Salah has already begun to prove the point. She’s been issuing informal fatwas, or religious proclamations, for more than a decade, counseling women on marriage, hygiene and sex. In books, in lectures and even on her own satellite-television show, “Fataawa An Nisaa” (“Women’s Fatwas”), Salah offers a uniquely feminine perspective on Islamic law. In her view, women should be active in every aspect of public life–as long as it doesn’t detract from their duties at home. Salah is hoping to be named one of Al Azhar’s official Islamic judges. Three years ago she formally applied to join the university’s Dar al Iftah, the 13-member religious body that helps decide questions like whether the Qur’an allows battered women to seek divorce. While its rulings are not binding outside Egypt, they do set the tone for the entire region. All Salah needs to become a mufti is the approval of the chief judge, or grand mufti, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, but so far he has remained silent.
Most of Salah’s colleagues at Al Azhar–male and female–support her quest. But she has no greater advocate than her husband, Abdel Raouf, the former editor of a government-sponsored religious weekly. Female Islamic scholars in Iran and the United Arab Emirates have the right to issue fatwas, says Raouf, 60. Yet Egypt’s women are prohibited by custom–if not by law–from presiding over any bench, secular or religious. Last fall First Lady Suzanne Mubarak came out in support of female judges in state courts. But female muftis are just as important, says Raouf. Then women will be able to query other women for rulings on sensitive topics, lending “a new color” to the Dar al Iftah. “It’s surprising that Egypt was always one step ahead of the other Islamic countries in many fields, but it’s still behind in allowing women to deliver fatwas,” he says.
It’s not Islam that discriminates against women, argues Salah, but lingering attitudes from pre-Islamic times. True Islam, she says, is a religion based on equality and respect between the sexes. To hear her describe it, life under the Prophet was more equitable in every way: Muhammad ran races with his wives and allowed men and women to mingle freely at weddings. His wife Aisha issued fatwas on women’s issues. Such precedents illustrate that improving women’s rights in Egypt is entirely possible within an Islamic framework, says Salah. “We are trying to achieve the rights that Islam gave to women 14 centuries ago,” she says. At a time when many Muslim intellectuals have called for an Islamic reformation, her campaign, if successful, would help prove that modernity and Islam are not mutually exclusive.
Despite her determination to achieve Islamic equality, Salah is not a feminist–at least by Western standards. A mother of four and grandmother of three, she believes a Muslim woman’s first duty is to her family. She still supports the Islamic law stipulating that in some crimes, the testimony of one man equals that of two women. And she once upheld a fatwa allowing female circumcision. Yet Salah’s father, a scholar at Al Azhar, encouraged her to become one of the first female students. Today she staunchly supports women’s education and employment outside the home. She considers prohibitions against women’s showing their faces in public, driving, voting and running businesses to be un-Islamic. And if she gets her wish, the feminine fatwa will no longer be a dream but a Muslim woman’s right.
