Nawal El Saadawi, the most prominent voice of Arab feminism in the last century, has died
Egyptian writer, feminist activist and doctor Nawal El Saadawi, a leading figure in women's emancipation in the Arab world, died on Sunday at the age of 89 after a long illness. She was for decades a controversial figure in Egypt, but internationally recognised for her prolific career as a writer and her tireless struggle for women's rights, which even led to her imprisonment and exile.
El Saadawi was born in 1931 into a wealthy family in the small town of Kafr Tahla, in the Nile Delta, where she began to develop her thinking and wrote her first feminist texts at the age of 13 in a diary she kept under her bed, after seeing the discrimination between male and female pupils at her school. She graduated in medicine from Cairo University in 1955. Considered the "Arab Simone de Beauvoir", she spent much of her life working as a psychiatrist and university lecturer. El Saadawi fought fiercely against female genital mutilation in Egypt and the world, unleashing a storm of criticism and condemnation from Egypt's political class.
Her steely temperament contrasted with her fragile figure, elegant white hair and warm smile, she was outspoken and openly critical of both the patriarchal and capitalist systems. El Saadawi's prolific body of work, the most prominent part of which revolves around a profound critique of patriarchy, capitalism and religion, and her political activism have been highly influential over the past five decades and have been recognised in numerous national and international awards. The Egyptian author has also addressed sensitive issues such as sexuality, identity and colonialism.
The author of more than fifty books, translated into some thirty languages, in which she spoke out against polygamy, the wearing of the veil, unequal inheritance rights between men and women in Islam and, above all, female circumcision, which affects more than 90% of Egyptian women, she fought for a long time for women's rights and against patriarchy in the Arab world.
Her outspokenness and boldness on issues considered taboo in a largely conservative Egyptian society have landed her in trouble with the authorities, religious institutions and Islamists. In the past, she has been accused of apostasy and undermining Islam.
Her first book, entitled "Women and Sex", was one of her most controversial works, in which she addressed society's "fear" of women's bodies and the continuous attempt to control them under religious or political pretexts. This work was censored in Egypt and El Saadawi was fired from her job and the Health Culture Association she founded was closed down: "All this for daring to write about women's private and public, bodily and intellectual misfortunes", as she recounts in one of her books. In 1981 she was imprisoned and charged with "crimes against the state" after criticising the regime of former president Anwar al-Sadat and the capitalist system. While behind bars she wrote her most important novel, "The Fall of the Imam", in which she denounced how men use religion, politics and morality to control women.
A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature, the controversial author of "Woman at Point Zero - The Two Sides of Power". She was director of Public Health in her country, UN advisor for the Women in Africa programme, founder and leader of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association and co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights. But she had to publish her books in Lebanon when they were censored in Egypt and go into exile after being imprisoned and accused of being a revolutionary. Although she returned to the country in 2011, her work remains banned in Egypt. In 2005 she was awarded the Inana International Prize in Belgium, a year after she received the Council of Europe's North-South Prize. In 2020, Time Magazine included her in its 100 Women of the Year issue.
She left Egypt in 1993, after receiving threats from Islamists, and took refuge in the United States, where she worked as a writer-in-residence for three years at Duke University in North Carolina, and where she created the subject "Creativity and Rebellion". She returned to Egypt in 2005, trying to run for election, but without much success.
The persecution of El Saadawi's ideas did not stop when she returned to Egypt in 2007; she faced another trial after being accused of apostasy and heresy by Al Azhar University, considered one of the most prestigious theological institutions in Sunni Islam.
Shortly before the revolution that overthrew former dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011, she took part in the Arab Spring protests, and in recent years she has continued to spread her ideas. She was later criticised for supporting the military coup d'état of 2013, and for supporting the current Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Nawal el Saadawi's life was marked by countless stones that she dodged on an arduous path that she never intended to leave, as it reinforced her conviction that "women must mobilise in defence of human rights". For El Saadawi, "revolution begins in the mind" and "needs knowledge". In her opinion, the feminist movement had to be global: "We women are all in the same boat", she claimed, "the oppression of women is universal; it is exercised by the patriarchal, economic and religious system". El Saadawi is recognised as one of the women who has fought the hardest, with real influence, both for women's freedom and for justice and the democratisation of Muslim society.