[R-G] Shame and Sexual Harassment in Egypt

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Lonely Planet's guide to the Middle East claims: "Although women
travellers have the hassle of staying covered up -- see the boxed text
'The Big Cover Up' -- most women find that the sexual harassment and
constant come-ons from the local males that are common in other Middle
Eastern countries are largely absent in Iran.  By comparison, women
enjoy considerably more independence in Iran than elsewhere in the
Middle East.  One welcome consequence of this is that female visitors
will find it quite easy to meet and chat with Iranian women,
particularly in large cities such as Esfahan, Shiraz and Tehran where
educational standards are higher" (Lonely Planet Publications, 4th
ed., 2003 [first published in 1994], p. 216).  I suppose that, in
Iran, if men didn't behave, the authorities would put the fear of God
into them. -- Yoshie

<http://agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1664>
Shame and Sexual Harassment in Egypt
by Mona Eltahawy	
Released: 29 Jul 2008

NEW YORK – When I was only 4 years-old, and still living in Cairo, a
man exposed himself to me as I stood on a balcony at my family's home,
and gestured for me to come down.

At 15, I was groped as I was performing the rites of the Haj
pilgrimage at Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims. Every part of my
body was covered except for my face and hands. I'd never been groped
before and burst into tears, but I was too ashamed to explain to my
family what had happened.

During my 20s, when I had returned to Cairo and wore the hijab, a way
of dressing which again covers everything but the face and the hands,
I was groped so many times that whenever I passed a group of men I'd
place my bag between me and them. Headphones helped block out the
disgusting things men -- and even boys barely in their teens -- hissed
at me.

I learned to push and punch those whose hands thought my body was fair
game, but I never found anything to soothe the burning violation. So
imagine how much sharper that violation stung when I tried to complain
to the police only to be shooed away -- or when it was their hands
which groped me.

Once, a riot policeman fondled my breast while he was pushing back a
group of us journalists at the trial of an opposition politician. I
yelled at him, and I complained to his supervising officer, who moved
him to the back row of riot police and told me "Nevermind."

So it was no surprise to learn that 98 percent of foreign women
visiting Egypt and 83 percent of native Egyptian women who were
recently surveyed said that they, too, had been sexually harassed, and
they have recounted a catalog of horrors similar to mine. What an
awful time to be woman in Egypt.

When the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights reported that 62 percent
of Egyptian men admitted to harassing women, I could only shudder at
what sexist bullies so many of my countrymen are.

Even worse, when I read that the majority of the more than 2,000
Egyptian men and women that ECWR surveyed blamed women for bringing on
the harassment because of the way they dressed, I honestly thought my
countrymen and women had lost their minds.

In Egypt today, up to 80 percent of women wear one form of veil or
another -- be it a headscarf or a full-body veil that covers the face
too -- so you would think it was obvious that sexual harassment had
nothing to do with the way a woman dresses.

So what is it that drives such a stubborn wish to fault women?

The answer lies in perhaps the saddest of all the Centre's findings.
Unlike foreign women, most Egyptian women said women should keep their
harassment to themselves because they were ashamed or feared it could
ruin their reputation. That's when I was taken back full circle to the
time I was groped on the Haj.

Shame.

This shame is fueled by religious and political messages that bombard
Egyptian public life, turning women into sexual objects and giving men
free reign to their bodies.

In 2006, It was the well-publicized episode of the mufti of Australia
comparing women who didn't wear the hijab to uncovered meat left out
for wild cats. He was educated at al-Azhar, the religious institution
in Egypt that trains clerics from all over the Sunni Muslim world. He
was suspended, but his reprehensible views are very much at work among
many other clerics. Today, as two bloggers in Egypt reported recently,
there are email and poster campaigns with a message that uses candy to
tell women that if they cover they will be safe from harassment, as
covered candy is safe from flies.

When did Egyptian women become candy and when did Egyptian men turn into flies?

There is no law criminalizing sexual harassment in Egypt, and police
often refuse to report women's complaints. And when it is the police
themselves who are harassing women, then clearly women's safety is far
from a priority in Egypt.

The State itself taught Egyptians a most spectacular lesson in
institutionalized patriarchy when security forces and government-hired
thugs sexually assaulted demonstrators, especially women, during an
anti-regime protest in 2005, giving a green light to harassers.

So there was little surprise that during a religious festival in 2006,
a mob of men went on a rampage in downtown Cairo, sexually assaulting
any woman they came across as police watched and did nothing.

It was only when bloggers broke the news that the media reported the
assaults. Still, the Egyptian regime has never acknowledged it
happened. At a demonstration against sexual harassment that I attended
in Cairo a few days later, there were nearly more riot police than
protestors.

My sister Nora was 20 at the time, and she, with several of her
friends, joined the protest. She had never been to a demonstration
before but was incensed when she heard the State was denying something
that had happened to her many times. We swapped our sexual harassment
stories like veterans comparing war wounds, and we unraveled a taboo
which shelters the real criminals of sexual harassment and has kept us
hiding in shame.

And that is why I began here with my own stories -- to free myself of
the tentacles of that shame.


Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning New York-based journalist and
commentator, and an international lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues.

Copyright (c)2008 Mona Eltahawy – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 29 July 2008
Word Count: 906
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