Report from Beirut

5th October. I'm here attending the conference on Arab Feminism: a critical perspective, organised by the Association of Lebanese Researchers (Bahtithat) and the Women and Memory Forum in Cairo. It started last night with a keynote by Mervat Hatem, who is president of the Middle East Studies Association, and who has written a lot about women and politics. Before that Jean Said Makdisi, one of the hosts, welcomed everyone, and acknowledged the Palestinian visitors who had gone to great lengths to travel to Beirut via Amman. They were given a spontaneous round of applause. Jean also welcomed those of us who had come from outside the region. She explained that the aim of the conference was to take a critical look at Arab feminisms as they have evolved over the years, from Morocco in the west, Yemen and Sudan in the south, Iraq in the west. The conference was the beginning of a new chapter which 'places us firmly in the global south, not only as Arab women but as citizens of Arab countries.' What is the rightful place of feminism in countries that have been suffering from occupation, devastation, environmental degradation, and to what extent should we, as women, make separate analyses as women? Mervat laid out some of the issues and although it was clearly quite controversial - she talked about some of the differences between the different Arab states, showing how certain governments had used the idea of feminism/women's issues to improve their image (thinking of Susannah Mubarak, the First Lady of Egypt perhaps?). She also talked about how secular women had marginalised religious women until now, treating the development of Islamic feminism with aggression and contempt. She asked the question: what do women want? but admitted she couldnt answer it. There was a bit of discussion as there is at the start of big conferences - both slightly tense and tentative. The proceedings are mostly in Arabic as you'd expect, but the translation is not very good, everyone agrees. eg they translated 'liberalism' as 'liberation' - not quite the same thing. This means it's hard to get the nuances, and sometimes the point as well. Today was a full day of panels, 95% in Arabic. Three things stand out. First, as Hoda Elsadda (from Manchester/Cairo, also one of the organisers) pointed out, there are deep disagreements about how to translate terms like 'gender' which are important to sort out. Second, a participant from KSA commented that education was not necessarily a positive thing for Saudi women - meaning I think that it did not provide space for intellectual and social advancement. Third Zeina suggested it was important to look to Latin America for examples of strategy, experience and revolutionary ideas. She got a big clap from the younger participants when she advocated sweeping away all patriarchal institutions and replacing them with ones that operated on the basis of equality. I didn't attend two further panels as I wanted to visit Sabra and Shatilla, or rather the uncommemorated sites of the massacres. We were fortunate in having a very well informed taxi driver who drove us there, and showed us the edge of the Palestinian camps, where the inhabitants are forced to live in horribly overcrowded conditions, with no rights of citizenship whatsoever.