Through the influence of the European women educators, an emancipation movement has been started among the younger generation of women in Constantinople. Many fathers, often through vanity, have given their daughters a European education. Elementary schools, secondary schools, and technical schools have existed in Turkey and Egypt since 1839. The women graduates of these schools are now opposing oriental marriage and life in the harem. At present this is causing tragic conflicts.[111]
To the present, two Turkish women have spoken publicly at international congresses of women. Selma Riza, sister of the “Young Turkish” General, Ahmed Riza, spoke in Paris in 1900, and Mrs. Haïrie Ben-Aid spoke in Berlin in 1904.
The Mohammedan women have a legal supporter of their demands in Kassim Amin Bey, counselor of the Court of Appeals in Cairo. In his pamphlet on the woman’s rights question he proposes the following programme:—
Legal prohibition of polygamy.
Woman’s right to file a divorce suit. (Hitherto a woman is divorced if her husband, even without cause, says thee times consecutively “You are divorced.”)
Woman’s freedom to choose her husband.
The training of women in independent thought and action.
A thorough education for woman.
In 1910 a congress of Mohammedan women will be held in Cairo.