ABSTRACT
Chapter Three offers a conceptual framework for the activism of the post-Islamist women under study in the public sphere. The Chapter provides a historical understanding of the Habermasian notion of the public sphere as juxtaposed to the private followed by a critique of Habermas's formulation; namely, the exclusion of publics other than the bourgeois public sphere, the public/private dichotomy with a focus on Arabo-Islamic contexts, and the relegation of religion to the private sphere. With all the critique addressed to the Habermasian notion of the public sphere, the Chapter demonstrates that Habermas’s thesis in the way the existence of certain socio-political developments would give rise though for a short time to an effective bourgeois public sphere, applies to the activism of the participants/entities under study. The Chapter thus explores the development in the relationship between the Square and the Mosque in Arabo-Islamic contexts, and the role of the online sphere.
