Water cannon? Calling in the army? Shutting down or disrupting mobile phone messaging services and social networks in times of civil disorder? Oh the irony of ironies. Six months after my country’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak, stepped down after 18 days of a popular uprising, British Prime Minister David Cameron, members of parliament and the security services were […]
Author Archives: Mona Eltahawy
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‘Virginity Tests’ Will Spark Egypt’s Next Revolution
There’s a thin line between sex and politics, and it is nonsense to keep repeating the mantra that Egypt’s revolution “wasn’t about gender.” What revolution worth its salt can be fuelled by demands of freedom and dignity and not have gender nestled in its beating heart – especially in a country replete with misogyny, religious […]
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Running on Crazy
If Tunisia kicked down the door of the Arab imagination by showing it was possible to topple a dictator, Egypt drew a blueprint of non-violence for the house of revolution that detailed how to demolish a stubbornly entrenched dictator and now in Libya a mad man is trying to burn down the entire house rather […]
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Mona Eltahawy…Saudi Arabia’s Spot on the Board of UN Women a Sad Joke
It took years to make the United Nations’ newest agency, UN Women, a reality, and then just one day to effectively kill it. Death was effected by allowing onto its board a kingdom where women are not just infamously prohibited from driving but are also virtual minors who need a male guardian’s permission to travel […]
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Mona Eltahawy…America, a Mosque and Me
When the planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, I was living in Seattle, on the other side of America. My brother and his wife were visiting me. We did not leave the house for two days because we were worried that Americans angry at Muslims would attack […]
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Mona Eltahawy…Generation Mubarak/Generation Facebook
NEW YORK – When a young Egyptian died from what his family, activists and witnesses say was a savage police beating, many of his peers – the generation of Egyptians who have known no other leader than President Hosni Mubarak – protested and mourned in the way they know best: by going online. Generation Mubarak […]
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Mona Eltahawy…Tea with Omar Sharif
When I read that Egypt’s Journalist Union had punished two senior Egyptian editors – one a member of the country’s ruling party and the other an expert on Jewish affairs for violating its ban on contacts with Israel – I wondered if Omar Sharif ever thinks of me. My nemesis wasn’t the once-heartthrob Egyptian actor […]