Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood MP Seeks to Abolish Female Rights and Enforce Female Genital Mutilation

According to the Egyptian website Youm 7, Azza al-Jarf, a female Member of Parliament representing the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Freedom and Justice Party,” is trying to abolish several laws currently enjoyed by Egyptian women—including preventing them from divorcing or even separating from their husbands, because “the man has the authority and stewardship” (see Koran 4:34); mandating that fathers must circumcise their daughters; and trying to get the Egyptian educational system to ban the teaching of the English language—on the grounds that it is an “infidel” tongue—while separating boys and girls in classrooms and forcing girls to wear the hijab.

Ms. Jarf, of course, is not the first Muslim female in Egypt opposed to her own gender; earlier, another female politician declared that “women are deficient in intelligence and religion,” and that, in agreement with Sharia law, they are banned from running for presidency.

At any rate, repressive and discriminatory laws, not to mention laws that mutilate the human body—such represent the Muslim Brotherhood’s idea of “Freedom and Justice,” the telling name of their political wing.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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Egypt Sex and gender relations

Raymond Ibrahim

Raymond Ibrahim, a specialist in Islamic history and doctrine, is the author of Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam (2022); Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (2018); Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013); and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). He has appeared on C-SPAN, Al-Jazeera, CNN, NPR, and PBS and has been published by the New York Times Syndicate, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Weekly Standard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst. Formerly an Arabic linguist at the Library of Congress, Ibrahim guest lectures at universities, briefs governmental agencies, and testifies before Congress. He has been a visiting fellow/scholar at a variety of Institutes—from the Hoover Institution to the National Intelligence University—and is the Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum and the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.