مؤسسة الشرق الأوسط للنشر العلمي
عادةً ما يتم الرد في غضون خمس دقائق
This study examines the representations of modernity in the discourse of Zeinab Al-Ghazali, a prominent figure within the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood during the 1970s, and interrogates the extent to which her writings aligned with, rather than opposed, prevailing nationalist and secular discourses of the period. Drawing on content analysis of two primary sources — Ayyam min Hayati (Days of My Life) and Musirat Jihad wa Hadith min al-Dhikrayat (A Journey of Struggle and Reminiscences) — and informed by the theoretical frameworks of Mervat Hatem, Partha Chatterjee, and Leila Ahmed, the study argues that Al-Ghazali's Islamic discourse constituted not a straightforward rejection of modernity, but a strategic renegotiation of its terms. Through an analysis of her positions on women's work and jihad, the study reveals a fundamental tension between her prescriptive public writings and her transgressive lived practice — a tension interpreted as a deliberate discursive strategy rather than mere hypocrisy. A comparative analysis with Sheikh Al-Sha'rawi further demonstrates that despite their apparent ideological differences, both figures ultimately served the same nationalist modernist project: the production of a domesticated yet politically mobilizable 'new woman.' The study additionally foregrounds the class-specific nature of Al-Ghazali's discourse, arguing that her project constituted a strategic mobilization of middle-class women in service of the Brotherhood's organizational agenda. The findings contribute to scholarly debates on gender, nationalism, and Islamic revivalism by demonstrating the porousness of the boundaries between Islamist and nationalist discourses on women in modern Egypt.