Il y aura un quiz sur le vocabulaire

The Muslim sisterhood was set up as a chapter of the Ikhwan, as the Brotherhood is known in Arabic, a few years after the founding of the movement in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. A pious schoolteacher who believed that adhering to Islam in every aspect of life was the path to defeating colonialism and overcoming social injustice, he created what would become the world’s most important Islamic movement. Though the Brotherhood once had a military wing (one of its later ideologues, Sayyid Qutb, inspired jihadi ideology), it evolved into a movement that rejects violence and argues – some say unconvincingly – that democracy can be compatible with its ideal of an Islamic state.

Muslim sisters prepare to hand out leaflets on the streets of El Taba, one of Cairo’s poorer neighbourhoods

The sisters tell me that everything they do, whether helping people in need, teaching Islam or campaigning for office, is in the service of God. I met a group of young sisters who are part of a new Brotherhood-backed student organisation on the leafy campus of Cairo’s Ain Shams university. They were huddled on a bench listening to 21-year-old Aya Mustafa reading and explaining a Koranic verse about loyalty. “Ikhlas [loyalty] means to do something for god and not ask for praise in return or for monetary compensation,” says Mustafa.

She explains that the new organisation, Nour, assists students with religious education and university life, launching campaigns for better accommodation and more security on campus. Before the revolution she used to distribute leaflets about Islam and food parcels during Ramadan, but would be harassed by security guards who accused her of wanting to overthrow the Mubarak government. “Egypt was destroyed by Mubarak and, while the men have the biggest burden, we have to help. I felt the weight of responsibility to join Freedom and Justice now that we can have parties because, for us, Islam cannot be disassociated from politics.” When Mustafa mentions that Nour is organising a conference about women leaders, I ask her for examples of such figures. “People like Oprah [Winfrey], for example, but there are also many in Islamic history who even participated in wars and were teachers to some men.” We also talk about love and relationships, and the limits on Islamist girls. They tell me Islamic teachings make them feel precious. “A woman is a very special thing in Islam, her body and her heart is for one man only, it is not a commodity. So we need to protect ourselves,” says Mustafa.

The older sisters are for the most part educated, middle-class women who wear their hijab conservatively, letting it hang down their shoulders over loose clothing. They are taught not to wear make-up or jewellery that might attract the attention of men other than their husbands, and nor do they pluck their eyebrows, something they say is forbidden by a saying of the prophet.

“The goal of each [sister] is to learn about Islam because it can change her life and improve it and then share and clarify that to people,” says Oumayma Kamel, the most senior woman in the Ikhwan, and an adviser to the president. “So you learn the texts and you practise them and spread them and this takes time and training, it’s very applied.”

Being part of the Ikhwan is an all-encompassing project – “it is who you are, how you are brought up and how you identify with others,” as Asem puts it. The building block of the organisation is the usra. The word means family in Arabic but in this context it refers to a group of Brotherhood members of similar ages, often from the same neighbourhood, who form a unit that meets every week to study religious texts, and organises outings and charitable activities on a regular basis. The Brotherhood also runs religious and social programmes for every age, starting with toddlers and moving on to teenagers, with the girls being prepared for their roles as wives and mothers. For adults too, members of an usra help each other, with jobs or financial support.

If your child is misbehaving or your marriage is in trouble, the Brotherhood can come to the rescue. The political party, which is now taking on some of the movement’s mainstream activities, also offers Irshad Osari, or family guidance. I attended a session in which women were being trained as family (and marriage) counsellors to be stationed in FJP offices across the country. The instructor prods the women to express their feelings – one rambles on about how she stares at the Nile and feels the water washing away her troubles and another tells of how she knew from an early age that she had the gift of solving other people’s problems. The instructor is trying to focus women on the fact that they have abilities and masses of energy that should be channelled for the benefit of others. “What’s important is not to rest but to feel satisfied,” Ghada Hashad, the organiser of the meeting, tells them. “You are all special because you have so much energy.”

In its early days, the sisterhood was made up of the wives and female relatives of members. It acted as a quiet addition to the Ikhwan until repression took the men away, leaving the women to carry the flame. Although scholars of the Brotherhood have written about several women leaders, the one that stands out is Zaynab al-Ghazali. She was the strong-minded, charismatic activist who was a central figure after the assassination of al-Banna in 1949, when she held secret meetings to reorganise the movement and helped the families of those arrested. She too would be detained in 1965 and tortured. Ghazali documented her experience in the jails of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the late Egyptian president who had turned ferociously against the Brotherhood, in her book Return of the Pharaoh.

Hassan al-Banna. Founder in 1928 of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Banna believed it would help to defeat colonialism

Ghazali is held up as an inspiration to sisters of all generations. Azza al-Gharf, a 48-year-old member of parliament for the Brotherhood, studied under Ghazali and became attached to her, taking up the preaching and charity work that has made her one of the most high-profile sisters. Gharf told me that Ghazali had picked her husband, another Brotherhood member, whom Gharf married when she was 18 before they both went to university. Gharf’s own work has been in getting women involved in grassroots activities, including educating others. “Instead of sitting in front of the television, women should engage in social work,” she says.

It was during the Nasser years that the sisters, who still had freedom of movement, became more active. “When the sisters’ branch was first created, the role of the woman was still in the home, she raised the children and she was the biggest support for her husband. But when the men were repressed, when they were away, and the families had financial strains, the women helped, they could still interact with society, still go to charities and to mosques,” explains Amal Abdelkarim, who heads the FJP women’s section in the governorate of Giza.

Zaynab al-Ghazali. A key Brotherhood activist following the assassination of al‑Banna, Ghazali was imprisoned and tortured in the 1960s

Halafawi made history in 2000 in Alexandria as the first female Brotherhood candidate for parliament. Sadat had been assassinated in 1981 and Hosni Mubarak was president. His attitude towards the banned Brotherhood oscillated between tolerance and repression. “When I ran, the world was turned upside down, within the Brotherhood but also within the regime,” recalls Halafawi, a small 60-year-old woman whose shy appearance belies her fiery spirit. We are in her cluttered Cairo apartment, and she sits with her arms crossed. “It was a big crisis for the regime, which was saying that the Brotherhood was a backward organisation.” The regime conspired to deny her a victory even though she received the highest number of votes in her district. But she nonetheless set the Brotherhood on a new course. “A step had been taken and the Muslim Brotherhood could not go back. It opened up to women candidates.”

Halafawi is among the sisters who have been asking for official positions for women in the Brotherhood – something which she says has become possible since the revolution. She tells me that some women are demanding representation in the guidance bureau, the highest structure in the organisation, under the supreme guide.

It was not until last year’s parliamentary vote, however, that candidates associated with the Brotherhood reached parliament, with four women elected in December (the assembly has since been dissolved). But while the sisters acknowledge that most women in the Brotherhood still vote for male candidates, they have proved their value as activists in campaigns and in mobilising the female vote. “When men saw what we could accomplish in elections, they started to change the way they look at us,” says 35-year-old Nermeen Hassan, a professor at Cairo University’s medical school. “I remember how in 2005, in the first rally by women during an election campaign, the men were giving us instructions all the time, telling us not to lose our temper, not to appear too emotional. But then they were impressed – the sisters carried their children with them and marched, and we were clever in how we dealt with the street, we didn’t even disrupt traffic.”

Fatma al-Zomor, the hyperactive assistant head of the teachers union, is known for her campaigning skills. She came from a modest family consisting mostly of loyalists to the Mubarak regime but joined the Brotherhood at 17, after benefiting from the free after-school lessons they provided in her village (the tutoring ranged from mathematics to the Koran). “I read the letters of Hassan al-Banna and other books and I believed in their principles,” she says. She would later run a Brotherhood-backed charity that distributed food in poor neighbourhoods and start two charities on her own, sending monthly stipends to 150 families. The charities were shut down when the authorities discovered who was behind them. She now teaches Arabic and Islamic studies and only told her students she was from the Muslim Brotherhood after the revolution. So she had numerous people to call on when the movement decided to put up Mohamed Morsi for president. “We can work under any pressure,” she says.