MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

“The worst sin and distraction from virtue that I have left for man is woman” – Prophet of Islam, Mohammed, Sahih AlBukhari, 5096

 “When I stood on the door of hell, I saw most of its inhabitants were women” – Prophet of Islam, Mohammed, Sahih AlBukhari, 5196

By Nabila Ramdani – “If you were to read a first draft of last year’s Egyptian revolution, it would probably be written by a woman. The uprisings that spread across the country from late January were originally chronicled by prolific female writers such as Nawara Negm, who used everything from internet blogs to appearances on Al Jazeera to spread information to the outside world. ‘Freedom is only for those who are ready to die,’ was her mantra, although the protesters’ tactics proved less extreme. Civil disobedience, marches and strikes were preferred to violence, with the number of women in Cairo’s Tahrir (‘liberation’) Square peaking at around 50%.

How dispiriting, then, a year and a half on, to see a highly politicised female population relegated to near-onlookers during Egypt’s first bona fide presidential election race.

In Cairo today, there is no longer a sense of a traditionally patriarchal society yielding to the democratic spirit of the Arab Spring. Instead, the hundreds of thousands of women who contributed so much to the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak find themselves marginalised, if not ignored.

Commentators have made much of the 40% of seats won by the Freedom and Justice party of the Muslim Brotherhood in parliamentary elections earlier this year. Some have suggested that Egypt has replaced a western-backed, secular dictatorship with an Islamic version, but for others the true headline figure was the paltry 12 seats for women out of a total of 498.

This translates into female representation of 2.4% compared with an already low UN world average of 19%. The 13 starting candidates in the presidential race – the run-off takes place 16-17 June – were all men.

‘The truth is that women were doing better under Mubarak,’ says Dina Shobra, a 20-year-old law student at Al-Azhar University who is out shopping in downtown Cairo. Dina, who wears a headscarf and still lives at home with her parents and four younger siblings, thinks that a combination of complacency and fear has reversed the successes of the 18-day revolution. ‘The complacency comes from conservative Egyptians who believe that a woman’s place is in the home,’ she says. ‘The fear is of the army and its oppression.'” Read more.

Flashback: Women’s Rights In Egypt: Islamist Parliament Members Introduce Several Controversial Draft Laws That Will Bring Egypt Back To Middle Ages If Passed – “Islamist Members of Parliament in Egypt are trying to deprive Egyptian women of their basic rights by introducing several controversial draft laws that, if passed, will bring Egypt back to the Middle Ages… Egypt’s National Council for Women is campaigning against the above mentioned Islamist initiatives that are targeting women rights, saying that ‘marginalizing and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country’s human development.’” Read more.