REPORTS: The Istanbul Workshop
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Since the Women and Memory Forum maintains a general interest in diverse cultural events and activities about subjects of civilizational heritage, as well as in historisizing issues of gender relations, Letters seeks to introduce any new additions in this field and to identify experiments and research trends -- in other places -- which relate to the Arab (or Muslim) woman's status in society as linked to cultural values and social practices. It is hoped that this will establish bridges of contact, increase the benefit of comparative perspectives, and thus widens the horizon of the project.
In answer to an invitation by Nilufer Gole, Professor of social sciences at Bogazici University in Istanbul, I attended a 3-day workshop (Sept. 11-13, 1996) entitled "Women in Islamist Politics: Between Public Visibility and Communitarian Perspective," along with a group of Arab women researchers -- from Lebanon, Tunis, Algeria, Morocco, and from Iran and Turkey. A number of graduate students in the Department also attended and presented their work, mainly revolving around the phenomenon of Islamist women in present day Turkey, who support the recent Islamist movement or actually belong to Islamist political parties.
The general subject upon which the researchers' papers and discussions converged was the movement in other countries and its significance to women's status and life-conditions in those societies. The goal was to address issues of gender, politics, and religion on a comparative basis. Introducing the workshop, Professor Gole put forth the premise that is to be debated by the various presentations, which is the centrality of women in the current Islamist movement on account of their active political participation and militant activism within or without party allegiances. This new phenomenon of Islamist politicization led the women to acquire new voices as public citizens and thus new societal roles. Consequently, a tension may arise between these women's developed and active lives, on the one hand, and traditional gender identities, on the other. One of the positive results of this process -- according to Gole -- is that women's participation in Islamist politics legitimizes a new realm of social roles and opportunities, both  political and religious, hitherto unventured. Hence, they are able to reconstruct for themselves a unique value system that incorporates their new acquired roles and an Islamic frame of reference that can be a source of support and empowerment.
The following questions, therefore, were posed: What is the impact of these movements on the development of the Muslim woman's identity in Muslim societies, and on these women's own self-perceptions and definition of their engagement in political and professional action? What is their intellectual stance concerning religious heritage -- traditional or critical? Does active political practice also raise the level of awareness and religious knowledge and so become a source of empowerment and improvement in society? What is the relationship between modern Islamic activism and gender relations? How do these movements vary according to different historical, social, and political settings in every country?
 Indeed, each speaker did present the Islamist experience in her/his respective country and explained women's roles within this movement and their self-reflexivity on their gender and Islamist identities. Points of view and assessments varied, ranging from those who endorsed the positive outcome of women's Islamist activity and individuation to those in doubt of the value of the experiment or of its usefulness to women altogether. Nevertheless, everyone talked, exchanged their experiences, and expressed different opinions that still allowed a common ground of concerns about women's self-definition and perception of their roles and cultural/religious identities in modern Arab and Muslim societies, and of a desire to extend bridges of personal and professional contacts. I mention here: Dalal El-Bizri and Azza Beydoun from Lebanon, Zaynab Samandi from Tunis, Boutheyna Cheriet, Doria Cherifati and Cherifa Bouatta from Algeria, Mounia Bennani from Morocco, and Fariba Abdelkhah from Iran; also Kenan Cayir , Buket Turkmen, and Alev Inan Cinar from Turkey.

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