The importance of integrating women into society without respect for how it affects religion or tradition, comes from inside the Arab world, in particular from Egypt. Tarek Heggy, one of the most important contemporary Arab intellectuals, living in Cairo, writes in his article, “Women and Progress,” after the appointment of the first female judge to Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court: “Any society that views women as unequal to men contrives to find references and ‘evidence’ to support its perception, although the attitude has no religious or legal basis, but is a purely cultural phenomenon.”
