Zaynab al-Ghazālī: Saint or Subversive?

Author(s): Miriam Cooke

Source: Die Welt des Islams , Apr., 1994, New Series, Vol. 34, Issue 1 (Apr., 1994), pp. 1-
20
Published by: Brill

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 Die Welt des Islams 34 (1994), ? E.J. Brill, Leiden

ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI: SAINT OR SUBVERSIVE?

BY

MIRIAM COOKE*
Duke University

"Riyad entered the cell slowly and carefully. His face expres
ment that he tried to hide with conceit: 'So, you want to be
disa)l? ... You want them to build a tomb for you in a mo
after your death and to say that Zaynab al-Ghazill al-Jab
miracles in the War Prison?" Zaynab al-Ghazili, Ayyim min
from my Life) Beirut & Cairo: Dir al-Shuriiq, 1986, pp. 1

"There is something in my life about which you mus

you are about to become my husband and I have agreed
... I have sworn an oath of fealty to Hasan al-Banna tha
in God's path ... I had decided to eliminate the question
age from my life, and to devote myself fully to daCwa
sion). I cannot ask you today to share this jihad (strugg
my right to demand that you not block it. On the day t
bility puts me in the ranks of the mujahidin, do not ask
doing. Let the trust between us be complete; the trust
man who wants to marry a woman who at 18 dedicated
jihad in the path of God and to the establishment of the
And if ever the welfare of the marriage conflicts with
then the marriage shall end and the daCwa shall becom
being ... I know that it is your right to command me a

* I would like to thank Elizabeth Clark, Bruce Lawrence, Erika Fried

ly Rkia Cornell and Vincent Cornell, for reading this manuscript
and for giving me invaluable criticism and suggestions.
1 Qiddtsa is the term used for a Christian saint, the Muslim saint
There is considerable use of Christian terminology and symbols, in
crosses, in Days from my Life. Vincent Cornell mentioned that the
Muslim Brothers and Sisters often echo Christian discourse. He sugg
were influenced by Christian missionaries (November 1, 1991).

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2 MIRIAM COOKE

is my duty to obey you, but God in our souls is gr

souls, and his daCwa is dearer to us than ourselves." (pp. 34-35)
Saint or subversive? Spiritual or feminist autobiography? These
passages reflect the two modes that distinguish this best-selling ex-
emplary tale of imprisonment and enlightenment. In 1972, 7 years
after Nasser had her incarcerated in the War Prison for suspected
complicity in a Muslim Brother conspiracy to kill him, Zaynab al-
Ghazali published her memoirs under the title, Days from my Life.
They tell the story of her leadership of the Association of Muslim la-
dies (al-sayyidit al-muslimit), of her dealings with leading members
of the Muslim Brothers, of her opposition to Nasser, and of her con-
sequent six years spent first in the War Prison and then in Qanatir,
the women's prison in Cairo. It will be argued in this paper that by
examining her prison memoirs we can identify the nexus between
solitary striving and exemplary suffering that she projects as her life
mission to a corrupt Egyptian society.
In 1935 at the age of 18, Zaynab al-Ghaz5li dedicated her life to
Islam. As a teenager, she had been a member of the Egyptian
Feminist Union that Huda ShaCrawi had founded in the 1920s.
Soon, however, she became disaffected, and she broke away to form
an association for pious Muslim women. Although this organization
was for women, it was modelled less on the Egyptian Feminist
Union that it was on that of the Muslim Brothers. It might seem that
such a move signified her embrace of traditional, patriarchal values.
Yet, a careful reading of her management and direction of the As-
sociation of Muslim Ladies indicates rather a refocusing of feminist
energies. From the beginning she conceived of the Association as
being equal and equivalent with, yet deliberately separate from, the
Muslim Brothers. Her insistence on segregation allowed her to hold
on to her power base. She must have known that had she accepted
alliance any notion of equivalence and equality would certainly have
degenerated into complementarity at best, subordination at worst.
It was not until the late 40s, just before Hasan al-Banna's death, that
she allowed her Association to come under the aegis of the Brothers.
How was Zaynab al-Ghazali able to assert autonomy and equality
within the highly patriarchal system of a fundamentalist Islam while
holding on to her Islamic credentials? She did so by establishing a
distance, a disjuncture even, between her words and her actions.

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 ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI 3

She spoke in piously normative terms and then procee

pediently and sometimes even in contravention of
thought to be social norms enjoined upon Muslim w
The leader of the Association of Muslim Ladies knew full well and
often publicly articulated Islamic stipulations for Muslim women:
unquestioning obedience to the husband and dedication to educat-
ing Muslim children. In a 1981 interview with Valerie Hoffman, she
said: "The Brotherhood considers women a fundamental part of the
Islamic call. They are the ones who are most active because men
have to work. They are the ones who build the kind of men that we
need to fill the ranks of the Islamic call. So women must be well edu-
cated, cultured, knowing the precepts of the Koran and Sunna,
knowing world politics, why we are backward, why we don't have
technology. The Muslim woman must study all these things, and
then raise her son in the conviction that he must possess the scientific
tools of the age, and at the same time he must understand Islam,
politics, geography, and current events ... Islam does not forbid
women to actively participate in public life ... as long as that does not
interfere with her first duty as a mother, the one who first trains her children
in the Islamic call. So her first, holy, and most important mission is to be a
mother and wife. She cannot ignore this priority (my emphasis). If she than
finds she has free time, she may participate in public activities ...
Marriage is a sure Sunna ... a mission and a trust in Islam. Sexual
life in Islam is a necessity for both men and women, but it is not the
first and last goal of marriage. It is to preserve the human race, es-
tablish the family, build the man and the woman, to build the ruler,
to bring about righteous government."2

2 Valerie J. Hoffman, "An Islamic Activist: Zaynab al-Ghazali" in Elizabeth

W. Fernea, Women and the Family in the Middle East. New Voices of Change, Austin:
Texas U.P., 1985, pp. 236-7. Hoffman quotes an editorial al-Ghazali wrote for
Al-DaCwa magazine in 1981 in which she emphasizes again women's domestic
duties to the extent of describing work outside the home as "contrary to a woman's
nature ... The family comes first. If an urgent need arises, then work in education
until you marry; then work stops, except in absolute necessity . .. Return, my
dear, to the house. Stay in your home and obey your husband. You will be reward-
ed for your obedience to your Prophet and to him." al-Ghazali, "Al-mar'a al-
muslima" in Al-DaCwa 1981 in Valerie J. Hoffman-Ladd, "Muslim Fundamen-
talists: Psychological Profiles", unpublished paper for the Global Fundamentalism
Project, p. 27.

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4 MIRIAM COOKE

First of all, she emphasizes women's political centra

This would seem to be a feminist move, however she
gument in highly conservative terms; her plea for th
of women contains no apparent threat. It is through
she asserts reassuringly, that women gain access to t
litics, of men. Women must be educated not to challe
workplace, but rather so that they may educate their
does not plead for women's education on behalf of da
political engagement is to work behind the scenes, to
behind the throne? Not quite. Albeit in negative term
that Islam gives women the right to become actively e
lic life. Having first blurred the border between priv
domains through her discussion of the purpose of wo
tion, that is, to be effective mothers in the home to
tions of public men, she seems to go on to eliminate
lam welcomes women into public space but only after
good wives and mothers in the private space. The ner
may have baulked at the implication that women mig
ing on his turf is encouraged.3 However, upon clos
appears that this comfortable dichotomizing is in fac
public action represents the culmination of private ac
are not separate realms but rather behaviors that are
continuum. To be a wife and a mother in Islam entail
political activism that cannot be confined to the hom
there that it starts. So what of efficient wives and mothers who can
manage their time so as to accommodate spells of dacwa in their spare
time? Or, of women like Zaynab al-Ghazall, who have no children
and only tamed husbands? They must throw themselves whole

Saad Eddin Ibrahim writes, a Muslim woman's "first duty is to her husband and
to the socialization of true Muslim children." MERIP, p. 8.
3 This is a common technique used in 19th and early 20th century women's po-
lemical treatises: comparisons with western women were deliberately made upfront
so as to enable the author to shoot down arguments detractors would be anxious
to make. The argument was always: we want to be educated for the sake of our sons,
the next generation of men, and not so as to become equal with our husbands. We
are not like European women whose goal is the destruction of their society. (See
Opening the Gates. A Centuty of Arab Feminist Writing, Margot Badran & Miriam Cooke
(eds.), Virago and Indiana U.P., 1990, introduction)

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 ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI 5

heartedly into political action for it is only thus that

the stipulations of a well understood Islam. All Muslim
to establish an Islamic state. Islam thus provides a lo
women's activism.
A well understood Islam also mandates marriage for all. Does
marriage interfere with the individual's spiritual growth? No, be-
cause the uniformity of the marriage mandate prevents the estab-
lishment of a spiritual hierarchy predicated on degrees of celibacy.
The Muslim devotee or saint does not have a radically different life
from the ordinary Muslim, hence, all can identify with the exemplar
without recognizing an institutional difference between herself and
God's chosen. Unlike Christian women and men saints who are ex-
pected to be both celibate and chaste, Muslim saints are expected to
have a normal family life. Where the 14th century Margery Kempe
had to justify the fact of her being married to a man as being symbol-
ic of her real marriage to God, the Muslim woman saint has to ex-
plain why she is not married.4 The case of the 8th century Sufi
woman saint Rabica al-CAdawiya is eloquent. In response to the
proposal for marriage by the Sufi Hasan al-Basri, RabiCa is sup-
posed to have said: "The ties of marriage apply to those who have
being. Here being has disappeared for I have become nought to self
and exist only through Him. I belong wholly to Him. I live in the
shadow of His control. You must ask my hand of Him, not me. "5
Zaynab al-Ghazali is not so extreme, for she does marry, but she
places marriage, always protested to be a sure Sunna, below devo-
tion to God. Her mission is so vital to the world that none but God
may interfere.
Lest the special nature of her calling be in doubt, she has written
this book-this "legend of torture and hardship" (p. 86)-to under-

4 Ellen M. Ross, "Spiritual Experience and Women's Autobiography. The

Rhetoric of Selfhood in The Book of Margery Kempe" inJournal of the American Academy
of Religion, LIX/3, Fall 1991, 527-546.
5 A.J. Arberry, Muslim Saints and Mystics, Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1966, p. 46. Annemarie Schimmel writes that "most of the Islamic women saints
were married and usually had a family" in "Women in Mystical Islam" in Azizah
al-Hibri, Women and Islam, special edition of Women's Studies International Forum, 5/2,
1982, p. 150.

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6 MIRIAM COOKE

score her extraordinary powers. But the writing o

a mere recording of an extraordinary life. It is at t
very construction of such a life; writing is instrum
zation and particularly the elaboration and inscript
experience. Importantly, this is also a book written by a Muslim
woman in defiance of the popular myth that the voice of a woman
must be considered 'aura, a word meaning also mouth, pudenda and
shame, something that must be kept hidden, away from the sphere
of public exchange.
The focus of the memoirs is on the first year of imprisonment. The
Egyptian authorities imprison her for alleged collusion in a plot to
assassinate the Egyptian president. They torture her because like all
torturers, as Peter Suedfeld writes, they want "information, in-
crimination of friends and associates, and intimidation of other
members of the community ... isolation and indoctrination."6
The latter two goals are particularly salient in connection with al-
Ghazill's story, as they are in stories of martyrs.7 The Egyptian
authorities are concerned about the plot to kill their leader, but they
are most concerned about what this woman represents, an alterna-
tive worldview. They have to eliminate that countervision, they
have to remake this rebellious woman in their own image.8
Like all martyrs, Zaynab al-Ghazali describes torture so unbear-
able and endurance so superhuman that even a jailor cannot stop
himself from asking whether she might not consider herself, or in

6 Peter Suedfeld, "Torture. A Brief Overview", Psychology and Torture, 1990

quoted in Maureen A. Tilley, "The Ascetic Body and the (Un)Making of the
World of the Martyr" inJournal ofthe American Academy of Religion, LIX/3, Fall 1991,
468.
7 See Sebastian P. Brock & Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian
Orient, University of California P, 1987, 17-19.
8 "But the torturers in the stories of the martyrs-and in the present-still keep
torturing long after these ostensible goals are achieved. Why? Because their real
goal is not merely the control of an individual but the restructuring of a society ...
isolation is to provide a setting in which the torturer can remake the unsupported
victim into a compliant citizen ... Thus torture has to continue even when there
is no more information to extract, for there is now information to inflict by means
of pain . . . Thus the torturer's most effective way to deconstruct the victim's world
is through the body's sensing, integrative, and expressive abilities." Tilley, pp.
468 -9.

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 ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI 7

fact be a qiddisa, saint. Days from my Life expands on th

periences described by Muslim Brothers who had been
in the 50s and 60s. The Egyptian sociologist Saad Edd
writes that these prisoners felt "deep joy in defying so
physical means of coercion. Several who claimed to h
verely tortured reported having images and dreams of
saints welcoming them to the Garden of Eden, or imag
Islamic society being established upon their martyrdom
all ... perceived their present prison sentences as an
of their struggle (jihad), God's testing of their faith an
ence."9 A year after her release, al-Ghazli puts pen
recounts her descent into hell, her purification through
her re-ascent to earth to minister to the world. This is the ultimate
test: to pass through hell unweakened in spirit and belief.
Days from my Life is an extended parable of the struggle by the
devil, embodied in Gamal Abdel Nasser, to wrest al-Ghazali's soul
out of its safekeeping in God's hands. Zaynab's body becomes the
battlefield on which the contest between good and evil is played out.
The War Prison is called a "hell that was a crucible for the melting
of men's metals." (p. 7) The jailors and the torturers are repeatedly
called zabanoya, or the angels who guard the gates of Hell (Q 74:30).
For the prison authorities, Nasser is God whose name is invoked be-
fore speaking in the same way that Muslims invoke God's name
before performing any action: "I say to you in the name of Gamal
Abdel Nasser." (p. 69) She is told, "If you say Lord, no one will
save you. But if you say Nasser, then Paradise, Nasser's Paradise,
will open up to you." (p. 94)10 Through prison intermediaries,
Nasser offers her the world-support for the Association and its

9 Saad Eddin Ibrahim, "Egypt's Islamic Militants", in MERIP, February

1982, pp. 11-13.
Gilles Kepel writes of the martyrology of the Nasser period as being of "the ut-
most importance for the subsequent Islamicist movement. The halo of persecution
suffered in defense of a faith and a social ideal confers a status of absolute truth upon
Islamicist discourse. " The Prophet and the Pharaoh. Muslim Extremism in Egypt (tr. Jon
Rothchild), Berkeley/LA: California U.P., 1985, p. 25.
10 "Where is your Lord? Call on him to save you from me ... Call for Nasser
and you'll see what'll happen." p. 91; cf. p. 111.

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8 MIRIAM COOKE

magazine and even the post of Minister of Socia

change for her obedience to and recognition of Na
mate authority in her life. Without weighing the
contemptuously rejects all such temptations, assur
of the news that Islam does not concern itself with the affairs of the
world.11 Zaynab al-Ghaz5li's repeated references to the prison and
its personnel as hell and devils recalls Christian martyrs' stories.12
During her months in the War Prison, before she is sentenced to
25 years' labor, the zabdniya try to break her will and to extort confes-
sions by subjecting her to fantastic torture. She suffers seven kinds
of torture, each associated with a separate cell, a separate hell:
1) whips, as many as 1000 per session; 2) attacking dogs and men,
whereas the dogs bite and tear at her flesh, the men never manage
to rape her; 3) up to week-long immersion in water; 4) rats; 5) hang-
ing and whipping; 6) fire, out of which she, like Abraham and
numerous martyrs before her, emerges unsinged; 7) hanging by her
arms from two rings attached high to poles until she drops and then
is suspended again.13 The memoirs from the time that she enters
prison are almost formulaic, focussing surreally on recurrent events
and statements. At first, she miraculously withstands the whips and
the dogs without giving in; Quranic recitations are central in this
struggle. Hagiographers have recorded martyrs' uses of sacred
phrases as a common technique to endure torture. Tilley has noted
that under "the weight of pain, (the victims') answers become short-
er and shorter, less and less coherent, until the voice is destroyed.
The stories of the Christian martyrs bear witness to their resistance
to this tactic. In order to maintain as much control as possible in the
process of torture, they are equipped with short stock phrases that

11 This reiteration of temptations echoes experiences in the life of the Prophet

Muhammad (conversation with Vincent Cornell, November 16, 1991).
12 In a ploy to undermine the torturer's goal of dehumanizing the victim, mar-
tyrs embraced this differentiation in terms of humanness or lack thereof. Tilley
writes that "they accepted the difference between the guards and themselves and
capitalized on it, casting the torturers as minions of Satan." (Tilley, "The Ascetic
Body", p. 471).
13 Brock and Harvey have written that hagiographies rarely if ever allow any
but human agents to destroy the saint. Hence, fire and beasts are ineffective,
humans must bear sole responsibility for the destruction of God's creature (p. 18).

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 ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI 9

can serve them when they can no longer reason. " (4

ever, al-Ghaz5al does eventually show signs of some
is taken to the prison hospital.14 Thereafter, she desc
commuting between torture cells and the hospital as
break her without killing her.
Her survival strikes awe even in the hearts of the zabdniya; some
of the guards reaffirm their faith. In spite of herself, al-Ghazali is
thus allowed to continue to perform daCwa even in the heart of hell.
This description of the spiritual awakening of evil ones is powerful
testimony not only to the conversionary power of her actions and
sheer endurance but also to her recognition of the potential good la-
tent in the hearts of the apparently irredeemable. Of this event she
writes, "My brother reader, I shall tell you a story about something
that happened to me when I was in hospital that will make you more
certain that these people are basically good and that their hearts are
pure . . ." (p. 70) After converting $alah, she sends him to Sayyid
Qutb who is in a nearby cell for religious instruction. She is the
agent of conversion, others will continue the task in whatever way
they deem to be necessary and appropriate. However corrupt the
world may seem to be, it will always remain susceptible to the good
works of the rightly guided. Muslim women and men, particularly
the specially chosen, have a single, overriding duty, and that is to
work in the world until it is ready for the establishment of the Islamic
state.

Although al-Ghazali does not explicitly describe her months in the

War Prison as a journey, the stages through which the narrator
passes do suggest movement. First, there is the descent, at the end,
ascent, but inbetween there is horizontal, circular movement. There
is little sense of the usual linear progression inherent in the spiritual
journey. Rather, the journey seems to consist of a movement
through concentric circles that ripple out from the still center that is
Zaynab. Torture and pain drag her out of her center to touch others.
Yet, each touch anchors her more firmly in herself and strengthens
her ability to ripple out again for the sake of others.
Her infernal journey inverts the usual narrative of a Muslim

14 This acceptance of medical treatment is not typical of Muslim mystic women

in history.

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10 MIRIAM COOKE

saint's spiritual journey that is often conveyed as an a

on the Prophet Muhammad's Ascension to heaven, or
a journey would pass through ascending stages: being chosen as a
friend of God, a wali; being opposed; searching for the truth; finding
an intellectual and then a spiritual guide; going back into the world
to teach.15 Zaynab al-Ghazali's journey seems rather to be the re-
verse: being chosen as enemy #1 of Nasser, the false god; descending
into the hell of prison; exhibiting patience in the face of temptations
and unbearable physical testing; without guidance revealing the
Qura5n and irjfan (gnosis);16 repeating again and again that she and
hers will establish an Islamic state; performing daCwa in hell in antici-
pation of the reascent and prosecution of daCwa on earth.
The almost christological association between suffering and
redemption is enhanced by her deliberate separation of herself from
her body. Tilley has described just such a disassociation from pain
in Christian martyrs' stories. She calls it a "hysterical fugue" that
decouples "language about realities and the realities represented
... The fugue state often occurs when a person cannot control an
intolerable situation. Fugue can entail changes in self-identity
focussing on the body, such as disowning pain ... In the case of
martyrs, hysterical fugue allowed the victims to continue to interact
with the torturer without feeling disabling, disintegrating pain ...
When the martyrs could not escape pain, asceticism taught them to

15 Geo Widengren is more meticulously prescriptive when he ascribes to the

journey ten steps: 1) ascending to heaven; 2) drinking a cup of water or milk;
3) being chosen as "friend of God"; 4) Qur'an is revealed; 5) esoteric knowledge
(Cirfan) is revealed; 6) exhibiting wisdom; 7) giving thanks; 8) sent to all people;
9) promised earth for self and community; 10) descent to earth and sent forth.
("Muhammad, the Apostle of God, and his Ascension" quoted in William M.
Brinner, "Prophet and Saint: the Two Exemplars of Islam" in John S. Hawley,
Saints and Virtues, U.C. Press, 1987, pp. 41-42.)
Referring to Franz Rosenthal's 1937 article entitled "Die arabische Auto-
biographie", Hilary Kilpatrick writes that in the "spiritual itineraries the author
represents the course of his life as inevitably leading up to the particular religious
or philosophical choice he has made; the central experience of conversion is retold
in a way which accords with the account of the life as a whole, rather than as it actu-
ally happened." Kilpatrick, "Autobiography and Classical Arabic Literature" in
Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. XXII/1, 1991, p. 2.
16 This presumption of cirfan informs the entire text. In the Preface, she greets
"the souls of the martyrs who have preceded with love and cirfan and a promise that
we are on the road." p. 7.

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 ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI 11

reconfigure its meaning ... Pain did not deconstruct th

in fact reinforced it ... The more the torturers inflicte
more they provided the martyrs with the means to the
vation." (472-3) Torture for al-Ghazali also was a means to her
goal of salvation, but it was above all a lesson and a guide for others.
Her sufferings seem to be less felt than they are presented as spec-
tacle. Her divinely protected body becomes the instrumentality
through which others may be saved.
Her steadfastness is supported and rewarded by the Prophet
Muhammad himself. Even the narrative structure of Days from my
Life reinforces this relationship: the seven chapters of the book echo
the seven differently numbered cells through which she passes; these
cells/hells can be seen to be the obverse of the seven heavens through
which Muhammad passed on his miCraj. And then, she is vouchsafed
three visions. In the first vision, which she has during the first few
days of her time in the War Prison, she sees herself at the end of a
caravan in the desert standing behind a huge man who turns out to
be none other than Muhammad. Five times, she asks him if he is in-
deed Muhammad, always prefacing her question with "ya habibi",
meaning "my darling". Each time, he responds that he is and that
she is on the path to the truth. The intimacy of their communion is
underscored by his once calling her "yi ghazdlt", meaning "my
gazelle". This vision establishes reciprocity of intimacy between her
and Muhammad, each addressing the other using the first person
possessive pronoun "my". The worshipper and the worshipped are
in a relationship that is not mediated by God; this is most unusual
in Islam. The association with gazelle, the symbol of the beloved,
and with ghazal, the Persianate poem of unrequited love, added to
Zaynab's astonishment to be called by her generally unknown birth
certificate name Ghazall rather than by the common misnomer of
al-Ghazali emphasize the significance of this appelation (p. 50). The
next two visions, discussed below, indicate that she has reached the
highest level in faith and works so that she is comparable both with
the contemporary Hasan al-Hudaibi, the leader of the Muslim
Brothers, and with the 7th century Prophet's wife Aisha, the female
exemplar in Islam. Her experiences constantly reinforce her worthi-
ness of the mission that has been thrust upon her. Her visions serve
as yet another proof that she is specially chosen.

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12 MIRIAM COOKE

This rather schematic comparison and contrast of al-Ghazali's

spiritual journey with that of the Muslim saint reveals the didactic
nature of the work. Whereas most spiritual journeys involve the in-
dividual in a search, in initiation or transformation or conversion
and in continuing enlightenment after learning and apprenticeship,
Days from my Life does not once dwell on what, if anything, is being
learnt. From the beginning, al-Ghazi.li presents herself as a power-
ful, already enlightened Muslim with complete knowledge whose
calling in spite of herself is to perform daCwa. 17 She is a chaste ideal,
an intrepid witness to the greatness of the Qur5an, the Sunna, Mu-
hammad and, by the by, Zaynab al-Ghazlli.
Days from my Life may or may not have been written as a hagio-
graphy,18 but it is certainly a woman's autobiography. It is not so
much the recording of the life of an exceptionalized woman, an
honorary man like RabiCa al-cAdawiya, but rather of a latter-day
female exemplar. It reconfigures the meaning of a life that is in the
re-construction created and related to the social order. Autobiogra-
phy is by definition both history and literature. It offers itself as an
ideal model of behavior and/or resistance within a vision of a society
that may or may not be projected as ideal. The autobiography is a
less common genre for women to use because it emerges out of self-
confidence, self-assertion and a sense of empowerment. It is often
an aspect of a utopian project. Unlike the diary and journal, the
autobiography presents itself as a coherent articulation of a politi-
cized self in relationship with a society in which it may then play a
transforming role.
Like all women's prison narratives, e.g., Memoirs out of the Wom-
en's Prison by the Egyptian feminist doctor and novelist Nawil

17 After the car accident that Nasser had apparently engineered in 1964 al-
Ghazali was in hospital and too weak to have visitors. However, the young people
were so devoted that they insisted on coming to her as though to get her blessings
(p. 8). When she came out of prison, her "sons and brothers, the pioneers in daCwa,
persuaded her of the importance of recording her experiences" (p. 5).
18 "The hagiographer seeks to reveal holy presence in human life and uses the
saint's story to accomplish that purpose ... Hagiography is only rarely biography.
The task of the hagiographer is to articulate the processes of the divine and the
human in the actions of the holy person, or to make visible to the ordinary eye the
inner truth of such a person's work." Brock & Harvey, 13, 14.

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 ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI 13

al-SaCdawi that was published in 1983, Days from my Li

importance of a woman's life, especially after she has
political prisoner.19 Whereas al-SaCdawi was immed
Qanatir, the women's prison, al-Ghazili was not sent th
had first spent a year at the War Prison with the men. She can,
therefore, from the start compare herself with men, put herself on
a par with them, often even place herself above them. She is in the
same prison that holds the famous religious leader and ideologue
Sayyid Qutb as well as thousands of other Muslim Brothers. Any as-
sumption that she as a woman is being treated more gently than the
men is quickly dispelled by vivid scenes of breathless violence enact-
ed on her body. In fact, she makes it clear that she has suffered more
than any of the others because she, unlike them, never says what her
torturers tell her to say. Her ordeal persists through her obstinate
refusal to comply. Even the "god of hell", Nasser, acknowledges
her special suffering in gendered terms: "Zaynab al-Ghazali has
suffered more than the men have suffered." (p. 84)
She resolutely refuses any sign of human weakness and enhances
her own strength by pointing to others' failings. Again and again,
the torturers assure her that all of her associates, mostly Muslim
Brothers, have confessed not only their own guilt but also hers.
When young Brothers are brought to her and are questioned about
their relationship to her, they admit that under the lashes of the
whips they would have said anything (e.g., p. 160). She does not
blame them, asserting that it is after all only human to break. She,
however, less human perhaps (?), never breaks, despite the fact that
her tortures make those of all the others pale.
The only fellow prisoners with whom she relates are women. They
are sisters, or perhaps daughters, along the road to the truth. Her
last two visions of Muhammad include only women and Hasan al-
Hudaibi, the leader of the Muslim Brothers. In the second vision,
she describes herself as climbing a path up a mountain. On her way,
she meets only women: Amina and Hamida Qutb, Khalida and

19 For a discussion of prison memoirs of women political detainees, see Barbara

Harlow, Resistance Literature, NY/London: Methuen, 1987, pp. 133-48.

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14 MIRIAM COOKE

CAliya al-Hudlaybi and Fatima CIsa. She asks each on

"the path" and each replies that she is. She meets no men
At the top of the mountain is a stretch of ground on w
pets and couches and al-Hudaibi. She conveys greetin
Prophet. Next, she sees a train pass by at the foot of t
In it are two naked women. She draws al-Hudaibi's attention to
these women. Surprisingly, he remonstrates that she should not con-
cern herself with these women, to whom she is clearly opposed and
with whom she is implicitly contrasted. Is she not with him at the
top of the mountain and have they not both earned this position
through works and grace? Zaynab retorts that they must "oppose
them until we reform them." (p. 174) She is at the top of the
mountain not only equal to the leader but also his teacher.20 He
would have been happy to let the world continue in its corrupt
ways. He did not feel obliged to do anything for these women
who represent the evils of the lower self that he had long ago left
behind. She is more mindful than he of the much cited hadith that
pronounced: "Whoever among you sees something reprehensible
let him change it either by means of the hand, and if that is not
possible then by means of the tongue.,"21 She is not only deter-
mined to continue to work in the world, she may also not consider
their nakedness to be intrinsically evil. Earlier she had referred to
herself as "a naked slave" (p. 24). Nakedness for her may indi-

20 This women's chastisement of a man supposed to be superior to her is not

uncommon in the history of Sufi women. Ruth Roded writes that the "women's
retorts (to the men who challenge their piety) embody not only pride in their spiritu-
al state but an aggressiveness towards men they meet which is in sharp contrast to
their self-abnegation and submission to God. They rebuke and even mock men who
they feel are lacking ... recurring image of women flaunting their spiritual superi-
ority over men, rebuking them for lapses of faith and religious duties, and ad-
monishing even men of authority and prominence certainly does not comply with
the accepted view of woman's place in society ... In this topsy-turvey environ-
ment, a woman may also admonish a man and the contrast is even stronger if the
man is a figure of authority." Women in Islamic Biographical Collections, unpublished
manuscript, pp. 21, 22.
21 "Man raai minkum munkaran fa-l-yughayyirhu imma bi-yadihi fa-in lam
yastatic fa-bi-lisanihi. " From Chapter on "Faith" in Sah.h Muslim, also to be found
in al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasaii and Ahmad ibn Hanbal. I am grateful to Rkia Cornell
for bringing this hadith to my attention.

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 ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI 15

cate the individual's freedom from the trappings and

world.
She is more aware than Hasan al-Hu~taibi because of
ings and her experiences in the prison. She knows that
one, however apparently evil, who is impervious to
tions of the good. She knows that daCwa demands that t
tinue the fight until they have put the world to rights and
lished the Islamic state on earth. In her last vision of
she again situates herself with women. This time it is
loved of the Prophet, and her female attendants. Muh
al-Hu4laibi and he keeps telling Aisha to be patient, an
keeps pressing Zaynab's hand and urging her likewise
(p. 189).
Whereas women in life and women in visions provid
ment, men bring annoyance and pain but, then again,
portunity for favorable comparison. She denounces
Muslim Brothers who could not hold out under torture. She de-
nounces all those corrupt men in official positions who use their
power to control, humiliate and abuse those under them. She de-
nounces those husbands of Muslim Sisters who ran away when th
wives were arrested (p. 66). She damns with faint praise her o
husband who had done what he could to hold on to a wife who toler-
ated him at best. The circumstances surrounding his death are
illuminating: when she heard of her 25-year sentence, she immedi-
ately told him to sign the divorce papers so as not to have to wait.
After at first refusing, he acquiesced because the government had in-
tervened with a choice: sign the divorce papers or go to prison.
Being too old and sick to risk the hardships of prison, he signed.
Within two weeks he had died. Without elaboration, al-Ghazali
mentions that her sister had announced that he had died without
honor. Implicitly she concurs with the declaration.
Having successfully shown that the men are not strong enough to
fight the jihaid that the world's current pitiful state requires, al-
Ghazal presents herself as the ideal mujihida (fighter), or even
mujaddida (renewer of Islam who appears once in a century). Her
name is doubly empowering. First, her given name links her with
Islam's best known warrior woman. Zaynab, the granddaughter of

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16 MIRIAM COOKE

the Prophet, has come down to us as the model of th

fights alongside men in the battlefield.22 Her family
to her namesake, Imam al-Ghazali. His 11 - 12th centu
autobiography, Al-munqidh min al-dalil, is a treatise o
scend the world while also saving it. Centuries later,
to the Muslim world to continue his daCwa. She, a wo
sent to save the world from tyrants like Nasser. She i
pared for her special ordeal. Her purity is so great th
derail it must always fail. Zaynab al-Ghaz51i's life is th
plary individual, more importantly, of an exempla
presents herself as the sacrifice that will redeem Egy
world. Whereas others do not recognize that they are
able to demonstrate through her journey into the In
the forces that the less enlightened are constantly co
that alone they cannot overcome. Even the Muslim B
commitment to God and to the founding of the Islami
is known, were broken by the authorities. She alone w
vail over the enemies of her people.23
Moving to the women's prison in Qanatir dampe
and provides an odd twist at the end of this "feminist" text.
Whereas at the War Prison she had had to face men alone, she is now
surrounded by a "lost troop of wandering humanity in the depths
of ignorance (who have) forgotten their humanity, purity, chastity
and nobility and become animals." (p. 195) It is worth noting that
when Nawal al-SaCdawi was thrown into that same prison, she found
herself with some munaqqabdt (women wearing the distinctive veil of
the fundamentalist movement), in other words with some Muslim
Sisters like Zaynab al-Ghazili. She describes them as mostly ig-
norant, blindly following Islamic dictates. This secular feminist is
as shocked by the fundamentalist women with whom she is incarcer-
ated as is the leader of these same fundamentalist women when she

22 Ali Shariati, the ideologue of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, has written of
the two female models available to the pious Muslim woman: Fatima the mother
and Zaynab the warrior.
23 When Islam prevailed, other causes, like Palestine, would prosper (p. 192).
Her vocation is so deeply spiritual that it encompasses the political also.

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 ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI 17

is thrown in with secular women prisoners. Unlike most women

prisoners who tell of their experiences, these two autobiographers do
not discover their "common lot with (their) fellow prisoners and in
(their) diary rewrite the social order to include a vision of new rela-
tional possibilities which transgress ethnic, class, and racial divisions
as well as family ties."24 Both are feminists, yet both condemn
women whose inner drives, being different from their own, they re-
fuse to acknowledge. Nothing must detract from the central role of
the narrator. Does this inability to empathize with their fellow wom-
en prisoners detract from the feminist and utopian nature of their
autobiographical projects? Or, must we once again question the na-
ture of the discourse-is it model-making or consciousness-raising?
And if we can make the distinction will that help to place the text and
to explain its motivation? I believe that it does, because the urge in
al-Ghazili's text to create a model of acceptable activism for Muslim
women has made her overlook the relational aspect of her life. She
is preoccupied with the individual woman's struggle.
Days from my Life combines features of both pious and feminist
autobiography, yet it also deviates from both. It is unconcerned with
the evolution of the self, it refuses to engage with the subjectivity of
the narrator either as spiritual seeker or as political agent. Zaynab
al-Ghazali is not writing this book to discover something about her-
self, or even to learn from outside herself. Zaynab al-Ghazali is not
writing this book for herself but for others as a guide and that is why
she so often addresses her reader. Although her experiences extend
over a protracted period, the narrator presents a synchronic account
of the totality of those experiences. She is at all times a complete and
perfect exemplar whose vocation is proven by her special relation-
ship with the Prophet Muhammad.
Does her life conform with Islamic norms of femininity? Can she
be even only close to perfect if she enjoins domesticity on pious Mus-
lim women, yet herself controls and ignores her husband, eschews
motherhood and throws herself into the fray of worldly power and
politics? Yes, she is the perfect revolutionary. Like so many contem-

24 Harlow, Resistance Literature, p. 142. I question Harlow's contention that al-

SaCdawi discovered her common lot with the women in Qanitir.

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18 MIRIAM COOKE

porary Arab women writers, she has written about

struggle. Yet, the political and feminist ramification
are always already evident. Like the Cairene women of whom
Arlene Macleod writes in Accommodating Protest, her behavior ex-
hibits Gramscian "contradictory consciousness". Like those lower
middle-class urban women who aspire through their work in the
public sphere to a higher social and economic status while holding
on to traditional respectability, her "beliefs support the dominant
ideology" of Islam, yet her "behavior expresses an alternative."25
She declares that women should marry, be obedient to their hus-
bands and have children. Yet, she only marries-having divorced
her first husband for interfering in her religious work-under the
condition that her second husband, an old polygamist who was thus
less demanding, recognize that her dacwa supersedes her marriage.
He never asks her about her activities. Even when young men come
in the middle of the night he lets them in, arranges for food and drink
and then tells her that "Some of her children had come". (p. 35) By
assigning her the role of "mother to the faithful", he defuses the ten-
sion inherent in such a meeting. In her interview with Hoffman, she
explains that after he had died, she "was free to give all my time to
the cause. " Children are so far from any of her priorities that in the
book she does not even mention their lack. But she does not choose
against them. In another interview with Hoffman-Ladd, she says
that she was able to devote herself to the Islamic cause because of "a
great blessing, which would not usually be considered a blessing,
that I never had any children. ,,26 Like many Sufi women, she con-
tents herself with adopting spiritual proteges to whom she refers as
her children.
The ideal of women's domesticity-the domain of men's rights
over their women-is to be shelved until the Islamic state is restored.
She says, "it may take generations for Islam to rule. We are not
rushing ahead of ourselves. On the day that Islam rules, Muslim
women will find themselves in their natural kingdom, educating

25 Arlene Elowe Macleod Accommodating Protest. Working Women, the New Veiling
and Change in Cairo, NY: Columbia U.P., 1991, p. 160.
26 Hoffman-Ladd, "Muslim Fundamentalists", p. 27.

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 ZAYNAB AL-GHAZALI 19

men." (p. 144) Hers is a deferred and perhaps thereb

utopia. In the meantime, all men and, most significa
must wage ajihad whose importance overrides all oth
And it is curious to note that although she advocates
the ideal activity for women, "the models of women
those of women warriors, including Layla bint Tarif ... and
Nusayba bint KaCb al-Maziniyya. "27
Although al-Ghazili has not been considered a feminist, for me
she is. She foregrounds the importance of women's activism in the
current jahilya, or age of ignorance. By her own example, she em-
phasizes that women should be active in seeking to apply duties to
God and the Islamic state above rights of individuals. This hierarchy
allows her to use the Islamic legal system to empower herself. Not
only did she know that she might dictate her conditions for marriage
and write them into the contract, she also turned to the sixth pillar
of Islam, jihid. The Islamic nation is together engaged in jihad,
war. As such, it is subject to abnormal rules of war that allow for the
relaxation of codes of social conduct and gender arrangements in
anticipation of the post-bellum society. Zaynab al-Ghaza1i, like
other women in other wars, is transforming the meanings attached
to roles assigned to women. She is calling for a prioritization of
domestic roles, but transformed in terms of current needs. She con-

27 Hoffman-Ladd, "Muslim Fundamentalists", p. 27. I have noted a parallel

in the philosophy of the Peruvian Shining Path. The women in this Maoist move-
ment are thoroughly engaged in revolutionary struggle. However, their struggle
must be waged within a domestic context, for they are the model of their new
society.
"The relation between a man and a woman is the most direct and strictly human,
and constitutes a social relation. When those who wish to enter this relation are
communists (or revolutionaries) this union should strengthen the fight both are en-
gaged in for communism.
Today, as we live the third moment of contemporary Peruvian society and our
people take up arms under the leadership of the Communist Party of Peru to trans-
form society by means of Popular War from the countryside to the city, Comrades
(or companeros with names) have decided to contract matrimony so that their marri-
age and their union serves the advancement of our revolution.
In the name of the Communist Party (or New State) which represents the New
Society and before these witnesses (add names) I declare you husband and woman
(wife), so that you support, help and assist and so serve better and more the revolu-
tion. "-Jose Carlos Mariategue, early 20th century Peruvian socialist, considered
by the Shining Path to be a Communist hero.

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20 MIRIAM COOKE

tinues to use patriarchal discourse because like all wo

ing radical reform in power relations she must hone
as to be heard. From within the Islamic movement, s
against religiously sanctioned gender norms without
charge of infidel. To speak and to be effective, she mu
brace those norms and show them to be contingent u
religious exigencies. She is like the Palestinian women
Bank and Gaza during the Intifada whom Rita Giacaman and
Penny Johnson describe as having "enlarged or extended their
traditional roles rather than adopting a completely new one." She
uses the rhetoric of a domestic ideal while subverting its meaning
through her behavior. If in exceptional times such as war it is alright
for women to relate to their spouse and children as men have always
related to their spouse and children, it may eventually be alright for
this state of affairs to continue. Then, as in the Intifada, domestic
roles may "become a source of resistance because women (will have)
transformed their family responsibilities to encompass the entire
community.' 28
Zaynab al-Ghazili may claim in interviews and write in Islamic
journals that women should restrict themselves to the home, but in
her life, and significantly, in writing her life, she marginalizes dom-
esticity. Are we to believe the prescriptive articles or the descriptive
self-authoring? Or, should we believe both at the same time? If so,
then we can let the apparent contradictions stand and function as a
dynamic, if isolated, model of social revolution.

28 Rita Giacaman & Penny Johnson, "Palestinian Women: Building Barri-

cades and Breaking Barriers" in Zachary Lockman andJoel Beinin (eds.), Intifada.
The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation, Boston: South End Press, 1989,
p. 161.
Wiebke Walther's article "Die Agypterin Sainab al-Ghasali als Propagandistin
fundamentalistischer Sozialethik" in: D. Dahnke (ed.), Blickwechsel. Frauen in
Religion und Wissenschaft. Marburg 1993, p. 273-297 came too late to my attention
to be included in my analysis.

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