Women's Organizations

I wanted to focus on the women's organization called the Society of Muslim Ladies, created by Zaynab al-Ghazali. It was initially formed to provide charitable services to poor women and children, but the Society later grew into training women in the art of preaching. Through this training, women could train other women on topics like basic rules of Islamic jurisprudence and exegesis of the Quran. They could provide lessons to other women in state run mosques.

This was interesting to me because like the Urapmin people in becoming sinners, these women were being very active in studying their faith and beliefs and one of the consequences was a greater role in this patriarchal, increasingly secular society.

Even though many of the practices were received with skepticism by the male population, this represented a marginalized group's attempt to begin to assert themselves as important, required parts of the community.