Qasim Amin Influence On Women

Qasim Amin was born in 1863 Alexandria and died in 1908 Cairo at the young age of 45, he was the son of an aristocratic Ottoman-Turkish father. Amin was an Egyptian lawyer, an Islamic modernist, reformer, one of the founders of the Cairo University, and an architect of Egyptian nationalism (Kurzman 61). Amin’s academic accomplishments made him a part of the British Empire’s civil servant class and in 1885, he was appointed as a jurist in the Mixed Courts of Egypt which were run by the British Empire and were saturated in foreign, western influence (Rida).

Amin is perhaps most known for his advocacy of women 's emancipation in Egypt as he was an avid writer on feminism and had written a total of six books on women; most notable were Tahrir Al-Mar 'a (The Liberation of Women) published in 1899 and Al-Mar 'a Al-Jadida (The New Woman) published a year later, in 1900. Although Amin was not one of the first Egyptians to write on women’s rights, upon publishing his book Tahrir Al-Mar’a, the discursive contributions within it, came to overshadow all who preceded Amin, even those

He believed that changing customs regarding women and effectively changing their public costume, abolishing the veil in particular, were key to bringing about the desired general social transformation. In 1989, in his book Tahrir Al-Mar’a, Amin states that a woman’s education is only necessary until she has completed the primary level. In 1900, his book Al-Mar’a Al-Jadida contradicts this idea as he now believes that the abolishment of the veil would lead to the increase in educated women, and that the advancement of society began with the education of women, who then raise educated men. Amin, when challenged by conservatives who opposed the idea of abolishing the veil, replied not from the perspective of gender equality, but from the standpoint to follow the superior Western civilization. He