People can “change the system of industrial capitalism” that oppresses them
Nawal El Saadawi — Memoirs from Women’s Prison
Excerpt, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett
“… [T]he technology of oppression, might without justice has become more advanced. The fetters on mind and body have become invisible.
“The most dangerous shackles are the invisible ones — shackles that deceive people into believing they are free. This delusion is the new prison that people inhabit today.
“North and south, east and west, we inhabit the age of the technology of false consciousness, the technology of hiding truths behind amiable humanistic slogans that may change from one era to another.…
“Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections.
“True democracy obtains only when the people — women, men, young people, children — have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor or female or darker-skinned.”
Sources and notes
Memoirs from the Women’s Prison, Nawal El Saadawi at http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/68481.Nawal_El_Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawi
Leading Egyptian feminist, sociologist, physician and militant writer on problems of Arab women, Dr. Nawal El Saadawi (b. 1931, Kafr Tahla village outside Cairo) is one of the most widely translated contemporary fiction and nonfiction writers.
Nawal El Saadawi was imprisoned in 1980 (released in 1982) under the Sadat [Muhammad Anwar Al Sadat, president of Egypt 1970-1981 (assassinated), his vice president and successor Hosni Mubarak] regime, for alleged ‘crimes against the state.’ El Saadawi said, ‘I was arrested because I believed Sadat. He said there is democracy and we have a multi-party system and you can criticize. So I started criticizing his policy and I landed in jail.’
From prison, she continued to fight against oppression and in 1981 formed the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association, the first legal, independent feminist organization in Egypt. An international membership of 2,000, the AWSA conducts conferences and seminars, publishes a magazine, and creates income-generating projects for rural women. Egypt banned the AWSA in 1991 after the group criticized U.S. involvement in the Gulf War. El Saadawi felt the situation should have been resolved among the Arabs.
In 1983, Dr. Nawal El Saadawi published Memoirs from the Women’s Prison in which she continued to attack the repressive Egyptian government.
Ref. “Nawal Saadawi” by Jennifer McBride, http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/saadawi.html
Dr. Saadawi and Dr. Hetata were members of the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal that investigated war crimes against Iraq. WAR CRIMES: A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal, http://www.nawalsaadawi.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=34&Itemid=54
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