The Mosque and Women’s Resistance: Rethinking the Summer of 2013 in Cairo

In 2013, when the criticism of the newly elected political leaders that hailed from the Muslim Brotherhood reached a nationwide crescendo, Egyptian women also took to the streets in masses. Yet, despite the widespread support for the coup that deposed the democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, not all Egyptian women agreed with this political turn. Although much has been written about women’s activism in Egypt during the country’s recent transitional period (2011-2013), the activism of those who supported the Islamists has received less attention. This article discusses the little-researched perspective of Egyptian women who resisted the overthrow of President Morsi in the summer of 2013. The article delves into the reasoning of a group of women who supported the ousted president amidst violence, death, and the imprisonment of his loyalists. It does so by drawing on the author’s ethnographic research in a mosque in one of Cairo’s impoverished neighborhoods. The Qur’an lessons that are analyzed in this article did not only provide guidance on the study of religious texts, but they also offered a safe space in which the women could interpret the unfolding political developments.