Nawal El Saadawi

Why an honorary doctorate? 

In 2007, Prof. Dr. Benjamin Van Camp & Prof. Dr. Philippe Vincke handed the VUB and ULB honorary doctorate to Nawal El Saadawi.

Free spirits do not cry

Nawal El Saadawi points to the power of education to stimulate progress. Even though she finds that educational institutions have a slight tendency to be led by the side of the authorities, the fervour of a free spirit will not be silenced. She approaches the changing social contexts in her own headstrong, fiery and incisive way; looking at the world critically and with an open mind: these are basic principles of VUB and ULB.

In humanism, the link between dissidence and creativity is central. Though Al Sadaawi's works represent vastly different genres, somehow they make the same points. They are a political-educational lesson in the development of the individual consciousness of many people.

As they become older, many people also start to lose their softness. But Nawal El Saadawi writes a different story. Her sharpness seems unassailable, as does her humour and her resistance to anything that smells of oppression, injustice, forced religion or unfriendliness towards women.

Writing is her first and forever love. It frees her from everything that binds her to something by which she does not wish to be bound. But big ideas and frank words make a lot of noise.

The statement that "Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies" unequivocally expresses her tenacious fight for the ideals she has been pursuing all her life in a world that extends far in its antagonism. As long as that world lies, her pen responds. As long as its truth cries out, danger never humbly creeps into its corner.

The urge to write

That urge translates into 56 books, essays, short stories and plays.

First female doctor in Egypt

This, combined with her love of writing, made her one of the most notorious activists and feminists in her country and abroad.

About her career

1956

After being sent to rural areas with hundreds of other doctors, she quickly came to the conclusion that poverty was the big culprit there.

2003

Great minds of the 20th century award

2007

Fonlon-Nichols award

2014

North-South prize and Premi Internacional Catalunya

Writing is in her soul

1931. In the small village of Kafr Tahla in the Egyptian Delta, the second child of the El Sawaadi family is born: Nawal. She later gains seven more siblings. Her father works for the Ministry of Education and strongly opposes British colonial rule. It is in the atmosphere of political protest and civil disobedience of her father that she grows up.

Most rural dwellers are illiterate, but in the deeply conservative Sunni family of El Sawaadi, they read and write. Nawal actually does not want to bear her grandfather's family name, because it is imposed on her - like so many other things - in the name of God and morality. 

Young Nawal El Sawaadi keeps a secret diary in which she writes her mother's name: Nawal Zaynab. She wants to cast off the false name that is being forced on her. She feels a strong urge to write. For her, it is a means of expressing human truth. When it comes to the position of women, she is unusually sharp. She shows the twisted ideas of a male religion in a way that no author in the Arab world dares.

Even though her heart beats for writing, she goes to study medicine. Because her father chooses it for her. In 1946, she takes part in student protests against British colonial rule, graduating in 1955. Being one of the first Egyptian female doctors, she immediately becomes a celebrity. She marries a fellow student, has a daughter with him but divorces soon after.

In 1956, under the socialist policy of Gamal Abdel Nasser, she is sent to the countryside along with hundreds of other doctors. She soon realises that her education does not provide answers to the needs of the villagers and blames poverty for the many problems.

She begins to criticise the economic system, class society and the exploitation of workers and peasants. After trying in vain to save a woman from her violent husband, Nawal is sent back to Cairo. From 1958 to 1972, she is Director General of Public Health at the Ministry there. But her critical reports full of radical ideas do not go unnoticed - in a negative sense. She rails against the system, exploitation and female oppression in her books, the first of which, 'I learned love', was published in 1957.

In 1972, Nawal is kicked out of the ministry after she explicitly opposes female genital mutilation in her book 'Women and Sex'. At the age of six, the same horror happened to her. The Egyptian government bans the book, but that does not stop Nawal from publishing it in Lebanon. She is the first doctor in Egypt to give her unvarnished opinion on circumcision, which has brought international attention to the issue. Under this international pressure, the regime has no choice but to ban the procedure.

El Saadawi still makes professional stops at the medical faculty of Ain-Shams University in Cairo, among other places, and as a consultant for women's programmes in Africa, the Middle East and the US.

Meanwhile, it is 1981. Nawal launches the feminist pressure group Arab Women's Solidarity Association and raises issues such as female circumcision, prostitution, Muslim fundamentalism and so on. But the Egyptian government increasingly sees her as a threat and, in September of the same year, President Sadat has her locked up in prison. Pen and paper are more dangerous than a gun. That is why she secretly writes her memoirs on toilet rolls using eyeliner lent her by a prostitute.

Shortly after the assassination of Sadat in October '81, she is released. She continues to express her dislike for Islamists and all other religious fundamentalists around the world. Even though Nawal El Sadaawi is just as much of a firebrand for the West, she flees to the United States in 1988. It is not until many years later that she returns to her roots, where she stands as a candidate in the first free presidential elections in 2005. It is the heavy conditions that make her retrace her steps.

But many cannot forget the sound of her sharp tongue. Her name ends up on several death lists and in 2007, Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi of Al-Azhar University proclaims a fatwa and the death penalty on her. The reason for this was the play 'God resigns at the summit meeting'.

But Nawal will continue for many years to write, lecture and stand up for what she has been fighting for all her life.