 Thank you all so much for coming we're glad you could come as tonight we discuss how the Arab Spring has given Arab women new ways to participate in public life and reinvigorated discussion of the ways that a feminist agenda can be reconciled with Islam and there's considerable difference of opinion among our panelists as to whether the Arab Spring will ultimately turn out to have been a good thing or a bad thing for Arab women. We'll be opening up to questions actually about halfway through this time and so I hope you'll all join in with your thoughts as well. Forthest away from me is is Mona El-Tahawi. Mona is an Egyptian American freelance journalist and columnist. She began her career as a news reporter in the Middle East and she was the first Egyptian journalist to live in Israel while reporting for a Western news agency. Mona sadly recently had her left arm and her right hand broken by Egyptian security forces in Tahrir Square and she's been back in New York recuperating before she goes back to Egypt next week, I think. In the middle is Isabel Coleman. Isabel is the director of the civil society markets and democracy initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also the author of Paradise Beneath Her Feet, How Women Are Transforming the Middle East, which examines the ways in which Muslim activists are fighting the portrayal of women's empowerment as an imperialist import by fighting for women's rights within Islam instead of against it. And the book will be available for sale after the panel and I really can't recommend it highly enough. Next to me is Abdi Hal Mubarak. Abdi Hal is a Saudi journalist and blogger who focuses on human rights and women's issues. When I first met Abdi Hal in Jeddah in 2007, she was reporting nonstop on the famous Keteeth Girl case, the case of a teenage Saudi girl who was gang raped by seven men and then when she told the authorities sentenced to 200 lashes for being alone with a man who was not a relative. And the term prison in addition to 200 lashes. Abdi Hal's reporting played a critical role in bringing the case to the attention of the international community, eventually leading to a pardon for the Keteeth Girl from King Abdullah. Abdi Hal is now based in Brooklyn and she's currently an intern at The Nation magazine. Lately, she told me she's been spending a lot of time thinking about what Saudi Arabia should be called after the revolution when it's no longer being run by the El Saud family. So you can you can talk to her about that after the panel. She has some very interesting ideas. Okay, well, I'd like to start out actually Isabel by asking you about your recent piece for foreign policy is the Arab Spring Bad for Women. And you write about this paradoxical fact that dictatorships are often a good thing for women and that in spite of the fact that women's activism was very important in bringing about these Arab revolts that women may be unlikely to turn this into any longer term gains. And could you describe, you know, well, to be clear, I've actually I've never written that dictatorships are good for women. I think dictatorships are bad for people, men and women. But there is this paradoxical effect that under dictatorships, some autocratic secular dictatorships, they have pushed an agenda of women's rights. So that has been the case in countries like Tunisia and to some extent, Egypt. So they're they've passed laws that have been relatively progressive for women have expanded rights for women. And now that those regimes have been swept away and there are new regimes in place, and there's democracy in place. The reality is that it's a much more turbulent, unclear political environment, and women are going to have to navigate it. And they're going to have to work and fight for their rights in this new dynamic political environment that's very fluid. And they're going to have to articulate reasons and justifications for those rights. It won't be just top down anymore. And you already see in countries like Egypt and to some extent Tunisia, there are conservative voices that are arguing against women's rights and a rollback of women's rights. And that's a reality and women are going to have to understand that political dynamic and and work within it effectively. Mona, I'm curious as to what you how you see, you know, the outlook looking forward, right? I think a big struggle. First of all, I wasn't I didn't just have my arms broken by Egyptian right police. I was also also sexually assaulted. And it's really important to say that because part of our struggle is to break the silence and the shame that they try to put on us. And it's not just me at least 100 women in Egypt have been sexually assaulted by the army by soldiers by the police since Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down. Now obviously sexual assault and sexual violence against women are not exclusive to Egypt. They're not exclusive to Arab men. They're not exclusive to the Muslim world. They're recognized as a weapon of war globally. Having said that, and the reason that I stress that is that this is part of our struggle. This is part of the revolution. I mean, as Katherine mentioned, Ebtahal's incredible work on helping Qatif girl. I mean, that kind of sexual violence and having women pay the price for it and having women basically shut up is at the heart of our revolution. Isabel makes an important point in Egypt. A lot of the feminists that I work with that I admire and whose work I love to support have had to struggle against this idea that they support Mama Suzan, which is Suzan Mubarak, because historically we've had all these first ladies who seem to champion women's rights because that's about the only thing they can do that seems to be good other than being married to this asshole who is suffocating our country. It's safe ground. It is because who can stand up to you when you're defending women's rights and it also helps you with your Western allies because when you have five US presidents supporting Hosni Mubarak and Hosni Mubarak's wife, just like Sadat's wife and just like all the other asshole's wife can step up and say, but we support women's rights, how can you possibly stand up against that? You gain a lot of ground by saying I'm good for women because if I go, look who's waiting in the wing, it's these crazy scary Muslim men with big beard who are going to roll back all these rights. And so where I position myself and where everybody involved in the revolution I know positions themselves is they position themselves very clearly in the middle. They tell the asshole to go away and they tell the scary Muslim men who even think for a second that they're going to deny us our rights or silence us or shame us to go away because this revolution is ultimately about freedom and dignity and that freedom and dignity is for men and women and how Egyptian women are going to fight it is there's a whole host of examples that I hope we'll talk about but I just want to keep it to the points that I just made that it cannot be seen as the property or these men and their wives, the first ladies and the dictators cannot co-opt feminism and pretend they're rescuing women because they're not because if you're just as you said dictators are bad for everybody, men and women and I don't want my rights to come from a dictator and his wife, I want my rights to come because I demanded my rights. I would just add quickly that the laws that protect women's rights in Egypt are being contested now from the the scary Muslim men with beards but they're also being contested from traditionally so-called liberal parties who look at the laws and say they're Suzanne's laws. That's a problem. And they call them Suzanne's laws as a way to discredit them. I mean they're really being attacked from all sides. Efti, I know that up till now the protests in Saudi Arabia have been fairly limited but I wonder if you could, I know you've been living here but I wonder if you could describe how they're being, how Saudis are viewing the protests in the rest of the Arab world. I'd like to also comment on the question and agree with Mona that the idea of benevolent dictatorship like Ben Ali and Mubarak it's only cynical that they use women rights to promote themselves in the West because if you think about it, giving a woman women rights is not, does not really, you don't lose your power. You're not giving them the freedom of expression and if a woman is active politically and she will be treated even I think is more cautious than the men, the treatment for her. But compared to Saudi Arabia that is not there because the Saudi royal family drives its legitimacy from the religious establishment. So that's just to make the comparison. But as you may all know that women rights in Saudi Arabia is strictly or every time you speak about it you only hear about woman driving which is something that Saudi women think they took it as a symbol for women who are treated under Saudi law as perpetual minors. You always have to have your male legal guardianship in every single basic Monday decision in your life. So challenging the ban on driving is a symbol for the absence of all control over your life. You're always in the back seat. So these, just to bring the history of it, it started in the 90s, it's been two decades now. As you can see nothing really much happened and that only tells you how repressive is the Saudi government, I would love to call it regime. The Saudi regime is concerning women rights at any rights as well. In the demonstrations this year have been a couple of demonstrations, actually hundreds of them, a lot of them were strictly bi women who were calling not actually to lift the ban on driving but the demonstrations were strictly political for demonstrating the long term detainees. There are human rights group in Saudi estimates a number of 30,000 political prisoners in the country without trial. So those were women like the last demonstration here was December 12th, 100 women and a dozen men were demonstrating after the Friday prayers in Riyadh and in Bereda. Bereda is the most conservative, Kassim region, the most conservative in the country and demanding the release of their husbands and brothers and sons. There was a woman filmed in YouTube, she's a grandmother, she's a literally 70 year old woman from a small village in the south of Saudi Arabia she went to visit her two sons in Riyadh while she was waiting in the detention room this isn't the prison, while she was waiting there security forces stormed in all mass they all beat her until they broke her bones and for such a woman to come out and speak about it publicly and you know although she's covered, she's in the hospital on bed and that says something about woman involvement but to go back to the woman driving it's been started in the 90s and there we have petitions and you have a couple of women going there individually driving their cars but I think the most optimistic thing that's happened in the country, the driving campaign that started the call for the woman like I will drive my car campaign that started in Facebook on June 17th and it was a collaborative work of women the face for that campaign was this 32 years old commuter consulted woman she works at the Aranko company the Eastern province, single mother called Manala Sharif she's not the only one that she was the face of the campaign because she was, her circumstances in her family, the single woman allowed her that you know to come forward and reveal herself so she filmed this YouTube and she filmed herself asking women to join her saying, telling them, you know, just comforting this is, we're not demonstrating we're merely driving our cars there's no certain law that restrict women from driving and it was, it was a hit it went viral over the internet and in Saudi Arabia you're describing to me how there was something about Manal, this like ordinary middle class woman she is a middle class, yeah not an activist, she's not she's not, I was surprised when I heard about her name because I know every, I think I know all women activists in the country she was never involved it gives you a sense of how many there are she was never really involved how many they are, you know why we think they're limited because there's no mean of communicating between each other because the country, we don't have the no parties the unions, there are no even clubs at the universities I discovered, I met Manal recently in New York City where she was eager to rent a car, you said yes and I discovered that in my freshman year at college we were the same college I was a science major, she was a science major and she's like you've never been to the basketball team like no, I was in the library but I mean, we have different interests back then but I mean, we were at the same school the same college, we had the same, you know same thoughts, same feelings towards certain things that we could never meet so how little they are I don't think they are little I think they lack the mean of connecting to each other you can be living in the same city, same neighborhood you don't know that your next door neighbor shares your same views but back to Manal Manal was, I told her like, I mean I'm in love with her she's like, she's the perfect example like she's the ideal face for the campaign because in the night, in 1949 when 47 women drove their cars publicly in the real during the Gulf War there were mainly academics there were doctors, they're upper middle class women a lot of them, if not most of them all of them studied in the West Manal is, I like that she's a middle class woman she went to public schools she went to public university she's, you know, she's never she's not she's not, she doesn't classify herself as a liberal nor a conservative she thinks she's a, you know she's a moderate Muslim and the only time she studied in the West was when she's, she went to the work exchange program from her, you know, from a company from a company and she's actually the most courageous until now she's the most courageous before that the first woman who drove her car publicly or she, she said, I mean she drove her car recently was Wajihal Hawaider whom I shared in Riding in Petition to the King in 2007 asking him to grant us the right to drive Wajihal drove her car in the suburbs Manal drove her car in the middle of the city she just drove her car there and she's like, she's telling Wajihal she's like, Wajihal, let us, let us let us not piss the government off or the people, let us drive you know, the highway in the suburbs and like, what are you talking about? No, I'm driving my car to go to the supermarket to drive my kid to the hospital to go to, you know, pick him from the school and so on so she said, because in the 1990s when those women drove their cars they were defamed for two years non-stop in every Friday's sermon prayer and most gatherings they were defamed, they were called among many names, prostitutes American cyclists and communists I don't know, how can you be American cyclist and a communist at the same time but, and Zionists and CIA spies and CIA spies, exactly so they were defamed then because they've been educated in the West or they have a Western agenda but in Manel's case that doesn't happen so even the government, I mean they're like they're trying so hard to to just pick on something but they really can't and they were like, you know, of course other than that, and so she had to because the majority are Zionists so that's another thing Do you see Manel as in a way a product of the Arab Spring? I know you were saying when we spoke earlier that you felt that it's become possible for ordinary Saudis middle class Saudis, people who are not well connected or especially well educated to consider themselves activists Yes, she told me she was very much inspired by the Arab Spring she was very inspired by the video, by the Egyptian blogger, Asma Mahfoud who did that video blog and asked, encouraged people to join her and demonstrating before January 25th even so she told me, I mean everyone she's like, if they can do it she thought that's the right time to do it, that will be the right time Okay, I think one of the other things that was so interesting about the Women to Drive campaign is as you said that earlier generation of women was hounded by the government their reputations were really in tatters but this time around you had these ordinary women who were driving and they posted videos of themselves on YouTube driving along, you could see them they were, many of them were veiled they had their husbands or their brothers or their father sitting next to them they were so incredibly ordinary they clearly weren't Zionist spies you know, they clearly weren't agents of the CIA they were your next-door neighbor and the government was unable to control the narrative they were unable to, yes, control the narrative they were unable to spread rumors I mean, it was impossible for them that's why they detained them briefly they only imprisoned Manal for nine days because they thought, it was stated in the newspapers she incited the movement she was the insider to disobedience that was her charges your question earlier about the dictator and his wife and where the women's rights come from are they top down or not the Saudi case is very interesting because the current king, King Abdullah is often portrayed as a reformer who wants to give women rights but then on the other side and then we're always told that there's this liberal wing in the Saudi royal family and they want to give people more rights but there's this group of conservatives who are just going to go nuts so they have to reform really slowly because the people are not ready this is an incredibly offensive idea that the people are not ready because one of the things that this women to drive campaign did and very cleverly did was that they would post these videos but they'd also write about it on social media and create a discussion and a fuss over this idea that the people are not ready because they would often say, look, I've just come back home and I've just driven my car and all these men next to me on the street saw me driving my car and they were just fine and some of them gave me a thumbs up but it was the police who stopped me so who's not ready? It's the authorities who are not ready, not the people so this idea again that we have to get rights from up there because our benign dictators are so much more progressive than we are is incredibly offensive and this is why the fact that these revolutions and uprisings are happening from a grassroots level don't have leaders are happening and you see conservatives and liberals all together on the streets is taking away this power of the idea that the people are not ready because this is how the Saudi world family also justify their existence to their Western allies because they say, you know, because how does the US support a country like Saudi Arabia that is like a black hole when it comes to human rights? We can sit here and talk about oil and all this stuff till the end of the day but Saudi Arabia also gains a lot of legitimacy because of Islam and the holy sites and among the Muslim world it's very difficult to criticize Saudi Arabia but they also push this agenda of the people are not ready the people are really, really conservative and if we just let go just a bit it's all gonna fall apart but you have these activists who are saying it's not about the people, it's about you and continuously infantilizing us and making us seem like the women are constant perpetual minors but they also look at the societies you know, you're like savage and backward we know what we're doing and we can only just give you kind of you know, drip drops of rights which is very offensive to the courage of the people who are trying to bring about change in that country Yeah, and to add to this like recently when the women to drive campaign is getting more popular and getting very much support and among the Saudi society men and women the Shura council which every, I mean it's the everyone is appointed member by the king consulted, yes invited this guy to give I'm sure they had a show the thing about it at SNL that this guy came up with the research that women driving can lose your virginity Oh, I saw that All right, and this is not random why would the Shura council invite such a guy to speak to, this is not random these are two things one, they're giving a message to the women activists that we will let that the most crazy, absurd folks in the right wing to come and you know, be on your case we're gonna make them harass you we're gonna give them the green light to harass you one, two, this is also for the West and like, look there's a small group of women who wants to drive but look how what we deal with in a daily basis look at those savages you know, this is what you're gonna deal with it reminds me a little bit of a Christian and Mamboor interview with Omar Suleiman America's favorite guy in Egypt who ran their interrogation redemption program rendition rendition program now that Guantanamo Bay the camp is upon us the 10th anniversary tomorrow so when he was with her she was like I don't know how many times did he mention not the Muslim Brotherhood Brotherhood Muslims Brother Muslimhood Brother Muslimhood it's very popular in Egypt now Brother Muslimhood I love that, yes fear them that's like, that shows you I mean, how much, you know there is ambulance, you know but one of the interesting things has been I think a lot of the men who have supported women and women's right to drive I mean, you've had some crazies in the Shura Council but you've also had members of the Shura Council stand up and say why can't women drive? yep, that would be good by the way look at the economic cost it imposes on our country that we have to import up to a million drivers to come and drive our women around and they repatriate four billion dollars a year you had a member of the Shura Council stand up in 2007 and put it in economic terms now with oil at over 100 dollars a barrel the economic urgency is not there but this is an economic urgency there is an economic urgency there is an economic urgency because the majority are middle class and they don't have their jobless you can get employed right now out of college with like 700 a month being a woman half of that goes to your driver if not even more but across the board this is an economic issue we've got the driving issue and the fact that you have to import labor to drive women around but also in Saudi one of the big controversies has been there is very high unemployment as we all know very, very high unemployment among women and women have to when they go into a shop to buy lingerie you would think in this conservative society that they would buy lingerie from other women well no they don't want women working in lingerie shops so they buy lingerie from men this has been a very controversial thing are women allowed to work as clerks in stores are they allowed to work in the checkout line at supermarkets or household health housekeepers and so on there's been a well there's a lot of domestic help who's imported for that but there was a panda supermarkets had a whole program to employ women as clerks in supermarkets at the checkout line no, said no it is, this is a very core economic issue for all of these countries I think that and the alliance between men and women is a very important one across the board not just in Saudi I mean and Al Sharif had her father and her brother's support and so many other women who were breaking the ban on driving had their male relative support too but when you look at Egypt what's happening in Egypt Tunisia and other countries I mean there was a story in the New York Times that drove me absolutely nuts and I was telling Catherine about this because on its surface the story seems to be good which is that they feature a young woman called Samira Ibrahim who was subjected along with 17 other activists to so-called virginity tests by Egyptian soldiers in March of last year these so-called virginity tests are basically sexual assaults that the military used because they claimed that they wanted to ensure that these female activists that detained were virgins so that they didn't accuse the military of raping them while in detention as if only virgins could be raped so then this story I mean we could have a panel alone on these so-called virginity tests but two of the women spoke out one of them gave an interview from the very beginning and was chastised across the board and called a liar by everybody because the military denied it had happened at the time it was a very sensitive time for Egypt because the military was still portraying itself as the safeguards of the revolution but a young woman called Sadwal Hosseini spoke out and broke that taboo of speaking about the military Samira Ibrahim who was featured in the New York Times story today has actually raised is suing the military there's this woman from a very conservative part of Egypt who was suing the military and standing up and saying you can't do this to me and the reason the other woman isn't because she doesn't have identification papers and you need ID to raise a lawsuit in Egypt but what really really enraged me about this story in the New York Times is that it said, you know, it gave all these statistics about women and sexual assault that I quoted 100 women being sexually assaulted it quoted one of my favorite feminists in Egypt a woman called Mozna Hassan who's the executive director of a feminist movement called Nazra which means vision and she's fantastic and she was saying, you know, we don't want men to be the only guarantors of our safety and security on the streets because if we have to wait for men to protect us against the sexual violence and the physical violence of the army it will mean that men will set basically the guidelines for us it will be I will protect you as long as you do this I will protect you as long as you behave in that way so here's an Egyptian feminist saying this and she's saying it clearly and openly and she's encouraging other Egyptian women to go out there and protect ourselves and yet the story says that Egyptian women and they mentioned that woman who was dragged across Sahir Square and stripped down to her bra and if anybody calls a blue bra girl I swear I will kick you where it hurts because she's not a blue bra girl she's a woman and she must not be reduced to the color of her underwear but anyway, so they use this woman and they say Egyptian women basically female revolutionaries are mostly silent victims who risk becoming these icons of the male dominated uprising and that enrages me where is the silence? Where is the silence when you hear women like Ebtahal and myself? Where is the silence when Mohsen Hassan is telling the New York Times we will not wait for Egyptian men to protect us where is the silence? And so it looks like the New York Times is doing us a favor by showing us look here we're writing about women now they never interview women when it comes to political stories in the Middle East I mean obviously everything is political but when it comes to you know they never pick up a phone and speak to female experts about what's happening in the region but the one time when they focus on women is women as victims so look at the irony here we're talking about men and women on the ground fighting together and yet the New York Times is portraying women only in this context of being victims but yet they have these feminists and these women who are standing up to the military a 26 year old Egyptian is suing the military and the New York Times is telling me that Egyptian women risk becoming silent or are mostly silent victims of a revolution and icons of these men it enrages me so you've got to ask how you look at women in that part of the world what is the lens through which you look at women in that part of the world because they have far outstripped you they're not waiting for you to look at them in the diversity that they come under because as Isabel mentioned and Ibtahal mentioned there are men and women and the support goes across both camps so I think part of trying to understand what's happening in the region with these uprisings and revolutions is understanding that for too long you have looked at that part of the world through a very narrow lens that portrays women there as victims that portrays Muslims there as barbarians that portrays the dictators there as you know these benign men who get you know all of these givens that have very surely been dismantled by the various uprisings that you've seen because that's the least you can do to honour the courage of the people there I know I'm biased on this subject because I wrote a whole book about how women are transforming the Middle East which really echoes what Mona's saying and just two things one is you mentioned the women in Saudi these conservative, a bio-cloud women who are out there demonstrating about these 30,000 people who've disappeared their husbands, their brothers, their sons and they won't go away which is interesting and if you look at what sparked what was the spark that got the Libyan revolution going it was women doing the exact same thing demonstrating at the prison against the fact that their loved ones their brothers, their husbands, their fathers had disappeared and they would not go away and there was violence against them that sparked more violence and the revolution started and if you think of that as women as victims I mean these are women as change agents I was in Libya in January I mean Libya I'm sorry I was in Yemen in January and I went and spent a day with Tawakal Karman unknown at the time to I'd probably everybody in this room who was a remarkable young woman who was leading protests every Friday prayer for two years every Friday after every Friday she had women without chains and they will demonstrate the freedom of expression in Yemen they were like five, 10, 20 every Friday no matter how many little women and you see them were all wearing their niqab and you know she wore the niqab up until recently and she said to me I said why did you take your niqab off and she said well it's really hard to be a revolutionary wearing a niqab of course she wears the headscarf but not covers her face anymore which I really I love that a lot but she when I was when I spent the day with her she was out in front of Sana University and there were maybe a couple hundred people with her maybe couple hundred and later in the week I mean this was in January every day there were more and more people and she had been there with 10 people 30 people, 20 people for two years but these are very courageous determined people who are really pushing for change pushing for change in all sorts of ways they're pushing for economic change they're pushing for political change they're pushing for cultural change they're pushing for religious change you know it's, to me I'm in awe and a lot of the women as well don't just identify in terms of just feminist issues I mean for me gender trumps everything so I identify primarily as a feminist but there are a lot of women in Egypt who are working on the ground who are working on issues that are not specifically that are not gender specific so there's a young woman for example called Mona Safe and she has been spearheading the no to military trials campaign she's a 24 year old biology researcher and you know alongside her genetic studies that every now and then she complains about on Twitter this woman has basically garnered this huge support across the country to end military trials of Egypt because at least 12,000 people have gone before military tribunals including her brother but she started this campaign months before her brother now if you spoke to Mona she would not necessarily say I identify primarily as a feminist as I would but she's out there a strong kick ass Egyptian woman standing up to the military and there are so many female attorneys who have been out there defending the most unpopular people we have the first political blogger who was imprisoned in Egypt he's a young man called Michael Nabil he's an atheist he supports Israel and he's against the army you can't get worse than that in Egypt that is like the end it's a Bermuda triangle and this guy was imprisoned where he was in March and he was the first to warn about the military basically not being the safeguards of the revolution and Mona and others have been defending him and so many lawyers out there defending the most unpopular cases saying this is a point of principle this is about freedom of expression and this is about the freedom and dignity that's at the heart of the revolution so you see these women and they lead marches and they're out in the courts and they're standing up to military tribunals you know the complete opposite of victimhood that they are survivors if they do experience violence as I do and Samira do Samira did then we're survivors of the military we're not victims of the military the language here is very important Back to Tawakul Prumar I met Tawakul in Kuwait 2007 and we had she was with a bandit with another Yemeni journalist who was a former interim chief and he was, you know, sacked out of his job when they went back to Yemen he was actually detained and she held me right at the base she went there and she's like okay, I'll let you talk to him I'm going to prison in like an hour and then when I was able to talk to him she smuggled the cell phone to him in the prison I mean, before that she was all for freedom or for breast, as you said, for different topics she was not restricted to only women issues Well, one thing that surprised me when I was in Egypt at the end of September was that so many of the young female activists that I met were actually very uncomfortable with the term feminist and seemed to resist it How do you read that, Mona? Do you feel that there's a sense that this is just not the time that we have too much else to fight for? Or is it a generational thing? I think the same would happen if we asked a lot of people in this room are you a feminist or not? I constantly get this when I give public talks about women's rights or women's issues and there's always this so do I identify as a feminist must I identify with the F word? I don't think this is specific to Egypt When I was in Egypt in July during the sitting that was happening in Tahirih Square and Nazra for feminist studies this feminist movement that I mentioned one of my friends is leading is a feminist movement that was launched by men and women and ironically enough this New York Times story that I'm obsessed with right now used as an example of how it's the men who are out there helping to rescue the women I think it's a positive thing that a feminist movement was launched seven years ago in Egypt seven years ago by men and women because it's a clear understanding that in order to get women's issues and not just women's issues because they also focus on LGBT rights they focus on masculinity studies they talk about gender issues it's important to have men and women and all the various other identities that people use to describe themselves to work together on this and so Nazra hosted me for a discussion and it brought together a lot of the community that they work with not just people in Nazra itself and we had a very robust discussion about feminism and who identifies as a feminist and what happened when women and men tried to hold a march in Egypt to coincide with International Women's Day last year and it was a disaster and women were assaulted and women were threatened with rape and it was a really, really bad time that day was very depressing for everybody and the kind of discussions that came out were incredibly deep and incredibly understanding excuse my voice, I'm fighting a cold incredibly understanding of the kind of issues that Egyptian men and women have to navigate because they had a whole team, for example, working across Egypt, north, south, east, west with female candidates who wanted to run for president I mean for the parliament and one of them was a Christian woman and to understand the multiple layers of challenges that this Christian woman is facing to run for parliament in Egypt she's running as a woman she's running as a Christian she's running as someone from the countryside a very conservative part of Egypt it's a very, very in-depth discussion that isn't just about a feminist that's why I mentioned Mona Safe because for me it's not so important that she identifies as a feminist I don't want to impose on her a label that for me is the centre of my identity because what she's doing by being a 24-year-old Egyptian who is also a woman but is going out there in the public field and standing up to the military or running for parliament in the very conservative parts of southern Egypt as this other woman does what she's doing is she is normalising the idea that a woman is this gender mainstreaming you know you have all these jargon that people use that really means nothing unless you see women actually on the street doing it what is gender mainstreaming? it means that to be able to look and see women and men and all the other labels that we use doing everything and look at it as a normal thing and so when you see Mona Safe out there in Tahrir Square and she's going out to taxi drivers who might not necessarily support the revolution and gives them a sticker that says no to military trials and persuades them to put it in their cab so that the next time someone comes into their cab they see this sticker for no to military trials that for me is the ultimate feminist act because it's a woman who's gone out into the public sphere has created a space for herself in a public sphere and has said I am going to change what I don't like in this public sphere that for me is feminism if she goes around calling herself a feminist or not that's not my prerogative that's her prerogative but so you sit around the table with these young men and women and also there were those who were in charge of their masculinity project now to sit there and listen to Egyptian men and women talk about masculinity and the pressures on Egyptian men and what it means to be masculine just as I fight the pressures of what it means to be feminine and I get to define my femininity when I want it and when I don't it is also part of that struggle is for an Egyptian man to determine what it means to be masculine what does it mean to be a man because a lot of the pressure in Egypt today and something that is disturbing me is when the police broke my arms when I was sexually assaulted when this woman was dragged through a tahrir a lot of men would write to me and say I can't look you in the eye I can't believe they did this to you and I wasn't there to save you what kind of men are we that we allowed them to do this to you we have to fight this head on it's not about a man and another man fighting over my body to ensure that I'm okay this is the last thing that we want and this is why these women who are going out in the public sphere are so important and that's why these ideas of what is masculinity are you just a man because you've come and rescued my honor which has been ruined by the sexual assault no, because my honor is not ruined by the sexual assault the shame belongs to the man who sexually assaulted me and you as a man your masculinity is not derived from saving my honor all these kind of discussions are happening in Egypt every day and so again that for me is the heart of feminism whether they identify as feminist or not it's not about a word it's about taking the concept of that word and living it and Egyptians are living it whether they're in Suez whether they're in southern Egypt whether they're in a desert oasis watching men and women together fight against military dictatorship as they did against Mubarak that for me is feminism in motion I'd actually love to open up to questions from the audience I think there's a microphone to ask Andrea I have more questions than I can I mean if we falter I'll ask some more because I have a lot but I guess the first one I wanted to ask virginity testing is really vague language to me and it reminds me when I first went for a mammogram and I thought you just went and turned your back to the camera because that's all I'd ever seen of a mammogram and I was like oh crap and they left a lot out or worse case what did they call it female circumcision a complete misnomer so could I ask just I'd like to have better language better a better concept better description you want to know what it is what it is I'll tell you an excuse my being graphic it's basically a man who stuck two fingers up the woman's vaginal opening to see if there was a hymen there or not it's sexual assault well there are two ways of testing it I actually did a little bit of research on this a few months ago and there's what they call the two-finger test which is actually apparently for like vaginal laxity they call it this is the idea is that a woman who is not a virgin will just be like oh well you know okay you know and a woman who is a virgin will go out will tighten up or whatever and then there's the visual test for the hymen and the two-finger test tends to be the one that's favored in Egypt but anyway they're all they're all about it it's stunning I'm so glad we're wearing this it's sexual assault rape, violation basically everything else yeah I was just interested in asking you to talk a little bit about Islam you know dealing with women's rights as a Muslim making the mixture sort of work up to how? I think there are many progressive Islam can be interpreted in one thousand hundred ways and they're very much progressive interpretations of Islam and for feminists who want to pursue I mean want to explain the rights to an Islamic agenda that is very doable I've seen a lot of people a lot of women actually in Saudi Arabia who are secularists and liberals who would rather have civil rights they would use that very progressive interpretations of Islam in public debates so I mean it can be used in any way religion you can interpret it in different ways I mean when I met Mike I belong to a movement called Musawa which is the Arabic word for equality this movement was launched in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2009 and it's basically an umbrella that brings together both secular feminists and Islamic feminists I used to identify as a Muslim feminist when I was much younger and I was more conservative I used to wear a headscarf and despite the fact that I wore a headscarf or maybe because I wore a headscarf at the time I was quite different there was no there was no contradiction between wearing a headscarf and being a feminist because for me it was determining what of my body I wanted to show I am no longer that woman I don't wear a headscarf anymore and I no longer identify as a Muslim feminist I identify as a Muslim and as a feminist I keep my Islam and my feminism separate because while I recognize that there is a need for some people to use Islam and to use reinterpretations of Islam to fight for women's rights I'm very wary of doing my verse versus your verse now there are many many Muslims across the world who will not reconsider something unless you give them the verse from the Quran or the saying of the Prophet that gives them permission to reconsider that but there are other Muslims such as myself who are not waiting for that permission and that's what Musa'wah does what Musa'wah does is it's brought together men and women who identify as Muslim but some of whom identify as secular feminist Muslims and some who identify as Islamic feminists and it's created an umbrella and what it does is it allows it has given us the tools because there's now publications and there are scholars involved with this movement and they take their education around the world it's given us the tools to give whoever we come across what they want to hear when they have questions like child marriage female genital mutilation polygamy you know all the really problematic issues of women's rights and gender issues that come up today so for example they'll help you make an argument whether you want to use universal declarations of human rights that various countries have signed on to or the various interpretations be they progressive or conservative of certain Quranic verses and the Prophet's sayings so what I'm saying to you is yes there is a recognized branch now called Islamic feminism and it actually uses scripture and it uses various ways of jurisprudence and all the different progressive attempts to reinterpret the religion but there's also a very definite and recognized form of secular feminism feminism as well and I think that you know that is not unique to Islam when you look at Jewish feminists when you look at Christian feminists whether they identify as religious and secular or not you know it's up to them but Islam is going through what all other religions have gone through and as long as there's room for me and there's room for the Islamic feminists I'm happy if they try to kick me out that's when I begin to fight Okay, so there's a while we're waiting here can I just make a comment you know I think Mona what you said is so important is that there does need to be room for all different approaches and the approach of Islamic feminists it you know it may not appeal to some but I actually think it's a very important approach in certain places in the world where Islam is the cultural touchstone it is what people are looking for in places for that permission and it becomes a very powerful argument and the book I wrote Paradise Beneath Her Feet looks at this movement of Islamic feminism around the world not in theoretical terms there is a remarkable theoretical literature academic literature saying how do you reconcile Islam and women's rights and there's academics who've done that and I think there's lots of room to do that through more progressive interpretations of Islam but looking at how it's actually trickling down to the grassroots level how women in Afghanistan are arguing with their husbands against child marriage using verses from the Quran or arguing for the right for girls to go to school or arguing against polygamy in Morocco and having polygamy restricted using actually theology against theology and I agree with you that it is ultimately unsatisfactory ground to have to fight theology with theology but I think it's a very important stepping stone in many ways to get from where some people are in terms of very conservative traditions that are reinforced in the name of Islam and that people don't think that there is any movement for change when in fact there is and a lot of women and men by the way have never read the Quran they're simply told what to think and what to believe and I think that the the experience today of women who are directly reading the Quran themselves with rising levels of literacy you have more and more women who are accessing the text themselves and saying hey it doesn't really say that or it says it here but it says something very different over here and beginning to contextualize and to argue and to fight back on some very conservative interpretations that leave them as second class citizens or worse in their own families in their own societies. Yeah I'm interested in the role of women in Iran both under the current regime and in the democracy movement and how might I compare for example to the situation in Saudi Arabia. Well that's a good question. One of my friends posted the other day something through Facebook I think was it the Boston Globe or something they had pictures from Iran women in Iran and in the daily routine and she's like I wish I was an Iranian woman I'm so jealous. Iranian women compared to Saudi have so much rights, so much better they have I mean it's I mean you can't even compare. Iranian women are they I mean they're like judges is now they're taxi drivers, they're sharing the public life they're in political sphere, they're lawyers you can't begin to compare them with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the most repressive and the worst place for a woman to born and raise is Saudi Arabia unless compared to like let's say a war zone where they have like gangraves and you know but compared to Iran Iran is pretty much progressive for women rights than Saudi Arabia on so many different levels yeah. But it's still a dictatorship. It's still a dictatorship but I'm saying compared to Saudi Arabia they have much more room to practice. And women have you know they had their rights in many respects stripped away with the Islamic Revolution and have clawed their way back legally in many senses you know not fully but for example the marriage age in Iran legally is 13 but the average age of a marriage in Iran is 26 in fact I think it's even higher today maybe it is higher than here the marriage age in Saudi Arabia there's no marriage age you can marry someone who's like 9 or 10 there's no even you know and they do yeah and they do and they do whereas in Iran child marriages are the thing of Saudi Arabia in Iran child marriage is very very rare but women protest against that legal but then you have the legal framework you can go and protest and you have the legal framework you have NGOs you have organizations you don't have there are no NGOs in Saudi Arabia there are no civil rights societies in Saudi Arabia how can you protest this? There's no way unless you petition the king or do something to be like there's no legal framework for you to redeem your rights back. The one thing I would say though going back to Mona's point about these women are not victims if you look at the green movement in Iran I mean today it is on life support partly because the government I mean not partly largely because the government has arrested them and really cracked down in a very harsh way but the ones who really continue to persist are women you know it is the women who are out there it is women lawyers defending political prisoners it is women who continue to demonstrate and it is women who the government fears and they're very harsh with the women you know they really throw them in prison even Sharon Abadi who's been a conscience of that country she was out of the country when the election happened and the green movement erupted and she was told by friends and family members oh don't come back right now and it's more than two years later and she's not gone back to Iran she's living here in the United States but you know when you know that Sharon Abadi can't go back it's bad for women because she's a very brave person but if you look at who is the conscience of that country today who continues to be out on the streets and protesting against human rights abuses not just about women's rights about human rights it is largely women there are many points to make and this is a really great talk but I just wanted to share the experience of my country, Kuwait because you brought up how women are needing change in the airport in the example of Kuwait I would say that women in politics are the only righteous ones they are the ones who advocate for minorities, they are the ones who stand up for the stateless or undocumented as they call them they are the ones who refuse to take illegal, private elections of the tribes because they think that's against the law and against the unity of the country so they are obeying all stereotypes and they're doing amazing and we just got our rights just in like 2006 first elections, no one won second elections for women won and it was fascinating and was just unexpected and at the same time we can see that I saw like this radical guy who was always voting against women's rights and he won the elections because more than 60% of the votes came from women and there was this guy advocating openly for the women and he lost because women did not vote for him majorly in the district so it's very complicated and we need to raise the question of class I mean in Yemen for example I don't think class is an issue we've seen women like like a 13 year old girl talking about, you know again this child marriage and being supported and being a face and media and so on but I would see for example in Tunisia and Egypt it's mostly driven by middle class women and what they're trying to say is that, you know we are taking we're leading the political game or stride though and it shouldn't only be focused on us, on our rights because this is not the stage now it's the next stage it's gonna come, it's coming at the same point another thing is that when Tawakum talked about Demikav Singh I can't understand what she's trying to say but if Tawakum did not wear the hat for such a long while she wouldn't have all this love and support from her people because she would they would feel she's strange you know like, oh this woman like she didn't live her life she didn't go through what we went through but the fact that she was dressed like them and part of them got her with confidence in my country and many countries you would see women that are not wearing the hat but they would wear the hat when they go to the protest because they feel comfortable they feel protected they don't feel like, okay my face is not revealed so they won't take me to jail my picture won't be on the newspaper so I'll just wear the hat and I'll go there and I'll show support and it's as simple as this I think we should not label anything I should, I think the labeling is for our region it's like really too complicated to label anything it's just too hard and as you go to countries like the Gulf where like way less research is done I mean especially comparatively with Egypt we have way less research and like people really don't care what's happening in Kuwait and when there's like this huge thing happening everyone is like pretentious and like oh yeah we know this stuff no we don't know this stuff like it's not that easy but it's happening this year has been at a more difficult year I mean 2011 and it's a big change so it's all different for the best thank you I think we have I think we have time for one more question maybe the doll in the back there it's me, it's the Nassie oh I can't see your hi Nassie I was I spent much the last year in Egypt and I've been struck by how sexualized a lot of the discourse is including the way male activists are often demonized as Hawa al as gay basically as a way of a slur to to marginalize their political demands and I'm curious about two things one is is there something different about Egypt the level with which there's an obsession with you know women's propriety and male masculinity as proxies for acceptability and the second question is how do you how do you prevent or is there already a danger of the discussion of these rights being sort of fatally linked to secularism so the idea of treating women with respect for example becoming something that gets lumped together with secularism and civil control of the military as marginal issues that can be uh... sort of shunted aside by polite political society thanks I think you ask a really important interesting question because and it's all tied into what I was saying earlier about this you know these men who are writing to me saying we wish we were there to protect you because Egypt's honor is at stake and we have to get your rights back because no one strips our girls basically and and and it's it's this horrible mix that is just has been brewing up in Egypt for years I mean when you look and I love to blame the Mubarak regime for everything for good reason because when you look at two thousand and five for me was a pivotal year that the Mubarak regime began to systematically target especially female activists and journalists with sexual violence and this began in May of two thousand and five when a lot of activists were protesting a referendum that Mubarak was basically pushed into agreeing to to allow multiple presidential candidates during that year two thousand and five was the first year that in Egypt we had the right to choose more than one candidate rather than going to the polls and saying yes or no to just Mubarak and so at this this particular protest and many of my female friends suffered from this sexual violence this was an actual it was it was it was a campaign that a general came up with and that was either plainclothes police or thugs hired thugs a lot of them ex-convicts that the workers inform us for the regime would go out and target female activists and female journalists a lot of this was caught on camera and these women tried to raise cases to sue the regime but the cases were thrown out and because of lack of evidence now this evidence was all documented there were photographs and media the reason I bring this incident up is because the next year in two thousand and six we had the infamous incidents in downtown Cairo close to Tahir Square during a religious festival where a group of men just went on the rampage sexually assaulting and and groping women dressed like me dressed in the car covered from head to toe dressed in headscarves and police officers stood by and watched and did absolutely nothing when the state violates women when the state thinks that it can violate women it it gives a green light to I own your body your body now is the property of the state and when the state doesn't do anything when an ordinary civilians violate women it gives another green light which is women and we don't care about women and so women's bodies do become and that was one point that the New York Times story I'm glad did make even I don't like it women's bodies have become this battlefield and when when it when it it's put in those stark terms of it's women and honor and anyone who tries to fight for the revolution is then called gay or effeminate as you mentioned it's you that this is the language of the patriarch this is that this is the very hypermasculine language of the patriarch and what we're doing in Egypt and I like to quote one of my favorite feminist who's a friend of mine is a young woman called Fatima Imam and she was interviewed soon after Mubarak stepped down and her mother didn't want her to go to Tahir Square because she considered it a very male space she said do you think you're a man that you can go out there and spend night after night in Tahir Square and she said I am going to Tahir Square and and she said the reason I went to Tahir Square is because this isn't just a revolution against Mubarak this is a revolution in every Egyptian home not just in Tahir this is a revolution against the patriarch so when you see the revolution and the language associated with the revolution in a language that is very patriarchal and hypermasculine that's where what you're saying comes down from because if you're a man then this is how you will behave if you're a woman or effeminate then you deserve to be treated this way and it can't be just a secular you know hypermasculine patriarchal military that is going to protect me because clearly it's the military who thinks it owns my body it's the military who sexually assaulted women through virginity tests the military is the regime and that's why I'm glad that there are conservatives and liberals out on the street there were Salafis also involved in the women's march that happened at the end of December it was women and men of all different political flavours including the ultra-conservative and the ultra-liberal and that I think is the best way to fight this kind of language that posits people in these very very polar opposites the patriarch, the real men and those opposing the patriarch who are also not real men and effeminate and women do you know what I mean? so it's a struggle over language as well as political ideologies and that struggle is happening