Alifa Rifaat

Presentation by Megan Tafoya

 Biography
Born in 1930 in Egypt as Fatimah Rifaat

Wrote under the pseudonym of Alifa Rifaat to

avoid embarrassing her family

Grew up oppressed like most women in her time

period and culture

Wanted to attend the College of Fine Arts but was

married off to her cousin instead

Her writings are deeply rooted in Arabic and

Islamic traditions

Her husband denied her to publish her stories for

more than a decade because her themes of
eroticism and sexuality were considered an
embarrassment

Her writings have caused her to be the target of

religious fundamentalists, conservative critics,
religious leaders, and other authors
Islamic tradition
and women
Other interpretations of the Quran say
that the testimony of a women is only
half that of a mans
Women are viewed as inferior, female
rulers are frowned upon as well as
women in academia
Wives should be subservient to their
husbands, wives always need their
husband's permission to almost
everything
Women are also deemed lacking in faith
and intelligence
 continued
Womens rights are compromised by a section of the Quran that has
been interpreted to say that men have pre-eminence over women or
that they are overseers of women

In Islam, women can have one spouse while men can have four

The legal age for girls to marry is very young and occasionally is
exploited by pedophiles

Wives in Islamic societies face great difficulty suing for divorce, they
often fear poverty or losing their children

This and other values have been used to legitimize abandonment and
beating of wives

Wife beating is very prevalent in the Muslim world and victims often
have to be convinced that violent acts by husbands are unacceptable
 Politics and Arab
feminism
A feminist movement has emerged in Egypt in the
latter half of the nineteenth century
The movement has received true recognition in the
past fifty years
Western concepts of feminism are often confused with
feminism in third world countries, especially Arab
countries
Egyptian feminist writers have struggles to obtain an
identity of their own within the boundaries of the
Islamic tradition
 The problem

Alifa Rifaat and other authors argue that the male

dominance that governs Arab societies is the result of
misinterpreting the Quran on the part of men

They feel many of the parts of the Quran that deal

specifically with women and their social rights are
ignored

Rifaat argues that if the Quran teachings were

practiced and read in the proper way, Arab women
would have a much higher social status one that is
close to equality with men
 writing
Rifaat has also written other
books with themes of
lesbianism, female circumcision,
and rape
Many of her writings have been
extremely controversial and were
not sold in most Egyptian
bookstores
They were considered too
violent or strayed too far from
the existing social norms in the
Arab world
 Themes
Rifaats characters mostly live in Egypt and re often women who are oppressed by men
in their lives

Regardless of the setting, her characters feel the need to be free or liberate themselves
from social constraints

Also the mother-daughter relationship and the length mothers will go to protect their
daughters

Challenging established expectations and demands of the right to the preservation of the
female body

In Bahiyyas Eyes she critiques female circumcision and arranged marriages

Sexuality is another theme of her writings, she writes how husbands do not provide
sexual satisfaction to their wives

Her most popular story A Distant View of A Minaret, she challenges the males right
within marriage to dominate, control, and deny his wifes achievement of pleasure
 Works Cited
"Alifa Rifaat." Dangerous Women Project. N.p., 04 May
2016. Web. 15 June 2017.
Al-Manteeqi, Immanuel. "A Woman Under Sharia: 8
Reasons Why Islamic Law Endangers Women."
CounterJihad. N.p., 07 Sept. 2016. Web. 15 June 2017.
Beyer, Lisa. "The Women of Islam." Time. Time Inc.,
25 Nov. 2001. Web. 15 June 2017.
Salti, Ramzi. "Feminism and Religion If Alifa Rifaat's
Short Stories." The International Fiction Review 18.2
(1991): 108-12. Web. 14 June 2017.