Women stand to lose most in Arab Spring

by Salim Mansur

The monthly journal Foreign Policy recently published an essay by Mona Eltahawy titled “Why Do They Hate Us?”

Eltahawy is an American of Egyptian origin, a graduate from the American University in Cairo with a master’s degree in journalism, who publishes views on politics and culture inside the Arab world.

In the large amount of reporting from and about the Middle East, Eltahawy’s writings convey the perspectives, and hurt, of Arab and Muslim women trapped in the web of a patriarchal culture with its endemic misogyny and violence. Her recent essay was written after her own traumatic experience last November in Cairo.

There she was assaulted, groped and beaten by goons linked to security forces in Tahrir Square where the so-called “Arab Spring” gathered pace and toppled Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. Read more…