Editing Qasim Amin (section)

==Influence of the Nahda (Awakening)==
Amin became a central figure of the [[Nahda]] movement that achieved prominence in Egypt during a period of "feminist consciousness" in the latter part of the nineteenth century.<ref name=autogenerated4 /> He agreed with his mentor, the exiled Muhammad Abduh, in blaming Islamic traditionalists for the moral and intellectual decay of Islam which, they believed, had caused its colonisation by western forces. Egypt, at the time, was a colony of the British Empire and partly of France.<ref>Badron, Margot. "Unveiling in Early Century Egypt: Practical and Symbolic Considerations." Middle Eastern Studies 25, no. 3 (July 1989): 370-386.</ref> 

Abduh called for all Muslims to unite, to recognise the true message sent by Allah which gave women equal status, and to resist Western imperialism. Amin accepted Abduh's philosophies as he too believed the traditionalists had created an inferior society by not following true Islamic laws. Like Abduh, Amin advocated the right of females in society, and rejected the cultural values that kept Egyptian women in submission.

In his book ''The Liberation of Women'' (1899), Amin argued for the abolition of the veil. He thought that changing customs regarding women and changing their costume, abolishing the veil in particular, were key to bringing about the desired general social transformation.<ref name=":0">{{cite book |title=Women and Gender in Islam |last=Ahmed |first=Leila |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1992 |isbn=0-300-05583-8 |location=New Heaven and London |pages=[https://archive.org/details/womengenderinisl00ahme/page/145 145] |url=https://archive.org/details/womengenderinisl00ahme/page/145 }}</ref> To answer the conservatives who argued that abolition of the veil would have an influence on women's purity, Amin replied not from the perspective of gender equality but from the standpoint of following the superior Western civilization. He wrote: "Do Egyptians imagine that the men of Europe, who have attained such completeness of intellect and feeling that they were able to discover the force of steam and electricity...these souls that daily risk their lives in the pursuit of knowledge and honour above the pleasure of life, ... these intellects and these souls that we so admire, could possibly fail to know the means of safeguarding woman and preserving her purity? Do they think that such a people would have abandoned veiling after it had been in use among them if they had seen any good in it?"<ref name=":1" />

Some contemporary feminist scholars, notably [[Leila Ahmed]], have challenged Amin's status as the supposed "father of Egyptian feminism". Ahmed points out that in the gender-segregated society of the time, Amin could have had very little contact with Egyptian women other than immediate family, servants, and possibly prostitutes. His portrait of Egyptian women as backward, ignorant, and lagging behind their European "sisters" was therefore based on very limited evidence. Ahmed also concludes that through his rigorous critique and generalizations of women in Egypt along with his zealous praise of European society and colonialism, Amin, in effect, promoted the substitution of Egyptian androcentrism with Western androcentrism, ''not'' feminism.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ahmed |title=Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |year=1992 |isbn=0-300-05583-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/womengenderinisl00ahme }}</ref>

Although he saw women as inferior to men, Amin supported the legislation of divorce. According to tradition, divorce is valid if the husband verbally announces it three times. Amin thought such oral agreement was not serious enough and that the lack of legality in the process contributed to the high rate of divorce in Cairo. Many men, he argued, accidentally divorced from their wives through jokes or quarrels.<ref>{{Cite book|title = Family, Gender and Law in the Globalizing Middle East and South Asia|last = Cuno|first = Kenneth M.|publisher = Syracuse University Press|year = 2009|pages = 10}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{cite book |title=The Liberation of Women and The New Women |last=Amin |first=Qasim |publisher=American University in Cairo Press |year=2000 |isbn=977-424-567-9 |location=Cairo |pages=94}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Liberation of Women and The New Women |last=Amin |first=Qasim |publisher=American University in Cairo Press |year=2000 |isbn=977-424-567-9 |location=Cairo |pages=95}}</ref>