Our lives are worth nothing to them
It has been an awful past month for women everywhere, but especially for Arab women. This is why.
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It has truly been an awful past month for women. First with Roe vs. Wade being overturned in America - and talk of the Supreme Court coming for contraception next - it feels as if all those feminist dystopian novels have become a reality. But there is one important thing to note here - as white feminists draw parallels with The Handmaid’s Tale, the truth is this has been the situation for Black women and women of colour already for many decades. Have we forgotten the forced sterilisations of Black women and Native American women in America, or how many of the gynaecological procedures we have today are due to the forced experiments (without anaesthetic) on Black women by white American male physicians, in the 19th and 20th centuries?
There was also the horrific murder of Zara Aleena in East London last month, reminiscent of the murders of Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard last year. I think it is important to note how little press coverage we get when a woman of colour is murdered in the UK.
And things have been even more painful for Arab women over the past month. At the end of June, 21-year-old Nayera Ashraf was murdered outside her university in Egypt just before her final exams by a man whose marriage proposal she had refused. He stabbed her to death and slit her throat while others watched on. Her murderer, Mohammed Adel, has been sentenced to death by hanging in one of the fastest trials I’ve seen in Egyptian criminal history. But this sped up trial only happened because of the outrage and uproar across the world, in press, and on social media. Her family had made formal complaints several times to the Egyptian police, and they failed to keep her safe, similar to how the Kuwaiti authorities failed to take action when Farah Akbar’s family made a formal complaint about her stalker, who then went on to kidnap her in broad daylight and murder her in April 2021.
Just a couple of days after Ashraf’s murder, a man in Jordan murdered nursing student Iman Irshaid outside her university for rejecting his advances. He sent her this text message:
“Tomorrow I am coming to speak to you and if you don’t accept I am going to kill you just like the Egyptian killed that girl today.”
He died by suicide by shooting himself after being surrounded by the Jordanian authorities and refusing to surrender himself.
At the end of June Egyptian TV presenter Shaima Gamal’s body was found in a farm in Giza after she had been reported missing for 3 weeks. A witness told the police that it was her husband, a judge, who had killed her and then disfigured her face with acid in order to hide her identity. As a judge he clearly thought his immunity would protect him, but thankfully that immunity has been lifted and he now faces a criminal trial.
I’m afraid that’s not the end of it. A woman in the district of Halwan in Cairo was stabbed 20 times and had her right ear cut off by her husband. When asked why he did it, her husband said “because she doesn’t listen to what I say.”
And merely days after Ashraf and Irshaids’ murders, a Jordanian woman was stabbed to death by her husband in Sharjah, UAE, with some on social media saying it was because she asked for a divorce.
One thing that these cases of femicide and grevious bodily harm have in common is that these men truly believed they had the right to take these womens’ lives, like their lives belonged to them, when the women rejected them.
These are the cases that have made the news and social media. But how many more cases of femicide, attempted murder, and acts of violence in Egypt, Jordan, and across the Arab world are there that don’t make it to the news?
Last summer I wrote for Cosmopolitan UK about my own brush with a murderer in Qatar - he had murdered his sister and her lover to “reclaim his tribe’s honour” (as he put it in his own words). It never made it in the news in Qatar. He did go on trial around a decade ago, but ultimately walked free. This is due to an article in many Arab states’ penal codes that allows for clemency or a lesser punishment for men who murder their female relatives in an “act of rage” or for catching them in the act of fornication or adultery. You can read my feature “How I escaped a date with a murderer” here.
I still have nightmares about this man. In the nightmare I am back with him, trying my best not to do anything to anger him for fear that he will hurt me.
This same man, days after confiding in me how he murdered his sister, put up a post on his social media commemorating a mutual friend of his and my brother, who was murdered by his wife’s brother in an “honour killing.” This friend was a well-known Sudanese bodybuilder in Qatar, who had married a Qatari woman without the blessing of her family (they had refused to accept their marriage on account of him not being a Qatari). The hypocrisy stinks. And let’s not forget that this man I had been on a date with had murdered his sister but was dating multiple women himself.
So at the moment Arab women across the world are outraged. We have had enough of our governments’ failure to reform their colonial-era penal codes and enact laws that protect us, that punish the men that hurt, rape, and murder us, and to abolish the articles that let men walk free or get lesser sentences.
We cannot believe that the one place we thought we would be safe in - our universities - is no longer safe for us. We are not safe at home, in the streets, or on campus.
Our militaries quash our activism and any anti-government activity by using sexual violence and forced virginity tests. If such sexual violence is mandated by our states, why are we surprised when the same authorities fail to protect us?
The Egyptian authorities in Nayera Ashraf’s murder, and the Kuwaiti authorities in Farah Akbar’s murder, are also to blame for not implementing restraining orders and taking formal complaints seriously. But they will never be held to account.
Egyptian feminist, journalist, author, and creator of Feminist Giant, Mona El Tahawy, wrote her seminal essay for Foreign Policy, “Why Do They Hate Us?” back in 2012. Ten years later, almost nothing has improved when it comes to the safety of Arab women. But if just one thing has changed, it is that we are using all the tools we have to express our anger, our collective rage, and our will and desire for change, even if there’s a cost to it.
What I’ve been working on…
Image courtesy of Mawjoudin
I spoke to Tunisian NGO, Mawjoudin, one of the first officially registered LGBTQI+ NGOs in the region, on how they raise awareness about the queer community and homophobia through art, for The New Arab. Read it here.
I was interviewed by online Arab publishing hub Nasher about my book Hijab and Red Lipstick, and the story behind it. Find out how much of my book is reality, and the challenges of being a female Arab author who writes about the men in her community. Read my interview here.
What I’ve been reading…
I cannot tell you how HAPPY I was when Egyptian Australian writer Sara El Sayed’s memoir, Muddy People, was published in the UK last month! It came out in Australia last year and I had been dying to read it. I have just finished it - it’s a wonderfully thoughtful, funny, and poignant reflection on her life growing up as an Egyptian girl in a heavily white Australian community, and on navigating her parents’ rules - rules that are standard in most Muslim and Egyptian families, but that don’t always make sense when you are a young person living in Australia or the West. You must read this!
Finally, if you enjoy reading my work, do support me by purchasing a copy of my semi-autobiographical novel, Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press. You can find it on Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwell’s, Book Depository and in the Hashtag Press Shop.