Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Says Women Don’t Make Good Leaders or Rulers

By Asma Marwan on September 11, 2012

Women are erratic, emotional, and they make good wives and mothers but never a leader or ruler. Or so Osama Abou Salama, professor of botany at Cairo University and member of the Muslim Brotherhood, told young men and women in premarital counseling classes. The women did not object.

Since the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power, much of the uncertainty over its social agenda is stirred by its undefined attitude toward women. Will the Brotherhood’s leaders try to impose a conservative dress code? Will they bar women from certain fields of work? Will they promote segregation at schools?

In a country where the vast majority of women already cover their hair, disregard any collective call for action and voluntarily separate from men in coed environments, that may seem academic.

But Mr. Abou Salama asks anyway. “Can you, as a woman, take a decision and handle the consequences of your decision?” A number of women shook their head. “No. But men can. And God created us this way because a ship cannot have more than one captain.”

None of the 30 or so young men and women in the class winced.

More than any other political group in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is most fluent in the dialect of the masses. By upholding patriarchal and traditional values around a woman’s place in society, it garners popular support, builds political capital and reinforces a socially conservative paradigm.
[ . . . ]
“I want you to be the flower that attracts a bee to make honey, not the trash that attracts flies and dirt,” Mr. Abou Salama said, encouraging the women not to flaunt their bodies. All the women in the room were veiled; most of them wore long loose dresses, and four had full-face covers. “A woman takes pleasure in being a follower and finds ease in obeying a husband who loves her.”