Does Political Islam Impede Gender-Based Mobilization? The Case of Egyp

http://reconstructionplanning.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/article.pdf

Thesis:
Using Egypt as a primary site of investigation this article argues that the correlation of  affirmative answers to the question "does political Islam impede gender-based mobilization" is spurious (apparently but not actually valid), if not ideologically biased and historical.
What that means in English is, that this article purposes that political Islam may not impede mobilization on the basis of gender although many scholars and feminist activists believe that it does on the basis of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Instead it proposes that although gender mobilization may be impeded it may be due to the widespread and exponential support of political Islamism in the South accompanied with the decline of non-religious-based women's movements.

Methodology:
Rabab El-Mahdi uses a majority of secondary and tertiary sources. The secondary sources are taken directly from interview, statements, and books by the individuals involved in political mobilization in Egypt such as Heba Raouf, one of the key founders of Women for Democracy. El-Mahdi's analysis is very thorough, and often repetitive due to the preponderance of evidence used in iterating pinnacle points of his argument.

Analysis and Review:
Throughout the paper El-Mahdi speaks about the nonspecific "scholars". This mythical scholar is often the owner of an opposing view to the declination and inhibitors of female mobilization in Egypt. Who or what is this mysterious "scholar" and when and where does it exist. This opposition is nameless, faceless, and therefore rendered defenseless without reputable sources. A good argument addresses the opposition, states the factual information that supports the opposition, the logical assumption behind the opinion,  then points out flaws in the oppositions case. It does not seem to be too challenging to make a strong case against a party (the scholars) that may or may not exists. I am not saying that El-Mahdi did not execute his argument well, it just seems ill-begotten to pose your argument against such a vague and broad opposition such as "the scholars". 

El-Mahdi Covers the history of the formation of the Women for Democracy, which was well explained and articulated. He Includes the 5 goals, or pillars, of Women for Democracy, explaining each of them. Women for Democracy was not entirely a feminist agenda, moreover it was a group, consisting of mainly women pushing for Democracy in the best interest of all citizens of Egypt. As El-Mahdi explains, the Egyptian government often uses the sexuality of women to control society as a whole. For instance during the state’s confrontation with militant Islamist groups in the 1990s, security forces used similar tactics extensively in villages in Upper Egypt against female family members of the militants. This is a tactic commonly used historically, as a tool to humiliate an enemy. I thought that El-Mahdi makes an interesting link (whether he knows it or not) between the common approach to discouraging the enemy by means of female sexuality and the failures of universal feminism (which have worked in the western world) in contributing to female mobilization in Egypt. Eh-Mahdi proposes that there is a need for a more local approach to feminism, meeting on the axis of class, religion, nation, and gender rather than the dividing line of sex. I find this to be a very interesting and rational concept, that feminism is not universal, it must develop within cultural boundaries. If western feminism developed in the regions and cultures of the west, then eastern feminism must develop in the regions and cultures in the east.
I believe that this is a very critical and analytically examination of political mobilization in Egypt, and that it provides an excellent conclusion to the changes facing gender mobilization that does not determine a correlation with the rise of Political Islam