutality. Slavery was common, and the peasantry, robbed of their land and livelihood was reduced to destitution. Early Christianity–before it acquired a bureaucracy of its own–provided a voice for the downtrodden against the appalling division between rich and poor in the Roman Empire. The Christian religion developed during the decline of the Roman Empire, encompassing today’s Italy and Spain, part of France, part of Turkey, Palestine, and other territories. The Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, in a 1905 pamphlet, "Socialism and the Churches," documented the outrage at class injustice shared by many early Christians, including Jesus Christ. Saint Basil, writing in the fourth century A.D., argued:

But as the Church itself developed as an institution, becoming incorporated as the state religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, its interests became intertwined with those of the nobility. From the sixth century on, the Church began collecting taxes in its own right. "Thus," wrote Luxemburg,