Thread by @HusseinAboubak

The social history of the Middle East is much more interesting than most people think. In the 1960s, during a period of state-led westernization, the Arab feminist movement that led the effort for the liberalization of women took the lead in producing feminist antisemitism /1

in various literary forms. The Iraqi female poet Nazik AlMala'eka produced a poem decrying miniskirts as a "Jewish innovation." The Lebanese radical feminist Leila AlBalabaki authored the novel "I live" in which she juxtaposed herself against a pregnant Jewish woman /2

whom she described as "the Jewess carrying an enemy, a butcher, while I'm carrying in my head the tragedies of a nation.. she is preparing the future of a despised people and I prepare in my head the fantasies of a meeting. Every day, she drops poison from her blood into /3

the veins of a misanthrope." Starting from the late 1960's, progressive feminism became part of the repertoire of then rising Marxist and nationalist terrorist movements, both Palestinian and Lebanese, and the type of female heroine/martyr who helps in murdering Jewish children/4

was introduced. It was the Iranian Revolution and the following rise of reactionary Islamism that halted the tides of Arab feminism and restricted Arab female resistance to reproductive duties in the bedroom. I just thought this is an interesting part of the history /5

feminism and the history of Arab feminism that doesn't get told often, if at all. Please keep a critical distance between you and any isms!

I can add that Islamist feminism remained peripheral for decades until the recent return of Western left/feminist radicalism picked it back up and transformed it into a new hybrid seen in Sarsour, Omar, etc.

An NYT article from 1964 celebrating the feminism of Leyla Balabaki,
nytimes.com/1964/09/13/arc…

Also you may want to check this piece of work out,