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The Egyptian Religious Establishment and Post 2011 Reform Initiatives for the Family: What is Being Reformed?
Abstract
Over the last decade, the religious establishment in Egypt has spearheaded a number of initiatives targeting the family to promote a model of marriage and family relations that are based on good communication, cooperation, and harmony. For instance, Al-Azhar established a unit of family reunification (wiḥdat lam al-shaml) on April 16, 2018. This unit provides online and in-person mediation in marriage disputes. The work of this unit has also expanded to tackle diverse challenges confronted by families including psychological and economic hardships and has been offering its service in villages as well as urban centers across the country. Al-Azhar also began a program of training female preachers to provide religious-based counselling to families across the nation. In 2017, Al-Azhar set up a committee to draft a new personal status law and made it public in 2019. Additionally, the Department of Egyptian Fatwa (Dār al-iftāʾ) established the committee for marital guidance in 2014. This committee evolved into the Marital Guidance Center (Markaz al-irshād al-zawājī) in 2021, carrying out training workshops for marrying or married couples; informing policy makers, and raising awareness of the society at large about the foundations and skills needed for healthy and happy marriage relationships. In this presentation, we examine some of these initiatives to engage with the following questions: How is reform understood in these initiatives? What is its object? And how is the role of the religious establishment and specifically the religious scholar changing through these initiatives? And importantly how are these initiatives being shaped by the Egyptian context after the 25 of January Revolution and more specifically since the rule of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi with complex interplay between the contested politics of religious reform, state feminism, and the on-going gender activism led by the civil society. Our presentation is based on analysis of data collected through qualitative research conducted by the first author in the period from 2014 to 2022 and subsequent research conducted jointly by the two authors in 2023. This research consisted of interviews with religious actors working in these programs; women scholar activists who have worked with the religious establishment; couples who took the training programs, as well as content analysis of: 1) written and materials produced by the studied programs, and 2) TV interviews with key actors leading these programs.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
None