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Doria Shafik

Egyptian activist (1908–1975)

Doria Shafik (14 December 1908 – 20 September 1975) was an Egyptian feminist, poet and editor, and one of the principal leaders of the women's liberation movement in Egypt in the mid-1940s. As a direct result of her efforts, Egyptian women were granted the right to vote by the Egyptian constitution.

Doria Shafik

Quotes

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  • My life began with the First World War and ever since has been a continual struggle.
    • "Memoirs" (1975) as quoted in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (1991) ed., Nikki R. Keddie, Beth Baron.
  • To catch the imponderable thread connecting my... existence to my... past, as well as to my country's history and civilization. The Egypt I knew... was... awakening from a thousand years' sleep, becoming conscious of its long sufferings—that it had rights! And I learned in my... childhood that the Will of woman can supersede the law.
    • "Memoirs" (1975) as quoted by Cynthia Nelson, Doria Shafik Egyptian Feminist: A Woman apart (1996)
  • [N]early all of the difficulties facing Egyptian women centered around polygamy and hasty divorce by men without protection for women and children.
    • As quoted in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (1991) ed., Nikki R. Keddie, Beth Baron.
  • It was obvious to me that women representatives were essential in the Parliament. They must not only be present in the legislative chambers when laws concerning them are legislated; but also... involved in writing the laws. ...[T]he only two bills presented in 1923 by Huda Sha'rawi (... for limiting polygamy and ... curbing easy divorce) had long been forgotten; while other laws concerning men were developing and improving... Women as half the nation had to be represented in Parliament, and justly protected. ...Women should have an equal say in the laws that... affect them and their children. The only solution was to build... a Feminist Union to demand political rights...
    • As quoted in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (1991) ed., Nikki R. Keddie, Beth Baron.
  • To Want and To Dare! Never hesitate to act when the feeling of injustice revolts us. To give one's measure with all good faith, the rest will follow as a logical consequence.

Doria Shafik Egyptian Feminist: A Woman apart (1996)

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author Cynthia Nelson quotes Doria Shafik.
  • Poetry!
    My great comfort
    ...
    When
    As a shipwrecked woman on the High Seas
    Desparing...
    Overwhelmed by the Tempest
    ...
    I do not know from
    Which illumened Heavens
    You appeared
    ...Love
    ...Beauty
    I took refuge
    In your tenderness
    No longer a
    Flotsam on the Sea.
    • Preface p. xiv.
  • [M]y departure is not running away or an escape but a quest—a conquest, an acquisition of knowledge! I would leave again for Paris! I would have the highest degree in the world. I would arm myself to the teeth, with all the powerful weapons of knowledge! Then and only then would I be able to find the way to freedom.
    • p. 66.
  • For the rule of Great Nature makes us understand... that we can have nothing without paying the price, and that the higher the goal, the higher must be the price.
    • p. 67, a quote from Doria's memoirs.
  • [T]here is a sort of immanent justice, facilitating certain things in compensation for others.
    • p. 68.

Quotes about Shafik

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  • Eager to be more active in public affairs, Doria began searching for an outlet and in 1945... was offered the position of editor-in-chief of a new magazine... founded by Princess Chewikar... La Femme Nouvelle. ...[S]he was not altogether happy in that milieu and became sensitive to popular criticism that she must be in the pay of foreign powers since she was writing ...in French. ...[S]he decided to launch her own Arabic-language magazine, Bint-al-Nil, through which she continued to champion the equal rights of women. Finally, signalling her impatience with the... complacency of the government toward women's political and legal rights, Doria Shafik took the decisive step in March 1948 of establishing her Bint-al-Nil Union on behalf of the complete emancipation of Egyptian women.
    • Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (1991) ed., Nikki R. Keddie, Beth Baron.
  • Doria Shafik had been a traitor to the Revolution and did not merit having a biography written.
    • Inji Aflatoun, as quoted by Cynthia Nelson, Doria Shafik Egyptian Feminist: A Woman apart (1996)

Doria Shafik Egyptian Feminist: A Woman apart (1996)

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by Cynthia Nelson
  • Doria Shafik was a woman who wanted "to experience it all," to be a public heroine in a society that defined and circumscribed women primarily in terms of helper, supporter, and moral guide to the family in the domestic sphere. She derived strength, importance, dignity, and self-respect from her own exploits in pursuit of freedom.
    • Preface p. xi.
  • [S]he openly challenged every social, cultural, and legal barrier that she viewed as inimical and oppressive to the full equality of the women in her society, thereby contributing more directly than had the reformers of an earlier generation to the construction of an Egyptian feminist discourse surrounding women's rights and Islam. ...Dora Shafik attempted to shape a new consciousness... on several fronts: first, through writing; second, through developing a feminist organization and political party; and finally, through a strategy of direct, militant confrontation.
    • Preface p. xii.
  • She... not only founded and edited two prominent women's journals but also authored and coauthored several books... on the history, development, and renaissance of the social and political rights of the Egyptian woman. She established a feminist organization and a political party through which she challenged the very bastions of male authority under both pre-revolutionary and revolutionary regimes, shaping a feminist consciousness through a strategy of confrontation: storming the Egyptian parliament, attempting to run illegally for parliamentary elections, staging sit-ins to protest British occupation of Egypt, and... organizing an eight-day hunger strike for women's rights. She met and spoke openly about "women's rights"... with the heads of state of [Egypt,] India, Ceylon, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran; she... lectured to audiences in Europe, the United States, and the Far and Middle East... only to lose her own freedom and civil liberties in 1957 following her... protest against the erosion of democracy in Egypt under... Nasser.
    • Preface pp. xii-xiii.
  • Although Shafik was silenced and... secluded from public life from 1957 until her death in 1975, her image lingers on. Every so often, the... Egyptian press mentions the Bint al-Nil Union or reprints her photograph as a nostalgic reminder... Her name can still evoke strong reactions...
    • Preface p. xiii.
  • [T]his interplay between solitude, alienation, and creativity... ran through her life and work and... brought her into continual conflict with her family and society. Although her life is an expression of one woman's unique experience... her metaphors reach beyond the borders of Egypt to remind us of other women who... challenged the forces that constrained... autonomy and freedom in an unswerving "courage to be."
    • Preface p. xiii.
  • Doria listened to and depended upon that inner realm of memory and consciousness, her muse of interior music, her beloved companion through whose consolation she escaped on her flight into the infinite.
    • Preface p. xiii.
  • I broached the idea to her two daughters... to undertake a biographical study of their mother. Their response... enthusiastic and encouraging. ...[T]hanks to their trust... Shafik's personal memoirs and unpublished papers have been generously shared, profound and painful memories have been re-lived, and pathways of understanding have been established.
    • Preface p. xiv.

The Postcolonial Crescent: Islam's Impact on Contemporary Literature (1998)

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ed. John Charles Hawley
  • ...in opposition to the rising tide of religious conservatism as well as the new revolutionary ethos that after 1952 dominated the politics of the country. Caught between the images of her own creation ("The New Woman" and "The Daughter of the Nile").
    • p. 112.
  • Doria Shafik was educated within two cultures and thus could visualize the broader context of her historical situation. She was a nonconformist who could "break out..."...
    • p. 114.
  • Doria Shafik took the liberal ideology of the EFU one step further, becoming more militant in her reformist ideas and actions than Huda Sharawi. ...Shafik thought of herself as the symbol of the new Egyptian woman emerging after World War II—highly educated, articulate, internationalist, urbane, attractive, and elegantly dressed... She presented herself... as different from the secluded, traditionally clad, silent majority of Egyptian women. Militant while remaining feminine... out to conquer the male elite sphere of politics. At the beginning of her career she might have defended the upper classes as the "natural" rulers of Egypt... [in] La femme nouvelle. By the end of the 1940s, however, she was... becoming one of the leading spokespersons for the middle class, which she considered eligible to rule.
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