LONDON — Amid worries that the Arab Spring may give way to political Islam and set back the cause of women’s rights, Queen Noor of Jordan said Tuesday that it was too soon to give up hope that revolutions in the region would ultimately yield social progress.
“Revolutions are messy,” she said at a conference in London. “They take time. They ultimately require negotiation and compromise. Revolutions in the Middle East are taking place in real time as we speak, and I think it is far too soon to give them up for lost.”
Queen Noor conceded that the rise of political Islam had shaken confidence in the progressive social impact of the Arab Spring, highlighting worries on Egypt, where a vote on a new constitution is scheduled for Dec. 15.
“It appears again that women’s rights are once again at risk even as revolution progresses,” she said.
No women were appointed to the committee that drew up the new draft constitution in Egypt, and the percentage of female legislators dropped to 2 percent from 12 percent because parliamentary quotas were abolished, she said.
However, the region’s gender equality ratings by the World Economic Forum have increased in the past two years by 1.2 percent, despite a 5.3 percent drop in Syria. That demonstrates, she said, that the greatest threat to women’s rights might be war, not religious conservatism.
“Even as some groups attempt to turn back the clock on Arab women’s rights using religious justification, Islam should not be considered the source of misogyny and women’s oppression in the region,” Queen Noor said, adding that setbacks “do not mean that the revolution has failed, it means it is not finished.”
Queen Noor is the widow of King Hussein of Jordan. The conference, Trust Women, was organized by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and The International Herald Tribune, which is published by The New York Times.
Egypt was a central focus of concern at the conference.
“The situation in Egypt is really alarming,” said Dina Wahba, an Egyptian women’s rights activist, who said the draft constitution endangered the rights of women and children.
“We are in a very pessimistic situation,” she added. “It looks very grim. It looks very scary.”
Julia Lalla-Maharajh, the founder of the Orchid Project, which is based in London and campaigns to end female genital cutting, said Egypt had “one of the highest prevalences in the world of female genital cutting: according to Unicef statistics, more than 9 out of 10 women are affected.”
“There are worrying reports that have suggested that female genital cutting is on the rise, with one call in Parliament for a ban on it to be overturned,” she said.
Ala’a Shehabi, a British-born Bahraini writer and activist, said the uprising in her country had been led by women and was not motivated by the economic discontent that drove some of the other revolutions in the region.
“In the gulf, it’s about inequality,” she said, with issues like corruption also proving important.
Manal al-Sharif, a women’s rights activist from Saudi Arabia, said that there, too, it was women who were pushing for change.
Alaa Murabit, an activist from Libya, argued that the overthrow of the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had changed the political dynamic. “Women are getting involved,” Ms. Murabit said. “Women are taking the initiative.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the founder of the AHA Foundation, which works to protect the rights of Muslim women, called for an end to placing women under the control of male guardians.
There were warnings about women’s rights in Western nations, as well. Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for the northwest of England, said he had dealt with more than 50 so-called honor killings.
“One after another,” he said, “I was seeing these stories of people who were being killed because they had a boyfriend, they kissed somebody in public, they wanted to learn to drive, they wanted to go to school.”
