Before anyone comes at me with racism accusations, I am an actual Egyptian who acually lives in actual Egypt so please keep your patronising performative faux wokeness to yourself.
A few days ago, a young woman in Cairo was killed by three men in a tok tok who sexually harass her and then tried to steal her purse. She was pulled along the concrete with her bag caught in the tok tok. I won’t go into more detail about her death, because it is a truly horrifying affair. Let’s talk about Mariam for a second. She was in her early 20′s, she was walking home at 5pm, she was walking in a huge, main street, in one of the most expensive, high-status areas of Cairo, she was a hijabi, she dressed modestly, she was engaged and soon to be married. You see, Mariam was the Perfect Egyptian Girl. A good daughter, engaged at The Right Time, she was a good muslim, she wasn’t out late, she did everything right, and yet..
This aspect of Mariam’s death is the reason why her case has the entire country on its feet. Feminist groups are screaming about sterilisation as a punishment for sexual harassment, and misogynists have been real quiet because of the general uproar. People are up in arms, two of the men have been arrested, I believe the third is being looked for now. But these things happen every single day, be it the original harassment or the resultant death. Why, then, is this any different?
99% of Egyptian women have faced sexual harassment on the streets, 50% face it daily. This, along with our very very strong culture of ‘Don’t scandalise us and ruin the family name and bring shame and dishonour upon us by speaking about this’ as well as our extreme societal pressure to ‘drop the charges, don’t ruin his life’, make it very rare for any case of harassment or even straight up assualt to make it past your own immediate circle. It happens every day. It’s normal, what are you complaining for? or, the even more insidious, it’s your fault anyway.
Which takes us to the other force of evil in Egypt: uncontrolled Sheikhs running rampant with their misogyny, headed by the ever infuriating Abdullah Rushdy, who will get his own post soon.
If a story of rape or harassment happens to get anywhere near enough attention to become of national interest, you will find a million and one sheikhs ready with their overused talking points: harassment is caused by the women’s inappropriate clothing and lack of hijab. Oh she was a hijabi and dressed modestly? well, she should’ve been a niqabi if she didn’t want to get harassed. Oh she WAS a niqabi? Well she shouldn’t have left her house for no emergency, this is god’s punishment. Oh it was an emergency? Well, it’s the fault of those other scantily clad women who irritate men’s desires and so men take it out on all women.
And if you think I’m exaggerating even a tiny little bit, I can easily provide direct quotes from very prominent sheikhs for all of this.
Egypt being such a religious country, and non-secular, means that whatever the sheikhs say goes. Their words become the public conscience. Their declarations become fact. Their opinions become True Morals. And when all they scream about, all day and all night, is women’s clothing and women’s work and women in the public sphere and women’s perfume and women’s makeup and women’s voices and how to control women and how to discipline women and how women are lacking in mind and religion, that becomes the ultimate truth in the public eye.
And I’m sick and tired of it.
I’m going to start writing, hopefully at least weekly, about feminist issues currently being brought up in Egypt for the first time, and about misogyny in Egypt and the treatment of women by their families, by society, by authority, by religion and by the state. I hope this will start to bring the struggles of Egyptian feminists specifically and arab and African feminists at large, into a more global sphere.
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