Notes on a Scandal

This post has got nothing to do with the movie holding the same name. It just popped into my head while writing about what our Egyptian society would classify as a scandal.

A few weeks ago a horrible murder took place in the 6th of October city, precisely in one of the new luxurious compounds which were initially built on the outskirts of Cairo before the 6th of October turned from being a mere district into a governorate . Two female students, Heba (daughter of the famous singer, Laila Ghofran) and her friend Nadine ( daughter of an Egyptian engineer who works and lives in Saudi Arabia) were brutally stabbed to death inside Nadine's family apartment.

It is generally expected that the Arab media would prove to be more brutal than the murderer himself in its coverage of such cases. The newspapers, which were first to announce the news, have extremely increased the dosage this time, though.. seeking to exploit the fact that one of the victims is the daughter to a celeb. Mind you, I'm not talking about some tabloid papers.. No! These are daily newspapers that Egyptians read every morning to check local and world news and daily columns written by the top writers in Egypt. Thus, they are considered to be a trusted source of information, and usually people take what they say for granted. Yet, this time, we found journalists competing hysterically in spicing up the details related to the murder, with a special focus on the moral conduct of the two girls (the victims). They spread rumors in the form of news from their trusted sources, and made headlines out of imaginary crap, building upon a social stereotype which basically condemns a girl living alone, even if she is a nun! Those journalists kept making their wildest guesses and casting their dices on the best they could get out of this story, which instantly became a huge buzz in Egypt.

It breaks my heart to go through the details, but I will just mention some examples to elaborate on how our media has got a very strong hand in misleading public opinion, of course without being bound by any ethical codes or rules or laws to organize this chaos. In Egypt, an editor-in-chief gets in trouble if he published fabricated info concerning our president's health.. but it is fine if his paper is totally fabricated from cover to cover. Just don't come near the presidency. It is true the press enjoys great freedom.. You can accuse anybody of anything you wish, without even having to prove it. We have a huge problem with the definition of "freedom" in this country, and usually what we consider to be freedom is nothing but chaos and meanness. Just look at our streets for God's sake! Isn't this the land of absolute freedom??

Anyway, back to Heba and Nadine. And I'd like to apologize in advance for mentioning the following rumors, which, I repeat, were written as facts directly delivered from security sources, friends, and neighbors to the victims.

Newspapers said that Heba and Nadine were drug addicts, who were notorious for their multiple relationships with guys and crazy partying in the apartment where they were both killed. It was said that during those parties the girls would invite friends from both sexes, serve drugs and alcohols, and dance till the early hours of morning. Journalists were specifically keen on suggesting the idea of "free sexual relationships" which took place during those parties, with special focus on the two victims.. not forgetting to mention the names of their boyfriends, who, according to colleagues and neighbors (the papers said,) were used to spending hours with the girls in the privacy of this villa!! Yeah, all of a sudden the apartment turned into a villa.

As to how the girls were stabbed and the possible reason behind the crime (which journalists claimed was according to police investigations), it was said that revenge was a primary suspect, because both girls were stabbed several times, Nadine's throat and tongue were cut, and it was said that a post-mortem examination revealed the presence of explosives inside her womb!! You may wonder why this sadism was mainly directed towards Nadine, although she ain't the famous one.. Well, I have got no idea.. But I guess it is because the apartment was hers, and she was the one who lived alone.. which is such a shame according to our local customs and traditions. Basically, people assume that a girl living alone would normally indulge in all the worst kinds of behavior, including sex, of course - being the taboo of all taboos here - and in this case, one sex partner won't be enough, she has to have several.. while drinking and doing drugs are just to complete the stereotypical image.

It was said that this "revenge" was either carried out by one of the girls' boyfriends, out of jealousy, or by a drug dealer!! And details just kept getting more disgusting, always ending by talking about Nadine's father who lives in Saudi Arabia without knowing anything about his daughter, while sending her a monthly allowance of 11,000 EGP (yeah, coz 10,000 won't be a convincing figure, the extra 1000 would make it sound more precise and thus causing people to believe all the other details) and that she had recently lent her boyfriend 40,000 EGP to be able to buy a new car!.. Oh la la!

Why turn a simple apartment into a villa? and what have those amounts of money got to do with the murder case? and why is it considered to be such a shame? Well, again.. I don't have the answers.. but probably because a society where the majority suffers from poverty will definitely feel curious about how the girls who belong to the high society of Cairo live. Thus, those kinds of details are guaranteed to verify the stereotypical image that those people have become familiar with through the Egyptian TV series, soaps and films, which always show the rich family as leading a life full of corruption and vice.

So, to make a long story short.. It wasn't long before the truth came out (and this drove people even more crazy because they expected this real-life crime series to last longer). The facts were as follows:
1- Heba was officially married to the guy they named once as her boyfriend and later as her fiancé. She called him after the murderer ran away and that's how journalists got his name.
2-Nadine's autopsy report proved that she was a virgin, her so-called boyfriend was a colleague she loved, has proposed to her family and was asked to wait until she completes her education.
3-The murderer was found to be a 19 year old blacksmith who came to rob the house, thinking that both girls were already asleep. But, Heba, who was still awake, saw him and started screaming. He was already shaking, so he kept stabbing her hysterically to make her shut up. Her screams caused Nadine, who was sleeping in her room to wake up. Then during a struggle, Nadine injured the guy's hand with the knife he held, running to the kitchen to grab a knife.. he then ran after her stabbing her repeatedly in the back, and when she fell, he thought she died, but she held on to his feet.. then he decided to cut her throat to finish her.

Now it's questions time.. Why would our society insist on making a scandal out of this crime? A scandal involving the victims!.. while the murderer in almost all similar cases has always had some kind of a ready-made scenario on his side.. from being a hurt lover, driven to commit the crime out of jealousy, to the young victim of poverty, to even suggesting a conspiracy theory in which the Egyptian police resorted to dragging an innocent guy to present him to the public as the murderer!.. Why?.. To spoil the fun of the masses, maybe!

Anyway, I've written about this terrible crime before, in Arabic, presenting a kind of humble reading of what might be the hidden motives behind the industry of social scandals in Egypt.. Why a female victim of murder is automatically shifted to become the subject of a scandal, and may indeed be considered a criminal herself in a different context, in which a very strange definition of "honor" usually appears.. much related to the idea of "honor killings." In this context, the assumed violation of social customs and traditions is in fact viewed by the majority of people to be a very serious crime.. much more serious than murder.. to such a degree which makes the act of murder itself a righteous act or even "the sole cure" in such a case.


A female exercising free will over her body is committing the most horrible crime. Anything else can be forgiven. Anything else can be dealt with. Any other crime has got a fitting punishment, and in such a case, the criminal can indeed be forgiven after undergoing this punishment.. even if it was execution.. he can still have a good name, and his family won't live with the burden of shame hanging over its head for a lifetime. Anything and everything can be forgiven, except a female out of control. This is the scariest notion.. It is a social obsession.. It is the greatest fear of every man in our society. Families are constantly under the stress of this ever present nightmare. And it just keeps getting worse and worse as their daughters grow up.

I often get criticized when I tell my female friends that I pity Egyptian men, and that I can, on a certain level, sympathize with them. I might be asking for too much if I expect them to accept this coming from me. Yet, it won't be fair if even someone who has got the insight to realize such strong influences shaping men in our society, ever since their early childhood, can not bring herself to understand their motivations and inner struggles. Yes, we have all the right to be frustrated and to consider our men to be the worst ever at times, but we must not forget that they just can't help it.

Imagine this.. A little boy being taught from his early childhood not to mix with girls, being urged to play the role of a bodyguard for his sister/s, and even his own mother in some cases. He is bullied at school by merely naming his sister or his mother (not to mention the dirty language dictionary which mainly focuses on using the mother as the source of shame. For example, mother f***er and others). This boy then grows up to see women as a source of shame and scandal.. his own shame and his own scandal. His next mission is to go through puberty and teenage years, suffering from feelings of internalized shame, because at this age he fantasizes about females a lot, yet he cannot understand his mixed feelings towards them.. a love/hate sort of relationship. Add to that the feeling of guilt that a teenager always carries like a bulk of chains weighing down his/her soul, merely because they are normal human beings who have got a reproductive system!

Then, this young man goes through the biggest challenge off all, a sort of "to be or not to be" kind of dilemma. He is brought up to believe that his manhood lies between his thighs.. And now he became old enough to put this to the test. So, what will it be? Man or Not Man?

There are 2 ways to find out: Marriage or else.. I won't go through the second option.. it needs a separate post. Let's say he chooses marriage. Then again he faces another challenge.. not the one you have in minds.. no.. finding "the one" is not really a big deal when choosing an Egyptian wife.. The challenge here is not finding real love, it is finding the absolute virgin.

In a society like ours, a mere virgin just isn't good enough.. every man's quest while mating is to find the absolute virgin. Well, I'd better clarify what that means.

An AV is a never-been-touched, never-been-in-love, never-had-a-relationship, kind of girl. This is different from the simple "virgin".. Coz it is taken for granted that the girl must be a virgin in the biological sense! She has to bleed on her wedding night. That is out of question. The absolute virgin goes beyond her hymn.. Her husband has to be the first man in her life. It is even better if she told him he was her prince charming.. and she would really do the perfect job if she was able to convince him that his ghost used to visit her in her dreams.. a very common proto-image inspired by some Egyptian movie classics.


Let's say our guy (thinks he has) succeeded in his mission, and he was able to find his half human, half angel AV. Is the nightmare finally over? Hehehe.. you wish!

To be continued...

Noha Roshdy

Yesterday, I read about a brave girl from upper Egypt called Bikhyta, who was attacked by a wolf and kept struggling with it for 3 hours, during which she lost 2 of her fingers.. yet in the end, Bikhyta was able to slay the wolf.. all on her own.

Today, all the Egyptian newspapers feature another female hero of a very special kind on their headlines.. She is Noha Roshdy, a young director of documentaries who had been harassed by a truck driver while walking home with her friend Hend about 6 months ago. The human-wolf stretched his arm out of the truck while slowing beside Noha and grabbed her breasts so violently that she almost fainted out of pain and fell onto the sidewalk while screaming hysterically. He then simply smiled at her and drove off!

Thanks to the traffic in Cairo, that animal couldn't go any far. And of course, he took it for granted that Noha will be lucky if she just managed to escape a nervous breakdown. He assumed that the best she could do is rise up and continue her walk home, carrying all the shame and pain, and probably going to the first pillow to weep. It never crossed his mind that Noha is not that kind of girl. To his amazement, he found Noha rising up like a tigress, chasing his truck, and jumping over the driver's cabin to force him to pull off and get out. She succeeded! And she held him by the collar determined to take him to the police station to charge him of sexually harassing her.

The reactions that Noha got were just unbelievable, and I highly recommend that this would be the subject of serious studies by Egyptian sociologists and psychiatrics.

Imagine that the harasser himself, the truck driver, thought Noha was crazy! He couldn't understand why a girl would jeopardize her life in such a way just to get hold of someone who grabbed her breasts! See? That's what we were talking about girls.. your passiveness in dealing with harassment caused you to be taken for granted in such a humiliating way! The good old wisdom of laissez-passer proved to be not good, huh. That's the way you are viewed by harassers out there.. for them, you are not the polite girl who couldn't get herself to face her attacker because she is a shy cute virgin! You are just a whore who has to shut up after being sexually assaulted. That's who you are.

Noha's shock did not stop there.. For, of course a crowd quickly gathered out of curiosity to see what all the screaming was about. Some of them had witnessed the incident from the start. Yet, Noha says: "Some of them tried helping the driver get back into his truck to flee.. Some tried calming me down by saying that they will make him apologize, and when I refused taking an apology, trying in vain to get them to see the crime he committed, they didn't understand why I was so determined to take to the police station and called me crazy. One of them even told me 'I don't understand what a girl like you is doing, standing her with men!' While others kept watching from their balconies without even caring to offer any help."

You may wonder, were there not any women on the street at the time?.. Well, according to Noha, only one woman volunteered to help her.. and her way of help was as follows: She said to Noha, "Never mind my girl, let him go, just don't humiliate yourself like that!"

What kind of society are we living in?! Are those normal people? Or were they all subjected to some kind of mysterious gas that caused them to lose their minds? Seriously, it seems that our society is suffering from mass hysteria! People are sick in a disgusting way! Have they lost any trace of common sense! Do they stand there blaming the victim for wanting to claim her rights?.. Seriously??.. Are they helping the criminal to get away with his crime??.. Seriously??.. Is that the presumably Religious, Pious, Conservative society of ours?? Damn it!

I'm sorry to shock you all, but it just keeps getting worse and worse. For those of you who love horror movies I recommend reading the full story as told by Noha in an interview with Al Youm Al Sabe3.. Unfortunately, it is not available in English.

For 2 whole hours after the assault, Noha stood there in the middle of a crowd, merely trying to convince them that this man she was holding is a criminal!! According to Noha, she was unable to find anyone in this very busy commercial road who was willing to help her, except for one young man who sympathized and bravely took all the criticism because he volunteered to help her get to the station with this harasser!

Now, we are going to see a totally different episode of how those things are handled by our heroic patriarchal security forces!

Noha's friend who was with her when she got attacked went off to the nearest community police station, which we call no2tah, to get help. But the constable there said that it was none of their business (I wonder whose business it is!) and told her to call 911! There was nothing to do other than holding this harasser all the way to this community station.

When Noha got there and told the story to the constable, he did not hide being so disinterested and warned her that she will suffer a lot if she insists on placing legal charges against the guy who harassed her! When she insisted, he called the police officer, who didn't bother to come. He then wrote down her complaint and said that they won't be able to take the suspect to the main police station!!.. and that if she wanted this complaint to take its legal course, she had to drive him by herself there!!.. Which she did.. She then had to go to the prosecutor's office on the same day, and there, according to Noha, the prosecutor was the only one who thought she did the right thing and saluted her courage. That's how the Noha's case found its way to court.. any other girl could have given up after facing all those obstacles. Does our honorable ministry of interior now understand why girls do not complain when they get harassed??? Or don't they?

Yesterday, 21 October 2008, Noha's harasser, Sherif Gabriel was sentenced to 3 years behind bars. A great victory to all the women in Egypt.. and a badge of honor to the Egyptian court. I am so happy that Noha's effort and courage in fighting for her civil rights were not wasted in vain. I am also so glad that although we still don't have a law under which harassers could be tried, Gabriel could not escape punishment. It is good to find some sanity and justice when all we could see around us is pure madness, and when violence against women has somehow become the norm.

Yes, justice was served. But not all is well that ends well. In fact, this good ending is just a beginning which opened a tiny window unto a world of evil and ethical rot. For example.. I couldn't help boiling with anger at some of the comments posted by the readers on Al Masry Al Youm this morning. Some of them still blame women for being the cause of harassment!!.. Some of them refuse to admit that Noha is a human being and a citizen that has the right in a safe street!! Some of them can't see beyond Noha's hair!! As if this is what tempted the harasser to grab her breast, and not the fact that she is a female! They haven't learned anything.. They insist on compromising their humanity and degrading themselves to the level of animals. But even animals do not do this to one another!

The image as it says that we have a serious problem in Egypt. A problem with the people, their minds, their psyche, their values, and the way they see matters. Something is very wrong with this country. We have to face it. Noha's case is only the beginning.. It gave us a peek into the darkness inside our souls as a society. Now, we have to see the disease that is eating up our moral system and causing us to fail miserably as human beings.

Harassment Season in Egypt

Well, what can I say? It seems like we still have to deal with this shit for some time to come. Again, I talk about sexual harassment.. and this time the return of a new phenomenon which takes place during Eid El-fitr.. which is a Muslim feast, following Ramadan. It seems that Egyptian sexual harassers have chosen this time of the year (what a choice!) to unleash their savageness as a group.. instead of the individual assaults they practice on daily basis!

During the Eid of 2006, incidents of mass sexual harassment took place in Down Town Cairo. This was the first time for such a thing to happen in Egypt (as far as I know). Hundreds of young men went about attacking women down the streets, grabbing them, touching them, and even tearing up their clothes! Back then, the Egyptian police refused to admit the occurrence of these incidents, even after actual footage were released over the internet and were being sent via mobile phones. Still police maintained that all this was not enough proof, and that all these were mere rumors!.. according to them, as long as there was no single complaint officially filed to certify the occurrence of such incidents, then this means that nothing has happened!

How hilarious our government becomes when it acts stupid! The problem is that, as citizens, we've seen enough to be assured that our security system is so damn knowledgeable. It can be loose at times, but it has got all the power and the tools it needs to gather information. They can not even pretend to be stupid. Anyway, what happened then reminded me of the well-known Egyptian movie "Al Noom Fi Al Assal" [Fast Asleep] (and a better translation would be "Sweet Obliviousness"), a comedy that mocks this fact about our government (that is, their habit of denying things, refusing to admit the presence of problems in order to escape responsibility of having to work on solving them). In this regard, the film was so realistic; yet in order to avoid problems with censorship (yes, we do have censorship on movies, books...etc) its makers resorted to an imaginary plot: aka, a mysterious disease is spreading rapidly throughout Egypt, causing men to lose their sexual ability. And because in a conservative society like ours such a thing is considered to be so scandalous and a horrible insult to a man's manhood, nobody dares confess being infected with the disease. The issue is discovered accidentally, when a young man commits suicide on his wedding night, a poor plumber slays his wife, and disputes between spouses reach police stations. The government discovered what was wrong, yet refrained from admitting it to the public, being sure that nobody would be brave enough to confess that they became impotent. However, the film ends on a very strong note when the police chief investigator who was on the case (played by superstar Adel Emam) loses his job because of taking those facts he found to parliament. He gathers people from all over Cairo in a huge march to the Egyptian parliament while screaming "Ahh".. a declaration of their suffering and a demand for action.

It seems that this movie predicted 10 years earlier (1996) how our government would handle the the mass sexual harassment of 2006. And it seems that Egyptian girls have learned the lesson. Here is what happened as published on Al-Arabiya Net:

The independent al-Masry al-Youm reported that 150 young men assaulted female passers-by on Gamaat al-Duwal al-Arabiya street in the upper-class neighborhood of Mohandeseen. One woman’s clothes were ripped off her body and another had her veil torn, the newspaper reported.

Police arrested 38 suspects, between 15 and 22, and questioned three of the female victims.

One of the female victims, who wore the 'niqab' (an Islamic dress covering the body from head to toe, except for the eyes), said that a number of young men assaulted her and her friends.

"They tore our clothes and snatched the 'hijab' (veil) worn by one of us," she was quoted as saying. She added that there were many other groups of young men along the street.

So, as expected and as usual this lollipop myth has proven to be useless. As I said earlier, "wrapped on unwrapped, you'll be consumed one way or another". This time harassers were actually arrested because their victims spoke up and testified. Nobody could deny it. But there remains the problem of "SO WHAT?"..

The arrests were random, some of the suspects complained. "Yes, I was there, but I did nothing. No one could prove that I touched any of these girls." On the other hand, imagine being trapped inside a circle of 150 harassers! Would you be able to recognize any faces? The trauma itself is enough to waste your chances in proving anything. The result? Yes, they were arrested.. but they were also released shortly after! It's that simple.

As previously mentioned , we are waiting for a law against sexual harassment. Now, if you are in a position like that, nothing will help you, even in the presence of such a law. But, what encouraged those guys in first place and made them unite in attacking those girls is their confidence that each of them was successful in his previous individual assaults. Therefore, the importance of this law cannot be ignored or marginalized. Still, as a woman you must be able to defend yourself. This time, I mean being able to defend yourself in case of being subjected to a physical sexual assault that may involve violence. Of course, until police regains control over the streets, DO NOT TAKE A WALK NEAR A CROWD OF YOUNG MEN, especially during feasts.

Here are some self-defense techniques that are a must-know, especially if you live in Cairo. You'd better be prepared. If nobody's willing to defend us, then we'd better be prepared. It seems that when men fail to go back to the jungle, they go ahead to establish their own.

It's Time to Say: "Back Off!"

Hi again.. I'm saying 'HI' as I have recently come back from vacation. My absence was due to many reasons, none of which can be discussed here. Yet, from now on I can promise everyone that they would find a huge change with this blog. Let's make it a surprise..

Today I talk about sexual harassment.. Wait.. I know what you're thinking now. Please be patient.. No, it's not a "going-with- the-flow" kind of business. And no, it's not because I suddenly discovered (like many people pretend to do) that women are being harassed in Egypt! And no, I won't waste your precious time on the usual talk which is being reproduced here and there. Nonetheless, I can't hide how happy I am that Egyptians have (at last!) decided to speak up and publicly condemn this shameful practice, which had in fact turned into a massive plague during the past few years.

I'm glad that nowadays we openly admit that women are not safe in Egypt. And I salute the idea of the campaign launched by the Ministry of Tourism. One of their TV ads show a truck driver harassing a female tourist, who angrily complains that "this has never happened to her anywhere else." The ad ends by telling the harasser, "You're not the only one to lose. We all lose." They might have as well added the label "ONLY IN EGYPT", although I don't believe it's true. Still, we should admit that sexual harassment is not as widely practiced anywhere else as it is in Egypt. In fact, it has become part of an Egyptian female's daily routine! You wake up, get dressed, head to school or university or work, get harassed on the way, and then get harassed again on your way back home.

I really wish to see an ad asking men to stop harassing Egyptian women. Don't get me wrong. I encourage protecting tourists with all my heart. Their safety is the least we can guarantee them while they're visiting our land. But don't you think that we lose more by turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the daily suffering of our own women! Money is not the only thing to lose. And allow me to say that it is the last thing we should care about losing if we lose everything that makes us human.. I'm talking about honor and dignity.

This BCC report, titled "Egypt voices: Sexual harassment", is not only worth reading, but it is also worth writing about. In this report, several Egyptian girls talk about their personal experiences with sexual harassment. Up till here, there's nothing new. What's new is that those girls did so while showing their faces, stating their true names and professions! Now, many will consider this an act of outstanding courage. But I wanna tell you that one becomes that brave (or daring if you might say) when one loses hope. In other words, when you are fed up, and you realize that you're all alone and that things will never get better unless you scream out loud in the desperate hope that someone may overhear you. This does not decrease our respect for their courage, for it takes a very strong person to face a society like ours with such facts. There is no more "I heard that". There is no more "one of my friends got harassed". There is finally a confession in first person pronoun.. "I was harassed". And it didn't stop there, for they moved to describing real incidents.. what the harassers did to them and how they felt during and after this ordeal.

I don't remember how many times I have been verbally harassed. According to the latest survey, 4 out of every 5 females in Egypt get harassed on daily basis! This doesn't mean that the other 1 out of 5 were never subject to sexual harassment.. It simply means that they don't experience it on daily basis. And I believe that this is the first true figure to be announced about sexual harassment in Egypt.. or 'the cancer', as the The Egyptian Center for Women Rights calls it in its latest survey. However, I don't like this metaphor, as it makes harassment sound like it has no cure, while on the contrary, this disease can and must be cured. Its cure lies in the hands of many who have for long chosen to be passive and to simply live in denial. Finally, I'm glad to announce that we're waiting for a law that would punish sexual harassers. However, I don't trust how laws function in our dear third world countries. My own problem, I know.. but it may as well be yours if this law (in case it sees the light) didn't improve anything.

In my previous post I wrote about the ridiculous lollipop ad and warned that it will only serve to provide more support to harassers. I also said that females in this country have got the choice between allowing themselves to be reduced into inanimate objects, or fighting for their humanity and their basic civil rights in a safe street and safe means of transportation. I think it's time to be more specific about what is expected of a girl who values her humanity.

One of the girls interviewed in the report mentioned above said that her mother told her not to answer back to those who harass her. How many times have we heard this, huh? With all respect to our mothers who lived in a different Egypt and who safely wore mini skirts to university without ever meeting an indecent look or gesture.. this dusty advice can go straight to hell. Being raised in shame, swallowing all kinds of insult and abuse in silence so as not to disturb our patriarchal society in its sleep has caused us to reach this dead end we're facing today. Now, what should we wait for? For society to protect us?? Hahaha. Bogus!

I say we keep screaming. It's healthy. Better than increasing the repression and hiding the agony. It is time for this society to wake up and see what it has done to its women.. don't you think so? But meanwhile, you should also seek to defend yourself. Unless you care to stand up for yourself, nobody will care for you. You won't earn anyone's respect if you just keep enduring being slapped. You will turn from being the victim into being guilty. You will be the cross onto which society shall hang all its failures and rottenness. If you have respect for yourself.. and if you think that you deserve to be treated with respect.. raise your head up high and shake off all the shame and guilt that they laid on you. Defend your right and take back your street. Yes, it is yours! It's not Men's Street. It is your street as well. You are not an excess. You are not a lollipop or any goody they want to reduce you into. Put the shame on the one who deserves it. Make the insect who dares touch you or talk to you in an improper way see your disgust, and expose him in front of everyone.


Here are some final tips which are personally tested and proven to reduce harassment. Preventing it, though, would need a collaborative effort. Remember that by being passive you are not only harming yourself, but you are putting hundreds at risk. Think about it.

1. Have a serious look on your face whenever you're walking down the street. This would give any harasser an indication that you're not the quiet, shy kind of girl. He would be reluctant to approach you for fear that his assault might provoke you enough to scream and scandalize him.

2. When you ride a bus or metro, or if you are in a crowded place, don't look around you as if you are expecting to be harassed at any moment. Harassers smell weak girls who are already scared. They know that fear will paralyze you for a few seconds, and that is all they need. Instead, stand up straight. Act confident. Look people in the eye. And if you meet the eye of someone you suspect of being a harasser, don't ever look away. Give him a slight grim mixed with the "Don't-even-think-about-it" kind of look directly in the eye.

3. If you have to walk down a quiet inner alley, don't walk close to the buildings. This will encourage any harasser, because he knows that chances of you being noticed by passers by or inhabitants who might be present in their balconies is minimal. Instead, walk towards the middle of the street. You might think that hiding makes you safe, but in fact you are trapping yourself, being blocked from view. It is also recommended, in case you pass by this alley on daily basis, to save the number of the nearest police station on your mobile.. preferably saving it as "1police", for example. This will make it on top of your phone book list for a fast dial.

4. If you think you're being harassed, do not deceive yourself into mistaking it for a joke. Many girls endure inappropriate comments or gestures made by their colleagues, bosses, teachers…etc, trying to convince themselves that it is just their way of joking, or that those persons have a crude sense of humor! They think that rejecting these acts or being firm would cause embarrassment and unneeded tension! Baby, if you feel bad, awkward, offended, uneasy, or that something is wrong, then it has to be as such. Sugar-coating harassment won't make it sound any better. If you don't stop this early enough, the person who is harassing you (whoever he is.. and yes, he can be as old as your grandfather) will take it as a green light to proceed to more daring stuff. Don't be a willing victim. Denial always makes things worse.

5. If you get harassed, make a scene. This does not only teach your harasser a lesson, but it also makes you stronger as you discover how cowardly those harassers turn to be. You will be more able to defend yourself. Once you lose the fear.. fear of the harasser and fear of speaking out.. you will be amazed as you encounter less and less harassments. By then, you'd think that those insects that roam the streets have suddenly disappeared. But no.. The harassers didn't disappear.. it is the new you that they fear.

Retards Make It to The Atlantic

The money quote:
"You won't be able to stop them (i.e. guys), but you can protect yourself. He who created you knows what's best for you!"

Hello all the lollipops out there.. and the flies too. Hope everybody's is doing great in Candyland!

Well, I've -unfortunately- seen this stupid ad in many places around the internet. I even received it in an email! (Some of my buddies have gone into the habit of spamming lately.) When I first laid eyes on it, the only thing that came to mind was.. WTF? I felt disgusted and offended beyond belief. And every time I saw it on a blog or a Facebook group the same lump found its way to my throat.

Until, one day, I saw it on The Atlantic! Even Andrew Sullivan seems to have been moved by it. Yeah.. Voila.. It's right there in my face.. But this time there was something new about it. I thought I saw a tongue sticking out from behind the lollipops! Most probably it was the working of my insulted brain which in turn intoxicated my imagination. I rubbed my eyes, looked back again.. still nothing changed.. There is the stupid ad, the lollipops, the flies and the tongue!

Sandmonkey has said enough about this, that I need say no more. Although in his post he has reached an awkward conclusion assuming that hijabi females themselves are the ones responsible for this stupid campaign! (Why?.. No clue.) Wish such a disgusting ad would have stayed at home.. but uhuh.. that's just one of the disadvantages of Globalization.. Things cannot be kept at home for too long! Now, the whole world can see the latest inventions of the Egyptian mind! That's how Egyptians use the evil West's modern technology.. precisely, as manifest in Photoshop! See? Who on earth could have thought of this but us? It still is creative, if you can somehow bring yourself to take out the "sick" aspect of it.

Let's cast all that aside now, and please bear to look at this thing (sorry) from a fresh angle.. an Egyptian one as well.

I don't believe hijab propagandists have grown that desperate while seeking to influence more girls to wear hijab, knowing that almost 80% of Egyptian females today are hijab-wearers. What's freaking me out about this ad, though, is its indirect encouragement to sexual harassers!

Seeing this ad from a boy's eyes, the message is totally reversed from a presumably "religious", "pious", or "moral" cause, to an implication that sexual harassment is the norm, and that whoever dislikes it should make this clear by dropping down a veil over her head.. so as to say, become marked. You guys are thus being encouraged to direct your sexual advancements towards those who do not hold this mark.. the X.

Mind you.. How come we see no ads, stickers, flyers, posters or the like, telling guys to back off? or reminding them of the punishment of a sexual harasser in the afterlife? The doors of hell seem to be wide open exclusively to females!.. and in today's Egypt those females are defined as those who do not cover their hair! On the other hand, though, nothing whatsoever is said about male sexual harassers. Sometimes I even imagine that they are ready to place a reward for those who harass females down the streets or means of public transportation! And the message that is being transmitted all the time sounds like "Girls are asking for it. Girls deserve it. Girls are the source of evil. Girls are temptation. Girls are the ones who push you to sin, and if you give in to their temptation you are just a poor fellow, and it is totally human, and God will forgive you for being weak. But she.. she will burn in eternal hell."

I can't believe I'm about to do this.. But let me play a devil's advocate for a while.

Suppose that girls are asking to be harassed.. Supposed that they enjoy your sneaky hand exploring their bodies.. Suppose they are just pretending to be offended while in secret that is what they are seeking after.. And suppose that you are merely answering their call. Why don't you count your sister among them? Why don't you count your wife among them? Why don't you count your daughter among them? Are they immune? Or.. the question I'd better ask is.. Are they marked as untouchables?

Here it is. In a man's world you can not place any restrictions on men. You can not ask them to be moral, religious, God-fearing.. or even human. Most of them will be delighted by the thought of being considered as insects, as long as they are allowed to roam freely and indulge in every low desire. "So what? Call me an insect.. Fine by me. But let those lollipops be prepared for my adventures. Let them know that they can never hope to get rid of my jaws and my stinky tongue. Let them surrender to my rules."

Islamist Fundamentalists exploit this patriarchal rot seeking their own advantages. They are other insects of another kind, feeding on social fungus. For them, reforming manners and calling people to abide by high morals means their distinction. What will they feed on when there is no more rot? While the status-quo is so full of advantages.. that's their ultimate playground. That's why they can exercise their influence at full length. Patriarchs will appreciate this license to sin, while in return they will offer huge support to those fundamentalists.. after all, they are the ones in power.. they control society.. and those fellow insects will help them to gain more control.

Girls in this position have no choice. They are not doers, and they are brought up to believe that they can never aspire to be doers. They are the done-by. You either accept the marking system (the veil) or you are exposed to waves of criticism and rebuke for being the primary source of evil on earth. You can not break this affiliation between patriarchy and islamic fundamentalism.. it is a match made in heaven!.. and you are too weak to dare question their values.

But wait a minute.. Your submission is not solving anything.. not even for you. On the contrary.. it is making things much worse. By accepting to play the role of the lollipop, you are in fact declaring the death of humanity. You are the one building Candyland with your own hands. And you're building it for insects to enjoy! In Candyland, there are only lollipops and flies.. Flies are the living organisms, they rule.. lollipops are merely inanimate objects. Wrapped or unwrapped, they still are the same. Insects will consume you one way or another.

Believe it or not.. you can stop all this! You have the power within you to decide and choose, because you are still a human being. So, you can either choose to stay as such and change your society to better, inspiring them to stick on to their humanity, and refusing to be exploited in such a way.. or.. you can go ahead and surrender.. go with the flow.. be the lollipop and lose any hope in becoming a human being once more. It all lies within your hands.

The Victimization of Egyptian Women and Children

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Somethings are just beyond belief! And I seriously wish that what Egypt has been witnessing lately is just one long bad dream. Don't know what to do if this nightmare doesn't end. Excuse my sad, or rather depressed, tone.. but I am extremely shocked, and on many levels.

Let's start with the child rights laws, which have been the subjects of many debates in Egypt lately. This led to some amendments and now the articles are being discussed once more, faced by huge resistance led by.. of course you know who.. the Muslim Brotherhood! Unfortunately, now that they have occupied 88 seats in the Egyptian parliament, they can object to such laws.. not only so, but the huge media controls they own, as well as those that surrender to their influence, enables them to disfigure anything they object to, and represent it in the most horrible attire to the masses who have come to consider them as their trusted source of information and ready made judgements.

Why am I writing about child rights? Well, there are a number of laws that mainly target the rights of a female child. Pardon me, I feel stupid when I call them rights.. let's say discontinuing violations against young girls, from FGM to early marriages. But that is not the only reason.


I don't know how to explain it to those of you who are not familiar with the Egyptian society (or Arab societies in general), yet let me try. Women here, in spite of of their utter vulnerability, are expected to bear full responsibility of their children. This responsibility may or may not include the financial one. Yet, even if the financial aspect is included, a woman is not supposed to take credit for it.. as opposed to the man, who is automatically perceived of as the bread earner, the hero who toils to provide for his family.

Take this as an example. A typical Egyptian mother is supposed to get as many children as her husband wants. She doesn't have a say in this. This is a man's decision to make. If he asks for more kids, his wish must be granted, or else.. and this "else" includes horrible options.. needless to say, all of which are totally controlled by the man, for he can decide to divorce his wife or desert her or have a second wife. So, to make a story short, that's why a woman has to keep producing babies into this world until her husband decides that he's had enough.

Then, she becomes responsible for nourishing those kids, upbringing them alone (just like a single mom) looking after their health, taking them to school, helping with their homework (if she is educated|), besides her regular chores of course, and satisfying her husband in every possible way. Which means, that basically this woman never gets a chance to have any time for herself.

Now, what if she is married to a cruel man.. or worse, a psycho.. which is not a rare case? He has the right to beat her and her children as severely as he wishes. No criminal charges can be directed against him, unless one of them dies as a result of this beating. And yes, it is allowed in our legal system. And yes, you guessed it right, because some crazy sadistic men have claimed that this is an authorized tool for disciplining a man's wife and children in Islam! Which is absolutely not true.

This woman, even if she has a job, is never encouraged to leave her husband. Even if you are married to a psycho or a drug addict, society expects you to stay in this marriage for the sake of "the children". Black comedy.. but true.. she is stuck with this psycho and her children have to pay the price, until either this man dies a natural death, or one of them ends up being murdered. Then this man is put to jail and the other members of the family, who are already ruined by then, can continue their lives without neither upsetting the society nor being tortured by the father (being in prison).

At last, in the year 2008, and for the first time, new laws are being endorsed to protect child rights in Egypt. Those laws include:

1- Prohibiting the practice of FGM and considering it a criminal act which deserves to be punished by law. ( Yes, up till now FGM is not considered a criminal act. It is prohibited at public hospitals, and the ministry of health forbids any registered doctors from doing the procedure. But there can be no charges against those who break the rule. 2 girls have recently lost their lives while undergoing FGM, and those who operated on them were not charged with anything.)

Bedour, lost her life while undergoing FGM

2- Considering severe beating of a child by his/her parents to be a violation against child rights, and therefore authorities will have the right to place charges against the parent in case of severe injuries and causing disabilities.

3- Raising the age of marriage for females to 18, and any female under this age can not have a legal marriage certificate. (Early marriages are usually arranged by the parents who wish to get rid of the responsibility of their daughters or force them to marry for money.)

4-Giving a mother the right to register her child on her name in cases of illegal children, where the father refuses to give his name to his own child outside marriage. (Currently, there are 120,000 cases of illegal children in Egyptian courts. By law, even if a DNA test relates a child to his parent, the man can still refuse to give his name to his child, as long as there is no official marriage certificate bonding him with the mother. Moreover, a man cannot be forced to take a DNA test in those cases. If he refuses to take it, then nothing can be done.)

Now, imagine this.. The MB objects to all those laws saying the following:

1- FGM should be left as a matter of choice. If parents wish to preserve the "chastity" of their daughters through this procedure, then it is their way of protecting her and deciding what is good for her! Therefore, they claim, by closing the legal doors, they will still do it (as if this is a matter of fact that we have to live with) even if they resort to unprofessional physicians, nurses or "hala' elseha" or "daya".

2- The Muslim Brotherhood considers corporal punishment ban "imported from west", saying that it is an authorized method of disciplining children according to Islam, and building on the hadith "Order your children to pray at the age of seven, beat them for it at the age of ten, and let males and females take separate beds." (The hadith didn't mean to beat a child until death. Severe beating is prohibited in all cases, while minor rebuking back at that time before any other methods of parenting or discipline were introduced was permitted in the case of reminding a kid to pray.). Then the other hadith, which they present in the worst version I've ever seen is "Play with them (your children) for seven (years), beat them for seven, befriend them for seven, and then let them be." Now, this hadith, if it is a real one (I've never seen it anywhere except on their websites) was never said with the verb "beat" edrabohom, but the versions I saw before either had the verb "discipline" adebohom or "educate" 3alemohom in its place. It does not make sense at all when you relate it to what we know about how prophet Muhammed brought up his children, besides the crazy and brutal message behind it. Seriously, those people are cursing their religion!

3- Again, as always, they like the idea of kids getting married. Don't know what those sick people are thinking! And they keep making pathetic excuses for it. How can a girl under 18 be responsible for a family, for God's sake? What are they benefiting by causing more men to rape kids in the name of a legal marriage? Yes, this is rape. Straight and inhuman rape, no matter what the papers say. How come a kid who can not even have a bank account or a driving license be able to get married??!! If I can't be responsible for some money bills or a car made of metal, how come I am allowed to be responsible for a family and raise children while I am legally a child? Who on earth would want a girl under this age to get married? and for what purpose? This is way too much!

4- Yeah, the usual talk. Leave the illegal children in the streets. We have one million homeless children in the streets?.. so what? Let them double or triple.. not a problem. But a child can never have the name of his/her mother. A child whose father is an animal must pay for it for a lifetime. But the animal has to be protected, because he's a man. Now that's a heavenly privilege that no one can touch. He is the god on earth. He chooses whether to give his children a life or execute them. A child whose father is unwilling to give him a name, can never have a life. The god on earth has decided his fate.. so leave the kid to meet it.

Yeah.. yeah. Great macho men! So, this is religion, huh? We are supposed to buy this, aren't we? So, Islam for you is a religion that rewards sadists, psychos and brutal men, while it punishes women and children, the scum of earth, right? Now, let me see this clearly. According to you, we are worshiping a sick man in the sky.. for this being you are claiming to talk on behalf of can never be a deity of any kind.. he can not raise to the level of the human even! What a bunch of psychos you are! I bet that the devil himself has got more ethics than you do.

Take a look at what the MB makes of this here.

V-day.... stop the violence (part 2)

The interesting thing about our society is that it mixes between emotional and physical abuse. As if all the emotional abuse was not enough! Men are encouraged to beat their wives. Religious authorities tell men it is okay to beat their wives, just not on the face. Then they say "hit her with a toothpick"!.. which makes no sense at all. What does poking someone with a toothpick do?? And if it doesn't do anything, why is it encouraged? So a punch in the stomach is okay? A kick to the leg? A punch in the shoulders? Hitting with a big wooden stick on her back is fine??

These won't leave visible bruises, so technically they are allowed..... But why do religious figures keep repeating that men need to hit women?? Why not look at religion a little differently? Even if beating is in religion, and religious figures translate it into very mild hitting with a toothpick, "sewak," why encourage it?? It was never a religious order. If a man does not hit his wife, he will not go to hell. Why not say that its purpose is just to let the wife know you are angry and you cannot take it anymore... so dont hit your wife or abuse her, just communicate your unhappiness, no need to be violent.

They all see how society currently thinks... so maybe it isnt a good idea now to tell men, go hit your wives... because the result is injury, humiliation, abuse, and breaking a relationship which can never be fixed. Maybe in this day and age, religious authorities need to come out and say no to violence all together... dont allow just a little violence... ban it completely. Is it okay to hit a colleague who disagrees with you at work?? If it isnt, then can you communicate your displeasure without using physical force?? If you can do it at work, I guarantee you can do it at home!! Now we all know that God is fair, and he would in no way mandate abusing human beings, so it would be reasonable if religious figures, seeing the kind of abuse happening today, actually forbid men from using force with women they share a life with.


The problem with physical abuse is that it not only encompasses beating women, but it also involves other forms of abuse, such as female genital mutilation (FGM) , otherwise called female circumcision.

As you can see , the incidence of FGM in Egypt is one of the highest in the world. Female circumcision is in no way related to religion. It is an ancient African tradition, designed to subdue women and deprive them of sexual pleasure, so women will not be tempted to cheat. In short it is the easy way out for males who do not care how much they damage a woman physically and emotionally, as long as their pride in front of other men is intact, to be comfortable knowing they can rest easy at night, and abuse their wives, without worrying that their wives will look for other men to provide them with the love and compassion they are lacking in their lives.. This kind of primitive culture involves a life threatening procedure by which parents cause damage to their own daughters' self esteem. so be it!.. infections septicemia, urinary tract infections and ultimate death are a mear smidgen in comparison to their super inflated ego. Add to all of that the psychological trauma and humiliation the poor girls suffer in full view of their families and friends... They are even taught that this is the norm, and that when they are older they need to enforce the same form of savagry onto younger girls without batting an eye lash since this is the way things are, and no one can ever change them.

It amazes me how this ideology exists in Egypt to this very day. The fact that it was adapted at one point of time is incomprehensible, since Egypt had a well known civilization that should not have been influenced by lesser civilizations. The fact that it still exists does not make any sense.. and the most astounding fact is that they actually attribute this abuse to God, stating it is mandated by him. It is just unacceptable how every time there is a way to oppress women that men would like to use, they just blame it on God and state that it is God's order, thus preventing women from fighting back. The statistics for FGM are frightening. 97% of Egyptian women have undergone the procedure. Mainly in Rural areas, but the practice is a little less common in larger cities. Demographic and health surveys have been conducted by USAID , and their results showed that there is no doctrinal basis for this practice in either Islam or Christianity. Although high officials in both the Muslim and Christian religious establishments have voiced opposition to the practice, it is still supported by some local religious authorities. Moreover, many Egyptians believe that this is an important part of maintaining female chastity, which is part of the religious tradition.

The historical roots of the practice date back thousands of years. According to the 1995 DHS findings, the most commonly given reason (58 percent) for supporting the practice was the belief that this was a "good tradition." Almost three-quarters of Egyptian women felt that husbands would prefer their wives to undergo the procedure. More than one-third cited cleanliness as a reason, while a smaller number saw it as a way to prevent promiscuity before marriage and unfaithfulness within the marriage.
The 2000 DHS also found that the majority of women think this practice should continue, though there was some decline in support for the practice (75 percent of women surveyed in 2000 versus 82 percent in 1995). There is spreading recognition of the many potential adverse health consequences of the practice, which has resulted in increasing resort to doctors rather than traditional birth attendants (TBAs) to perform the procedure.
One of the main factors behind the persistence of the practice is its social significance for females. In communities where it is practiced, a woman achieves recognition mainly through marriage and child bearing and many families refuse to accept as a marriage partner, a woman who has not undergone the procedure.

So you can see that women who promote this practice do so because they believe it will please men, and they are more likely to get married, which to them holds more significance than any trauma a young girl may suffer. On the positive side, In 2007 after many many deaths of young innocent girls, the Egyptian government finally stepped up and banned FGM for good....banning it unless it was medically necessary was the most absurd law in the world... it is like saying we ban cutting a girls arm, unless the doctor feels that it is medically necessary, then parents would get their girls to see the doctor, so we can decide if we should cut off all of her arm or half of it... but with the new law, I finally see some light at the end of the tunnel. There is even a very nice ad campaign to go along with it.

On a lighter note, fighting violence against women is a world wide phenomenon. A show called "The Vagina Monologues" celebrated it's 10th anniversary this February 14th.... V-Day!! It promotes women identifying with themselves and their bodies, and being comfortable with who they are, the way God made them. It promotes healthy sexuality, and women not fearing men, and not mutilating their bodies to please men. This show has been translated into many languages, including arabic.An arabic version played for some time in Lebanon, of course with some modifications to suit Arabic culture. I especially like the following segment, because it opposes everything patriarchal cultures resemble... In our culture they try to shame women about their periods... they tell them they are not clean, they cannot perform certain jobs, they accuse them of being crazy or irrational, so unable to function in life... in short they make women feel bad for something that is natural and healthy and in no way shameful. This segment is the complete opposite!! Enjoy!

V-Day... Stop the Violence 1

With the curent trends and attitudes in modern day Egypt, a very important problem has surfaced that I feel is unacceptable, and attention needs to be brought to that matter.
I am talking of course about violence against women in general, or spouse abuse in particular.
Abuse can be one of 2 types: either emotional or physical. Many factors have promoted this abuse, including te media, misinterpretation of religion, and our mysogynist culture. In older movies, it was not uncommon to see a woman being beaten by a man, and it always shown in a positive light, and the man was always the good guy, because the woman of course deserved it. This led to the acceptance of the concept of domestic violence and abuse, making it appear as a normal every day event, and encouraging people to follow the footsteps of the star in the movie... slowly it became widely acceptable, and mainstream.

Abuse can be one of 2 types, either emotional or physical. Emotional abuse is the least evident form of abuse, yet has the most damaging concequences on the victim. The problem with our society is that it advocates the emotional abuse of women... Girls are taught that they are inferior to boys in childhood. Boys run around as they please, while girls are told, "you are a girl, so you should be quiet".. it is not "natural" for girls to be active or to run around freely or misbehave like boys. As they get older, things only get more difficult and more complicated. Brothers are given control over their sisters, simply because they are males, and therefore should be dominant. They are encouraged to order them around and to monitor their every move... some families go as far as allowing their son to beat their daughter if he feels that she is doing something he does not approve of, or something that may threaten the "family honor". This scenario sets the stage for what is to come later as boys and girls grow to be men and women. In a household, men begin their marriage by trying to establish the fact that they are dominant, every decision that is taken is the man's.. everything the woman does, has to be pre- approved by the man. Family and society encourage him to do that, and tell him he is not a man if he doesnt do that. Some men will force their wives to stay at home. So they are 100% financially dependant on the husband. In return, the wife is expected to attend to her husband's every need. If she doesnt, she is not good enough and needs to be "disciplined" according to the man's standards. And of course according to the way he was raised, "beating" his wife is justified... after all, isn't she the one who didn't have dinner ready on time, or didn't clean the house efficiently enough, or didn't perform a task he asked for in a timely manner? Women are taught that they are nothing without a man.
She does not even have the option of leaving him, which is a right God gave her, but which society has taken away from her. Fanta discussed how women are prevented from seeking a divorce by society here. Some men will even forbid their wives from communicating with their families, and make sure they are totally cut off from all of their friends.... and when these poor women complain, they are told, "you have to obey your husband...it is his right to 'protect' you, and women can spoil (yefsedo) each other, so your husband is only protecting you by cutting you off from your life as you have known it before he married you". Now this may look like a fact of life for some people, or a husband being over protective compared to others, but the truth is: this is a very systematic approach to deprive women of everything they have and to gurantee their total submission and dependance on their partners, so they are unable to function in society... which gives people a reason to forbid them from holding positions or being figures of authority...etc.

This scenario is in fact a direct application of the steps of Psycological abuse!!! Here is how:

Based on an adaptation of work from Alice Miller's For Your Own Good and John Bradshaw's Healing the Shame That Binds You

Authority figures (AF)
1. AF's are the masters of dependants.
2. AF's alone decide what is right and wrong
3. They alone make up the definitions, the rules, and the "consequences" (i.e. punishment)
4. Dependants are held responsible for the AF's feelings (anger, disappointment, embarrassment, humiliation, happiness and unhappiness)
5. The AF is only responsible and accountable for good things that happen, never the bad ones. Thus the AF appears to always be right, and when things go wrong the dependant is always blamed and feels responsible and guilty.
6. The AF tries to exercise total control of the dependant by controlling his thoughts, feelings and behavior. Whenever this control is not absolute, the AF feels threatened.
7. The dependant's individuality is minimized as much as possible by the AF.
8. The AF creates an intricate system of punishments and rewards which rob the dependant of any sense of inner direction or esteem.
9. The following freedoms listed by Virginia Satire are denied to the dependant as much as possible:
a) The freedom to perceive b) To think and interpret c) To feel To want, need, and chose
10. The AF never (or rarely) admits mistakes or apologizes.
11. All of the above take place in a way which does not expose the AF's true motives, and none of this is openly talked about. No "back talk" is allowed
Some of the Consequences:
-Mistakes are concealed
-People are under constant stress
-Needs are frustrated, denied
-Fear dominates
-Power is based on fear, not respect
-Information is withheld and distorted
-Information flow is primarily from top down
-Behavior is forced; does not come naturally
-Behavior is not consistent with true feelings, which adds to the stress
-Conflicts and problems are blamed on the dependent's "poor attitudes" and "character flaws."
-All of this tears the dependant person apart, causing self-alienation and even self-loathing. The dependant person loses faith in his/her own mind and feelings with devastating self-esteem consequences.
-Depression, rage, mood swings, co-dependency, self-injury and self-destruction are typical outcomes.
-If the authority figure is a parent, this person will likely develop symptoms of various "disorders" such as the so-called Borderline Personality disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Anoexia, Bulemia etc.

The previous box explains emotional abuse and how it is accomplished, and how it affects the abused person. I copied it from this link

If you read through the points, you will see that we can all agree that points #1,2, and 3 are all systematically carried out in most Egyptian households, and are considered to be traditional values that people should not question. Emotional abuse is mainly having someone depend on you emotionally , financially, socially.. You threaten to leave them or marry someone else if they disobey you.. You cut off ties between them and their friends and family.. You control them financially, then you make them feel that they cannot function in life without you!!!

Point #4 may not be as evident, but it is the one argument used by most Egyptians when they talk to women to see why a husband has cheated on his wife.... For example, if a man cheats, the woman is always told "you are responsible for his bad behaviour... you must have done something wrong, so you were unable to contain him... maybe you are not enough for him... see where you are deficient, and try to fix your flaws, then beg him to come back to you.. maybe if he sees your sincere efforts to correct your faults he will have pitty on you and be yours exclusively"!!! A woman is never encouraged to leave a cheating husband, and of course the welfare of the children is always mentioned as a reason she should tolerate abuse.

On the other hand, if a woman cheats on her husband, then she is a slut and a whore, who does not deserve her husband .. she does not deserve to live .. he is encouraged to throw her out, and never look back.. what she has done is inconceivable and unforgivable. The husband is discouraged from ever forgiving his wife, and to society, she deserves every bad thing that comes her way. The children's welfare in this case is not an issue, since they claim children dont need a mother who cheats on her spouse!! Notice how the man is never at fault.... if he cheats, she is wrong.. If she cheats, she is wrong!!! Men are never wrong in society's twisted logic.

To Be Continued..

Honor Killings: The Shame Behind the Oxymoron

I saw a very alarming post on Cao's Blog that I'd like to share with you here. This is something which takes place on a regular basis in Egypt, that we have come to accept it as a matter of fact. The headline is "Honor Killings" (What a stupid name! How can crime and honor both meet in the same term?). Although the subject itself is not new to us in any way, yet this time we are allowed to see the crime from a different perspective.. the perspective of the West, of those who suddenly wake up one morning to learn about this crime through their local newspapers.

The Crime:

An Egyptian cabdriver, who lives in the United States and is married to an American ( Christian) woman, has shot his two teenage daughters when he found out that each of them has got a boyfriend.

Let's check out what was written about this crime on The Dallas Morning News:

Sarah and Amina Yaser Said looked luminescent in their pink dresses, a pink flower in each girl's hair. One might have thought the sisters were sleeping were it not for the matching pink-lined coffins that held them.

Their Christian funeral service Saturday – followed by a Muslim service later in the day – served as a reminder of the promise their short lives held and the needless tragedy of their deaths. Police believe they were killed by their father, a 50-year-old cabdriver.
And the police presence was a reminder that the girls' Egyptian-born father, Yaser Abdel Said, is still on the run.

Amina, 18, and Sarah, 17, who both attended Lewisville High School, were found shot to death in a taxi at an Irving motel Tuesday night.

The girls’ great Aunt spoke with journalists, relaying that Mr. Said had been abusing them for two years, and their mother left with the girls after he found out they had boyfriends and threatened to kill them. She said, “This was an honor killing,” a practice in which a man kills a female relative who he believes has somehow shamed the family.

The girls were buried in a muslim cemetery, because in Islam, the children inherit their religion from their father.

And here's Cao's comment on this crime:

Of course, two years is a very short time. In some countries, the child abuse starts from when they’re very young, like this little girl in Moracco. Even their holy men get into the act. How dare she step on the prayer rug!

Cao ends her post concluding: "Why should anyone object? It’s their religion."

And her reply to my request, asking for permission to publish this material over here was:

"Yes, go ahead, Fantasia. Some say he’s hiding in the neighborhood, but I am more inclined to believe he went back to Egypt where this is acceptable."

Now, please let's quit the crap for a moment and not say these are individual practices that nobody approves of. And don't tell me the story of the four witnesses, cause this rule has never been relied on in real life. Let's talk facts.

Honor killings are a fact that we all hear about without being least alarmed. It is not religion, but some people strongly relate it to religion. There is no stronger proof than the fact that only Muslim countries witness this kind of crimes.

Egyptiana had written about this issue earlier, and she rightly entitled her post "They Kill Women in Egypt". And you will find much of what I am going to say here to be written in my comment on her post.

Violence against women in Egypt has been on the rise recently due to many social, economical and cultural factors. Yet those factors can never act as a justification for such crimes. Honor killings seem to be practiced without minimal hesitation, and are in fact considered to be glorious acts in some cases.

The murderer, who kills a female relative, is raised to a heroic level by his community. This actually increases the number of totally innocent female victims, because the men in their families do not really care much about finding out the truth. They instantly take any suspicious signs or casual talks running in the neighborhood as a chance to become heroes. Those are usually very marginalized people, who would happily do anything, including murder, to find a meaning for their lives.

The result: 65% of victims of honor killings were found to be virgins according to autopsy reports. Now, you would expect a country which suffers from a moral crisis like that to do its best in fighting against those crimes and make sure not to encourage this kind of twisted criminal thinking. However, the damn miserable crisis in the case of Egypt is that our laws treat honor killings as if they were justified.. even if the judge presiding over a certain trial is 100% sure that the killer had other motives behind the murder.. or that "rumors" related to the victim's conduct in this case have only served as a golden chance, or excuse to perform the act and escape punishment.

Criminals found guilty in those cases won't be executed!!.. Because there is an article in the Egyptian law which gives "honor killings" a different status in deciding penalty for murder charges! Article 237 of the Egyptian Penal Code reads “Whoever surprises his wife in the act of adultery and kills her on the spot together with her adulterer-partner shall be punished with detention instead of the penalties prescribed in articles 234 [permanent or temporary hard labor] and 236 [hard labor or imprisonment for a period of three to seven years]. While Article 17 of the Egyptian Penal code allows judges to decrease the sentences given in the case of murder when they decide that the condition of the murderer requires so. Such reductions reach as little as six months that could also be spent during the trial. Therefore the murderer can escape being imprisoned and walks free.

Which means that basically any murderer whose victim happened to be a female, can plead that it was an honor killing to be able to escape execution. And this happens a lot. There was even a case where the murder was committed for theft (and it was very clear from investigations), yet because the murderer was a distant relative of the victim, his lawyer suggested that he claims it was an honor killing in order to receive a better sentence. This is the real disgrace in my point of view. The law is encouraging people to go about killing females in pursuit of glory. And the press is just disgusting in the way it covers those crimes. The journalists use their imagination to attract readers at the expense of social and legal justice. They make the victim turn into a whore who destroyed her family, being sure that she can never come back to defend herself.

A true example from court cases: *

In the court case No. 831 of 1998 in Qena, a girl's father and brother killed her. She was mentally retarded and suffered from psychological disorders. She used to go out of the house without permission. She also used to spoil the food when cooking and ruin some of the household equipment. Her father and her brother could not tolerate her any longer. After her mother's death, they both pushed her to far away place so that nobody could see them or hear her voice. They both strangled her with a red shawl she was wearing; they also hit her hard on her back and tummy with a stick and left her dead.
The court found out that there was no proof that the girl's chastity was in question. Both the father and the brother said that they killed her because of their deep concern and fear that she might get involved with a stranger due to her frequent trips outside the house. In spite of the fact that the court was sure that the two men had committed murder of first degree, yet the judge used article 17 of the Penal Code and gave the father a verdict of imprisonment for ten years only.

Now, Let's have a look at statistics which reveal horrible facts about honor killings in Egypt (1998-2001):

Murder of a female for being suspected 79%
Murder of a female because of adultery 9%
Murder of a female to hide incest 6%
Murder for other reasons 6%

Degree of relationship between the victims and the murderer:
Husband killing the wife 41%
Father killing the daughter 34%
Brother killing the sister 18%
A man killing his female relative 7%

I believe this says it all.. I want us for just once to be able to look our problems in the face and see the damage caused by absence of justice. What remains is to be brave enough to put an end to that. Whatever your motive might be.. whether it be human rights, sympathy, concern for Egypt's image, concern for the deformed image of Islam, or rejection of violence.. all motives in the end will lead to one way: Honor killings must be treated as any other murder crimes, without any discrimination or justification.

*Information copied from an expert paper prepared by Fatma Khafagy, The Association of Legal Aid for Women