On the State of Egypt (16 page)

How many intellectuals or even men of religion in Egypt would turn down the prize? Which of them is closer to Almighty God: this high-minded Spanish writer, who I am confident never thought of religion when he took his brave and noble decision, or the dozens of devout Egyptians, Muslims and Christians, who cooperate with despotic regimes and put themselves at their service, completely ignoring the crimes these regimes perpetrate against their peoples? Real piety must go hand in hand with ethics because morality without piety is much better than piety without morality, and democracy is the solution.

August 31, 2009

The Sorrows of Miss Laurence

L
aurence is a French woman, a physiotherapist who had the chance to work in Egypt and was overjoyed because, like most French people, she loved Egyptian civilization and dreamed of seeing the Nile, the pyramids, and the pharaonic temples. I met Laurence in Cairo on various occasions, but when I met her again a few days ago, I was surprised to hear her saying, “I’ve decided to leave Egypt forever.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I can no longer stand being a woman on display,” she answered.

“What do you mean?”

“Every time I go out in the street, I don’t feel that I’m a human being with a mind and feelings. I feel that I’m just a body, because I’m a woman on display to everyone. Every man I meet looks at my body in an offensive manner and undresses me with his stares. I’ve started to avoid crowded places because I know that crowds mean harassment. They mean that a man’s hand is going to reach out to my breasts or my legs or any part of my body.”

“Does this always happen?” I asked.

“Invariably. If the guy can’t touch me for the crowds, he speaks to me in broken English to ask if I have a boyfriend or a husband in an attempt to sleep with me. Even the men walking on the other side of the street shout out sexual remarks, or whistle or wave at me. A dozen men started to ogle my body simultaneously, and after that I started taking the women’s carriage on the subway.”

“Do you wear revealing clothes?” I asked.

“Not at all. You’ve seen me several times and you’ve seen what I wear. I respect the culture of others and I know that Egypt is a conservative country. Even in summer when I wear a sleeveless top, I always put on a silk shawl to cover my arms.”

“Don’t you get harassed like that in France?” I said.

“Very rarely. After a year and a half in Cairo I can’t believe what’s happening. Sometimes it seems like all Egyptian men have been struck with some sexual perversion. I’ve started to be afraid of going out in the street. If I don’t have work I stay at home for whole days.”

“What are you going to do now?” I asked.

“I’m happy to have found a job in Greece, and I’m impatient to leave. At least in Greece no one will try to grope me or ogle me or invite me to bed as soon as he sees me. There I’ll feel like a human being and not a woman on show for sex.”

My conversation with Laurence came to an end and I felt sad. How could this happen in Egypt, a country always known for being polite to foreigners and treating them well? I referred back to surveys carried out on sexual harassment in Egypt and I found some alarming results. Last year a survey by the Egyptian Center for Human Rights Education found that 98 percent of foreign women in Egypt had experienced sexual harassment. The strange thing is that this wave of harassment is spreading alongside an overwhelming wave of superficial religiosity. All these beards,
gallabiyas
, blaring loudspeakers, Salafist Wahhabi television channels, religious lessons, and manifestations of piety have not stopped the sexual harassment. Why do Egyptians harass women? The traditional answer is that the women themselves are responsible for the harassment because they wear revealing clothes and incite men to harass them. This is a perverse and incoherent argument, first, because it blames the victim instead of the perpetrator; second, because it portrays men as a bunch of stray beasts unable to control their instincts—as soon as they see a bare piece of a woman’s body they pounce on her; third, because most women in Egypt now wear the
hijab
but this does not protect them from harassment, according to the survey I mentioned; fourth, because until the end of the 1970s Egyptian women wore very modern clothes that revealed their arms and legs but sexual harassment was much less common than it is now; and, fifth, because in France, for example, where women in general wear scanty clothing, the rate of sexual harassment is no more than 20 percent, according to the
New York Times
. This means that in pious Egypt, women suffer four or five times as much sexual harassment as women in secular France. In fact those societies that strictly segregate men and women, such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, have the highest rates of sexual harassment in the world. The phenomenon in my opinion is much more complicated than the type of clothes women wear. My view is that sexual harassment is rampant is Egypt for several reasons.

One is unemployment. The millions of young men who have failed to find jobs after completing their education feel frustration and despair, and lose faith in the idea of justice, on the grounds that in Egypt causes do not lead to results. Hard work does not necessarily lead to success, academic excellence does not necessarily lead to a respectable job, and a commitment to morality does not necessarily lead to social advancement. In fact, on the contrary, moral deviance often leads to wealth. All this must push young men toward violence, and in this context psychologists say that sex crimes are not always committed in order to satisfy sexual desire and that men often engage in sexual harassment as a way to take revenge on society or to vent their anger and frustration.

Another is the difficulty of getting married in Egypt. Millions of Egyptians cannot afford to get married and, since traditions and religious injunctions (both Muslim and Christian) ban extramarital relations, most young Egyptians are sexually frustrated, which must sometimes lead them to harass women.

A third reason is the prevalence of pornographic videos and easy access to them because of the communications revolution and the spread of the Internet. In fact the harm done by pornographic material is not confined to arousing the instincts of the young, who are already repressed. It also normalizes and decriminalizes the idea of rape and removes the personal and respectful aspect of sexual relations, so that sexual harassment becomes merely an act of pleasure rather than an abhorrent crime.

The final reason is that our attitude toward women in Egypt has changed. At the beginning of the last century Egyptian women began a long struggle for liberation from the
harim
, for equality with men in education and employment, and for a respected position in society. Egyptian society then fell under the influence of the restricted Wahhabi reading of Islam. Although this reading is strict about covering up women’s bodies, it also sees a woman as merely an instrument of pleasure, a source of temptation, a machine to produce children, and a house servant. Everything else is less important. In fact in their defense of Islamic dress codes, some Wahhabi sheikhs have likened women to pieces of candy that must be well wrapped so that flies don’t land on them. This may be said with good intentions, but likening women to pieces of candy dehumanizes them because a piece of candy has no mind or feelings and its only purpose is to be eaten and enjoyed. So if someone wants some candy and cannot afford it, and if he has a chance to eat someone else’s candy with impunity, he will not hesitate to take the chance. This is exactly what a man is doing when he sexually harasses women in the street.

The sexual harassment of women will not stop until we revive the true open-minded Egyptian reading of Islam, which sees women as human beings who are fully capable and competent, not just as bodies or pieces of candy. The harassment will stop when corruption, despotism, and injustice come to an end, when a new political system comes about, elected by the people, giving the millions of young people their natural right to live and work and get married.

Democracy is the solution.

September 13, 2009

Why Are Religious Fanatics Obsessed with Women’s Bodies?

T
he Shabaab movement in Somalia controls large parts of the south and center of the country, and because officials in this movement embrace the Wahhabi ideology they have imposed their views on Somalis by force and issued strict decrees banning films, plays, dancing at weddings, soccer matches, and all forms of music, even ring tones on cell phones. Some days ago these extremists carried out a strange operation: they arrested a Somali woman and whipped her in public because she was wearing a bra. They announced clearly that wearing these bras was un-Islamic because it is a form of fraud and deception. We may well ask what wearing bras has to do with religion, why they would consider them to be a form of fraud and deception, and how they managed to arrest the woman wearing the bra when all Somali women go around with their bodies completely covered. Did they appoint a special female officer to inspect the breasts of women passing by in the street? One Somali woman called Halima told Reuters news agency:

Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts.… They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women’s chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat.

In fact this excessive interest in covering up women’s bodies is not confined to the extremists in Somalia. In Sudan the police examine women’s clothing with extreme vigilance and arrest any woman wearing trousers. They force her to make a public apology for what she has done and then they whip her in public as an example to other women. Some weeks ago Sudanese journalist Lubna al-Husseini insisted on wearing trousers and refused to make the public apology. When she refused to submit to flogging she was referred to a real trial and the farce reached its climax when the judge summoned three witnesses and asked them if they had been able to detect the shape of the accused’s underwear when she was wearing the trousers. When one of the witnesses hesitated in answering, the judge asked him directly, “Did you see Lubna’s stomach when she was wearing the trousers?” The witness gravely replied, “To some extent.” Lubna said she was wearing a modest pair of trousers and that the scandalous pair she was accused of wearing would not suit her at all because she is plump and would need to lose 20 kilos in order to put them on. But the judge convicted her anyway and fined her 500 pounds or a month in prison.

In Egypt, too, extremists continue to take an excessive interest in women’s bodies and in trying to cover them up entirely. They not only advocate that women wear the
niqab
but also that they wear gloves on their hands, which they believe will ensure that no passions are aroused when men and women shake hands. We really do face a phenomenon that deserves consideration: Why are extremists so obsessed with women’s bodies? Some thoughts might help us answer this question.

First, the extremist view of women is that they are only bodies and instruments for either legitimate pleasure or temptation, as well as factories for producing children. This view strips women of their human nature. Accusing the Somali woman of fraud and deception because she was wearing a bra is the same as charging a merchant who conceals defects in his goods and makes false claims about their quality in order to sell them at a higher price. The idea here is that a woman who accentuates her breasts by using a bra gives a false impression of the goods (her body), which is seen as fraud and deception of the buyer (the man) who might buy (marry) her for her ample breasts and later discover that they were ample because of the bra and not by nature.

It would be fair to remember that treating women’s bodies as commodities is not something found only in extremist ideologies but often happens in western societies, too. The use of women’s naked bodies to market commercial products in the West is merely another application of the idea that women are commodities. Anyone who visits the red-light district in Amsterdam can see for himself how wretched prostitutes, completely naked, are lined up behind glass so that passersby can inspect their charms before agreeing on the price. Isn’t that a modern-day slave market, where women’s bodies are on sale to anyone willing to pay?

Second, extremists believe women to be the source of temptation and the prime cause of sin. This view, which is prevalent in all primitive societies, is unfair and inhumane, because men and women commit sin together and the responsibility is shared and equal. If a beautiful woman arouses and tempts men, then a handsome man also arouses and tempts women. But the extremist ideology is naturally biased in favor of the man and hostile to the woman, and considers that she is primarily responsible for all sins.

Third, being strict about covering up women’s bodies is an easy and effortless form of religious struggle. In Egypt we see dozens of Wahhabi sheikhs who enthusiastically advocate covering up women’s bodies but do not utter a single word against despotism, corruption, fraud, or torture because they know very well that serious opposition to the despotic regime (which should really be their first duty) would inevitably lead to their arrest and torture and the destruction of their lives. Their strictness on things related to women’s bodies enables them to operate as evangelists without any real costs. Throughout human history, strictness toward women has usually been a way to conceal political abuses and real crimes. Somalia is a wretched country in the grip of famine and chaos but officials there are distracted from that by inspecting bras. The Sudanese regime is implicated in crimes of murder, torture, and raping thousands of innocents in Darfur but that does not stop the regime from putting on trial a woman who insists on wearing trousers. It is women rather than men who always pay the price for despotism, corruption, and religious hypocrisy.