Nawāl al-Sa'dāwī’s Criticism on the Discourse of Masculine God

Nawāl al-Sa'dāwī has criticised sharply the discourse of masculine God in her works, either fiction or non-fiction. The phenomena is interesting to be analyzed since there are no many feminists who have courageoulsy discuss the problem. By paying attention on her works, this paper is aimed to answer the question: What are the forms of Nawāl al-Sa'dāwī's criticism on the masculinity in the discourse on God? What is the positionisation of the criticism in the meaning of discourse on divinity and why did Nawāl Al-Sa'dāwī criticise? The paper gives meaning to the reading on the deconstruction that emphasizes the plurality and meaning of the relation between the signifie and signifiant in language. Nawāl al-Sa'dāwī offers a new meaning which is different, humanistic, and visionary, since the masculinity of discourse on God had been structured by the ruler as a philosophical basis for the theological justification to structurise the patriarchal point of view to preserve women's subordination. She has made her deconstruction as a strategy for liberation of women and establishment of their autonomy as their fundamental condition, a gift from God. This autonomy of women had been actualised in the early history of mankind through the reconstructive reading on history of ancient Egypt which has been done by her