The Burden of Proof: Women and National Identity in ‘Islamic’ and ‘Secular’ States – The Case of Egypt

The call for the implementation of Shari'a law to create an ‘Islamic’ national identity can go no farther than a mere political statement in the Middle East and North Africa. The case of Egypt provides a model example of parallel examples in the region. In Egypt, Shari'a is not defined consistently, has evolved over time to include European legal codes, and the legitimate voice over the interpretation of its source texts is constantly put into question by entities vying for political power through the use of religious dogmatism. The result of these ambiguities is a weak national identity that must draw upon the only source accepted, for the time being, by society as validation that the state is ‘Islamic’. Over time, the jurisdiction of Islamic law has been limited to matters of personal status, because the exigencies of the law would prove fatal to the long‐standing military‐backed, authoritarian regimes in the region. As personal status laws primarily affect women's rights – including the right to marry, divorce, work, travel, have custody over their children, and inherit – it is women who bear the burden of the weak national ‘Islamic’ state identity. The irony is that the resulting restrictions imposed by the state on women are not authentically Islamic and reflect instead the need to differentiate from the West as well as norms associated with pre‐Islamic customary laws. The key to stabilizing states in the Middle East and North Africa and ending the perpetual state of Islamic revivalism in the region, therefore, is to liberate women by disentangling national identity from this false version of Islam. To do this, Egyptians from across the political spectrum must unify around authentic spiritual principles found in both secularism and Islam.