Egypt is Free,
But Not The Women?
A week ago today, after 18 days or rallying and protesting, Egyptians successfully won “liberation” and forced Mubarak to resign. The world saw both men and women on the front lines. In a country where women are marginalized, harassed and openly discriminated against, it was hugely empowering to see women– veiled and unveiled– walk side by side their husbands, brothers, sons and fellow countrymen demanding change and reform. It was truly a revolution of the people!
Revolution, particularly in the US, is rare in our modern day supersize-me, high-def, Starbucks era, but the idea of women and revolution is not. If it weren’t for women like Angela Davis, Assata Shakur and Kiilu Nyasha there probably would not have been a Black Panther Party. And Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer & Ruby Dee were pivotal in the success of the Civil Rights Movement.
So during those 18 days of protests I tried to get as informed as I could about modern-day politics in Egypt and how they informed and/ or challenged the women there. The first piece I read “Let Me, a Muslim Feminist, Confuse You” was this brilliant essay by activist Mona Eltahawy. It started with the title as the first sentence and ended with: “I’m a bumble bee who carries ideas– pollen– from one place to another in the hope that they will blossom into a wild and challenging orchard. The pollen might be sweet, but I ‘sting like a bee’ because like the great Muhammad Ali, I will not hesitate to knock you out. Confusion is both my right and left hook.” Mona got me. I was hooked. The women fighting for equality in Egypt were outspoken, brave and unapolegetic… kinda sounded like me. And unlike the media who wants to say they are Middle Eastern, I think of Egyptians as Africans and therefore as kindred souls from the same root.
In reading Rebecca Walker’s interview with activist Nawal El Saadawi– an Egyptian physician, novelist, and activist, I could feel her excitement and urgency surge through every single word uttered: “Women and men are in the streets as equals now. We are in the revolution completely… This revolution has unified us. We are not men and women, Christian and Muslim, professional and nonprofessional; we are all Egyptians, and we will not let Egypt burn.”
The 79-year old feminist who was thrown in prison for her activism in 1981 by then President Anwar Sadat penned her memoirs on a roll of toilet paper. No doubt she knows the costs of struggle and is clear that democracy doesn’t come overnight let alone 18 days:
Of course if you know the history of revolutions, you find that after the revolution, often men take over and women’s rights are ignored. In order to keep our rights after the revolution, women must be unified. We must have our women’s union again. We cannot fight individually.
But it seems that not even a week after Mubarak’s resignation and the brutal sexual assault on Lara Logan that the women are fighting individually to be heard and recognized. I was forwarded this story by Dina Zayed and it seems that after only six days of proclaimed freedom, women are already being marginalized and silenced in shaping Egypt’s new democracy: “The lack of women on a committee charged with amending Egypt’s constitution for elections post-Mubarak casts doubt over whether the country can develop into a true democracy,” states the article.
My grrrl Nae told me and others last Friday on Facebook not to dance for joy quite yet because she had a feeling that a military-run country like Egypt saddled with not only sexism, but ethnic racism as well was far from true freedom. Clearly the news of women’s exclusion from the newly reformation party is a sign that she was unfortunately right in her move to not break out the hooka and hummus quite yet.
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Pedestrians stop to argue with Abu Rahman, right, Matt Sky, second from right, and Julia Lundy, third from right, as they stand in front of the site of a proposed mosque near Ground Zero in New York, Aug. 19, 2010.
SETH WENIG/AP
NEW YORK CITY
I a Muslim. I'm a feminist. And I'm here to confuse you,” I told attendees at the TEDWomen conference, where I was a speaker, in Washington this week.
The conversation on Muslim women usually revolves around our head scarves and our hymens — what's on our heads (or not), what's between our legs, and the price we pay for it.
For kick-ass feminist icons, I have a long history to choose from.
In the 7th century, there's Khadijah, Prophet Muhammad's first wife. She was a rich divorcee who owned her own business, who was his boss, who was 15 years older than him and who proposed to him.
My fondness for younger men clearly has a precedent.
But the first wave of feminism for many Muslim women started at a Cairo train station in 1923 where Hoda Shaarawi removed her face veil, which, long before anyone was burning their bras, she described as a thing of the past. She must be turning in her grave as some today try to justify covering women's faces.
My paternal grandmother was a teacher, a furious smoker, a fast walker and an adamant supporter of a soccer club hated by most of her children
My maternal grandmother — whose sexually racy jokes would outrage her children — was pregnant 14 times. Eleven of those children survived.
My mother — the eldest of those children and the first woman in her family to get a PhD — has three children.
I am the eldest of the three and I've chosen not to have any children. My mother had her youngest when she was 42. My sister is now herself working on a PhD and is longing for a baby.
I was born in Egypt, where I belonged to the Sunni Muslim majority. When I was 7, we moved to London, where I learned to become a minority and learned too how little was expected of Muslim women, Teachers assumed my dad's work brought us to London and were shocked to hear Muslim wives didn't take the husband's name.
We moved to Saudi Arabia when I was 15 and I fell into a deep depression as I struggled to find a place among very different Islams.
At home, I was taught an Islam by parents who were equals and who were raising my brother and me to be equals. Outside our new home was an Islam that treated women like the walking embodiment of sin. I was done with Muslim men.
I chose to wear a head scarf and became a feminist (the two weren't mutually exclusive) after I discovered essays by Muslim women scholars who taught me women could reinterpret religion. They terrified the hell out of me.
When I returned to Egypt at 21, I learned Muslim men were not the enemy after all, as progressive, liberal Muslim women and men helped me define my own place in Islam.
My headscarves-and-hymens moment came when I took off my head scarf — it no longer represented the Muslim woman I was becoming — and I became increasingly obsessed with female genital mutilation after I learned how many members of my extended family had been subjected to it.
Both Muslims and Christians practise genital cutting in Egypt. It's not about religion. It's about hymens — and that's about controlling women's sexuality.
I moved to Israel, where I was the first Egyptian to live and work there for a western news agency. I became a liberal Muslim because my ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbours reminded me of ultra-orthodox Muslim Saudis. Orthodoxy serves men much more than it does women.
I moved to the U.S. 10 years ago after marrying an American, but when we divorced two years later I got into my car and spent 18 days driving alone to New York City. It was my American pilgrimage. My reward was a community of like-minded Muslims together with whom I prayed behind Amina Wadud, an American Muslim scholar, in the first public female-led mixed-gender Friday prayer. Without a head scarf and on my period, I prayed next to a man — sacrilege to many but a delight to me.
I belong to Musawah — the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. A young British Muslim woman told me at the launch in Malaysia last year that if she had to choose between Islam and feminism, Islam would win. A young Egyptian Muslim woman told me if she had to choose between Islam and feminism, feminism would win.
For my sister-in-law, it is about head scarves and hymens. She wears a head scarf and she's a gynecologist. For the past five years she was the only woman ob/gyn doctor in a tiny Ohio town.
She was the true “jihadi” — every time her patients heard Fox News talk about Moozlums and “them Ayrabs” she was there as the antidote.
This summer I confused people outside the Islamic Community Centre near Ground Zero known as Park51. When a bigoted couple came to insult and provoke us, I gave them the middle finger. I mustered patience with others. But when Bill Keller, a right-wing televangelist came to shed crocodile tears over Muslim women it was clear he was boosting his ego, not my rights.
I'm no fool. I know that terrible violations of women's rights are committed in the name of my faith. But Islam belongs to me too.
I'm in a boxing ring. On one side is Bill Keller's right wing: bigoted and xenophobic. On the other side is the Muslim right wing, which uses Islam against me to fuel its misogyny.
I'm a bumble bee who carries ideas — pollen — from one place to another in the hope that they will blossom into a wild and challenging orchard. The pollen might be sweet, but I “sting like a bee” because like the great Muhammad Ali, I will not hesitate to knock you out.
Confusion is both my right and left hook.
Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues.
>via: http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/905569--let-me-a-muslim-feminist-...
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Egypt's Nawal El Saadawi:
'We Will Not Let Egypt Burn'
For more than five decades, the famed Egyptian physician, writer and feminist has been fighting the powers that be. The Root caught up with her just hours before President Mubarak stepped down.
- | Posted: February 11, 2011
The activist protesting in Barcelona in 2004 (Courtesy of AFP/Getty Images)
Nawal El Saadawi -- an Egyptian psychiatrist, scholar, novelist, feminist and activist -- has been agitating for change in her home country for more than 50 years. An outspoken opponent of female genital mutilation, she was fired from her position as Egypt's director of health education in 1972. When President Anwar Sadat threw her in prison for her activism in 1981, she penned her memoirs on a roll of toilet paper. A committed secularist, her name appears on fundamentalist death lists.
Now 79, she has lived in exile off and on for the past 15 years, teaching at Duke University and Spelman College. For the past year or so, she's been back at home in Egypt, writing and organizing young activists. The Root's Rebecca Walker caught up with her early this morning as she was heading out into the streets of Cairo -- right before President Mubarak stepped down.
The Root: Where are you now?
Nawal El Saadawi: I am home in my apartment in Cairo, and we are preparing to go out into streets.
TR: Are you going to [Tahrir] Square?
NS: The square is full. There is no more room in the square, and so we have decided that we will be everywhere. Egyptians will be in every square, on every street, at the Presidential Palace and at the national television station. We will be in every place. This revolution has unified us. We are not men and women, Christian and Muslim, professional and nonprofessional; we are all Egyptians, and we will not let Egypt burn.
TR: How are you organizing this revolution? Is there leadership among the people?
NS: We are doing it all with Facebook and mobile phone and e-mail.
TR: Are you concerned about who will take Mubarak's place? What about the Muslim Brotherhood, or other extremist groups?
NS: I am not at all worried about the Brotherhood. There is a lot of exaggeration about this organization, and it is used to frighten women here and Western women, too. The Muslim Brotherhood is a minority. They do not lead the revolution, and many of the men involved in the organization want a secular constitution. Men and women protested in the square and died in the square together.
There was not one single harassment of a woman in the square. And these are covered women, secular women, all women from every background. No, it was not the Muslim Brotherhood who hurt women, it was Mubarak's people who entered the square and killed. All of this talk about the Brotherhood is an attempt to use religion to divide the people. Do not worry; the Muslim Brotherhood will never rule Egypt.
TR: What role would you like the U.S. to play?
NS: I don't expect the power or support or interference of anyone, of any government. We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism. Obama is a pragmatic person and thinking of the interests of his country; I understand this. But now he is confused: One minute he supports Mubarak, one minute he doesn't; one moment he is afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood, the next he is not. Now I believe in the people of Egypt only, I depend on the people of Egypt only.
TR: Your work has mainly revolved around women's rights and equality. How are these issues playing out in the revolution? What is the role of women on the ground?
NS: Women and men are in the streets as equals now. We are in the revolution completely. Of course if you know the history of revolutions, you find that after the revolution, often men take over and women's rights are ignored. In order to keep our rights after the revolution, women must be unified. We must have our women's union again. We cannot fight individually.
TR: How do you know that the people who will follow Mubarak will honor your hopes for change?
NS: This revolution changed everything. In history, the millions win, that is democracy. Now the people in the street say no to Mubarak and then will form a temporary government, protected by the army. Then we have to protect the revolution from being aborted; that is the most important fight.
I must go now. There are many people waiting here for me. It is time to go on and do the next things that must be done.
Rebecca Walker writes frequently for The Root.
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>via: http://www.theroot.com/views/egypt-catching-history-nawal-el-saadawi?page=0,0
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Egypt activists ask:
"Where are the women?"
CAIRO |
(Reuters) - The lack of women on a committee charged with amending Egypt's constitution for elections post-Mubarak casts doubt over whether the country can develop into a true democracy, a group of activists said on Wednesday.
The group of over 60 non-governmental organisation and activists said the committee, which is presided over by a respected retired judge known for his independence, had begun work on Wednesday by "marginalising female legal experts."
"This sheds doubt over the future of democratic transition in Egypt and raises questions about the future of participation, and whether this revolution sought to liberate all of society or just some of its sectors," a statement said.
Mass demonstrations that ousted President Hosni Mubarak from his 30-year rule were led by both men and women.
"We affirm that Egyptian woman participated in the revolution, and proof of such is that many remain missing or arrested. They have every right to participate in building the Egyptian nation," the group said in a statement sent by Nahed Shehata of the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights.
Protesters have demanded several changes, including making presidential races fair and putting limits on a president's term in office. Mubarak served almost five six-year terms and had been expected to seek a sixth.
The committee is due to propose its changes within 10 days as a prelude to parliamentary and presidential elections due to take place in six months.
STANDARDS OF SELECTION
The committee includes one senior Muslim Brotherhood legal expert in an unprecedented move to include the Islamist opposition group, but the panel did not give details on how it selected its members.
"Signatures to this statement have received with great concern the list of committee members as there is no participation from female experts, which is unacceptable marginalisation of half of society," the statement said.
"We also question the standards used to select the members of the committee," the group said, although adding they supported the military's efforts in moving to a democracy.
The role of women in Egyptian politics has been limited, with few occupying ministerial and parliamentary seats. Their role in the judiciary has been the subject of wide debate in recent years.
Last year, a top court ruled that women should be allowed to serve on the State Council, a court that tries cases involving the government and which had resisted including female judges.
Mubarak appointed Tahany el-Gibali, Egypt's first woman judge, to the Constitutional Court in 2003. Conservative judges campaigned to stop what they regarded as an exception from becoming a trend.
Activists called on the Higher Military Council to revisit "values of citizenship" and asked that female experts be incorporated in the constitutional committee.
(editing by Elizabeth Piper)
>via: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/02/16/uk-egypt-women-idUKTRE71F3Z220110216
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