Since the first night of Eid, downtown Cairo has turned into a sex predators’ jungle, where dozens of (unveiled, veiled, and even in niqab) women were the subject of sexual assaults.
You can find horrific reports by the following bloggers: Malek, Radwa, and Sharqawi.
The Central Security Forces, and the police officers did NOTHING to stop the sexual assaults. They were busy camping in front of the US and British embassies in Garden City, and the neighboring Arab League HQ.
Should we blame those animals who were involved in the molestation fiesta? Why? If everyone can see the police and NDP thugs sexually assaulting women in the broad day light, stripping them off their clothes and manhandling them in demos under the blessing of Mubarak’s security… Why is it wrong then? Go ahead boys. Molest some more. You are doing your country a great job, you sick fucks!
It’s weird, Hossam – all these groups of young men hanging about downtown – why? What is it about the Eid that sends them on the prowl? Many of them look like high school and college kids, the harrassment I noticed was of the most juvenile kind (though I’m sure lots of very serious harrassment was also going on, as the other bloggers have noted). What a contrast from Ramadan evenings when downtown would be packed with families! Who are these young men, and why do they descend on downtown? Where are their families?
SP, I wasn’t there, but heard testimonies and read postings from others bloggers that made me wanna puke. And I can’t believe that up till now the press did not write a single word about it.
These guys are sexually repressed boys from the urban poor, who went rampaging around, with no intervention from the useless security services.
I have seen this kind of behavior at mouleds. Young women get harrassed, gropped the clothes pulled. I saw it at Sayeda Zeinab once. The young women was with her husband or fiance, he had to get his belt off and whip their way out of the crowd, the police interviened though and help him with they crowd control wooden stick. I have actually been part of another episode at the tanta mouled. I was with my girlfriend and another male friend. We were trying to go through a crowd and some young men started to try groping her I had to push them back really hard and we stormed out. This the reuslt of kabt dur to the impossibility for young men to marry sometimes before 40 and the sense of lawlessness at mouleds. I ahvent seen what went one in Cairo bu think I have an idea of what your talking about.
I an very sad to read the site and the comment in English? we have our language and our nationality
wahot about peop;e who don’t know Eng??
Egypt is crossed off my wish list!
The report of women being sexually assaulted on egypt on eid day has not been verified by any official sources. Obviously official sourcxes are not always correct in there reporting of an event. However eyewitness reports relating to this incident are mixed. Some who said nothing of the sort happened while others have said that they had to hide a girl in their shop to prevent any attack and on a recent website it was also claimed that hundreds of women were subject to this attack.
My point is,there seems to be an element of exaggeration in this story especially given that there has been (as far as im aware and shown in the egyptian media)there hasnt even been a report to the police as to the ocurrences on eid day. Would be good to gt any form of verification of the story.
I don’t know why people are in denial to belive such incident could happen in Arab land. It’s a direct consequence of adopting double standered of moral code and ethical social norms. Sexual plesure is God’s given rights to man and women; thus, denial of it to youth only breeds such unacceptable behaviors. Arabs must chose one of the two means by which society meets the sexual gratification of young men and women.
1. Except the SECULAR method to deal with it, where premarital relationship is embrased by society. The benefit of it is people meet their needs with no string attached or any investment of love and loyalty. The negetive outcome is the brake down of family unit in society and everything that goes with it. In U.S.A., 35.8 precent of childbirth is out of wedlock, children not sure of who there father is. (TIME-30,OCT,2006)US-edition.
2. Except the DIVINE method wholeheartedly, where youth are encourage to marrige bond at early age, dispite there economical condition. The benefit is that, family unit is mantained along with love and loyalty. The negetive outcome is that, society has to carry the resposibily to bring economical viability to those who are lacking.
Hello all,
I am from Latinamerica and I was was studying in Egypt last semester, the same one when the African Cup happened. I remember that after Egypt (alhamduliAllah) won the Finals, some of my friends and I were separated. When talking later to them I found out some of the girls has gotten separated and even thought about half of them were Muslim and veiled they were attacked by a crowd of men. The crowd groped them and tried to rip of their clothes. It was very sad, luckily some of our friends from school saw them again and helped them by beating off the attackers. It is very sad that this should happen at such a happy ocassion but it happens all the time in crowded places. Khan al khalili, etc. Sad indeed. The Egyptian society and its people are very beautiful but these attacks taint the image of us all. It is everyone’s responsibility to do something for a better Egypt.
I think the above comment by “U.S.A.” is correct — there is an ethical double standard, and it is mostly created by men. It is a morality that creates much ugly behaviour.
Any morality that breeds violent, immoral behaviour is immoral.
Isn’t there a vicious cycle? Women are stigmatised for having sex before marriage. As a result, young women are reluctant to engage in any love relationship, sexual or otherwise, to guard their honour. This, in turn, means that young men have no partners. They feel, at some level, rejected by women, and angry with them. The whole relationship to woman is poisoned. The woman is both desired, and hated. As a result, women mistrust men and are even less likely to give their love to a man, because the man brings all this baggage.
I do not think early marriage is the universal solution. It may be for some who love each other, and good luck to them. Of course it is what everybody dreams of.
But what about the reality of unhappy marriages, where the wife still feels raped and brutalised, and the husband still feels that love and respect are withheld and is always angry with the wife?
In my opinion, the woman has to be set free, completely set free, and set free from all stigmatisation. Men need to have the intelligence to recognise that if they try to control women they are destroying the very thing that they seek. Love and respect can only blossom in freedom.
Thanks for the blog. Good luck with everything.
sadly i can’t even bring myself to go home to egypt any more because of the disgraceful behaviour of the men there.. the last time i went was two years ago.. i was ashamed in front of my english friend at the behaviour of the men there and spent the whole time apologising for the men’s behaviour. i do not look egyptian but i am and of course can speak egyptian arabic very well.. the way that the majority of the men behaved and spoke about us in front of us all of the time upset me…
‘shayfeen el-sharameet? shakluhum 3aizeen yitnaku’ (we were dressed in very respectable clothes and not attracting attention to ourselves at all..
me: ‘eihel 2araf dah? i7tirimu nafsuku, 3eib 3eib’
them: ‘ma3leish makkunash 3aarfeen in inti musrayeh’
like it’s ok to do that to non-egyptians but not egyptians.. the people need to be EDUCATED that women should be respected & equal… or god help the egyptian women….
Salams,
Hmm interesting perspective, iahve different stories from different sources…there are massive questions of who these youth are, ther are stoies that mubarak and his people are the ones who are behind this…that they wish to casue some sort of civil unrest and use this to bring about in certain claws that will somehow help them have some credibility….so they wish to make there secular standards the law to follow
instead refereing to islam as the criteria for all actions the muslims are being told to follow a system of beelif whcih is alien to others…it is sad to see such events (IF TURE) allah hu alim.
But all i can say it is not as disgusting and humiliating as living here in the west the society is like a cesspit and it has become a decadent society…that is fuelled by desires….walahi i ahte living here and would rather be living with my muslim brothers and sisters abroad….
waslaam
Harassment can happen everyday in every country and can take different forms. From harassing a girl in a crowded place on an Egyptian street to harassing a family like mine when I was driving on a Chicago suburb street and being named a Moslem terrorist, son of a bitch and Osama supporter in front of my 4 children and my wife for no reason apart from that my wife was wearing her veil (Hejab). Ignorance and narrow mindness can bring the worst of the human being wither he is a Middle Eastern Moslem or an American Catholic or Anglican solider in Abu-Gharib prison.
Since I have lived in the west for the past 15 years, I have received mostly bad news from Egypt. But we should not isolate these events from the challenges that face Egypt as a key strategic country, with what this entire word means. Egypt in the center of the Middle East and indeed the whole world is manipulated politically, economically and socially by forces and powers that the least that can be said about it is that it is anti any thing that binds this nation together. These powers are working persistently to wipe-out Egypt reputation and importance as the corner stone of the Middle East (see the impression of our sister the British Muslimah). Egypt image is being worked upon for some time by these extensive efforts; to look like a whore-house (from recent TV video clips, to movie production and porn sites). They try to reform a new perspective about Egypt that contradicts, in every aspect, the image of the country who expelled the French and British colonization. The country that stopped the Tatar and ended their legacy and became the long arm in the Othman empire during Muhammad Ali time and threatened, for some time (during 50’s and 60’s), the western domination of the Arab and Islamic worlds. While other non-Egyptians and some times (non-Moslem) find an easy explanation of this moral and ethical degradation of the some Egyptian youth to be explained by the rigid Arab and Islamic tradition and ideology (please see the remark from U.S.A.) that agree well with their narrow vision and ignorance, this shouldn’t be our way to solve these problems. That has been always the case with their classification of our people, either we are a dedicated terrorists our punch of sex hungry pigs.
Egypt is facing many problems and they are not isolated from what we live in and suffer from everyday in every corner of this world. Is there any one willing to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness?
“Egypt is facing many problems and they are not isolated from what we live in and suffer from everyday in every corner of this world. Is there any one willing to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness?”
Am willing to bring a match. :-)
Certainly, young men (especially when unemployed and underprivileged) behave badly in any country, and you’re right that is has nothing to do with religion. China and India still have unchecked women’s abuse in parts, much of Africa has it, and the West had it until not so long ago. And like you say, racial (as well as completely random) abuse on Western streets is a reality, perpetrated by a kind of idiot whose mindset is an exact carbon copy of what seems to have been at work here.
Still would say though that Western countries’ legal systems tend to be more developed in regards to women’s rights. Did you read the Daily Star Egypt article?
https://web.archive.org/web/20100628133525/http://dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=3727
Doesn’t make it easy for women, does it.
Mohammed from UK
Your hateful comments disturb me? I really hope that you don’t encounter those same attitudes that you have put forth in your comment directed at you because that would be racist! There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the UK, there are hundreds and thousands of people who are not Muslim and who are rational openminded intelligent & kind people in the UK. Don’t forget over a million British people marched against their own government’s plans for Iraq & Afghanistan. When my family were being targetted by anti-muslim campaigners it was my non-muslim friends that supported me and came to my aid, not my muslim friends sadly.
Perhaps your generalisations of people here and society here is symptomatic of the ideologies of the very thing that we are talking about – a basic lack of respect for fellow human being, whether it be based on their religion, race or gender.
Why is it ok for you to brand Western society as a cesspit & humiliating to be in whilst taking full advantage of what it has to offer you (why else would you be here?) I would suggest you look at what you said and consider how offensive it would be to people that live in this society here
Omda
I have found time and again that is first of all lack of education that makes people behave so inappropriately. Too many people in most countries (including the West) are ignorant of their country’s history and background, and of how their countrymen are perceived by people from other countries. One of the best examples is that most Americans are at a loss to realise or understand why nobody likes them anymore (this is true of most US citizens who don’t possess passports and keep maniacs like Bush in power, whether by actively voting him in or inactively by not turning out).
Equally, lack of education made Western people call your family terrorists (as happened to an Arabic looking friend of mine in England). All these people know is that ‘they fly planes into our buildings’. And unfortunately, from the uneducated point of view they are right.
Being German I have been met with enough prejudice on my travels to be sick of it. Lack of education made people think it appropriate to blame me for my country’s sins in the past. I am 23, if at all it was my great grandparents.
Living in Cairo as a Western woman, I am branded as a whore and a decadent person of no morals. I live here with my partner. I am neither. And I dress more modestly than most of the young women here who serve modesty by wearing the hijab but then wear the tightest tops and skirts I have ever seen. (That to me is a sign of quietly fighting oppression.)
From a natural interest and being careful not to appear insulting, I have asked Muslims here about their religion. I wanted to find out what Ramadan was about for example and what the religious restrictions are on women in society. I got as many answers as I asked people. Having read several books on Islam and the major religions, all of which included extracts from the Qran, I have realised that nobody seems to know their own religion. The same goes for most religions’ followers as Paul Harris points out so well in ‘The End of Faith’.
Double standards and lack of education result in people ignorant of what is acceptable behaviour towards their fellow human beings.
Similarly, most Egyptians don’t seem to know their country’s history and have no idea of the intricat moral code us ‘decadent’ Westerners adhere to. The West might appear decadent and immoral to many Muslims but there women don’t get attacked and sexually harassed when being dressed modestly – and neither when they’re not!
I and my partner were lucky to get out of Downtown when the riots were just kicking off on Eid Al Fitr. Some teenager grabbed my breast and then seemed more than happy to start a fight with my partner when he told him off in the sharpest words. Another boy then kept following me and touching my arm until we shouted at him. Luckily some older men pushed us out of the crowd before a fight could start.
I have heard of someone’s friend who got beaten to death when he tried to help a young woman who was getting harassed by a mob of men. I believe she got raped.
Whatever the image is that certain elements might be trying to paint of Egypt, the attacks and open and everyday harassment are a reality here.
what u talking about …..?
its that EGYPT do u all though
we still have the goodness and lost of a beautiful things in egypt too
yes but sadly the beauty & goodness can be ruined for some people by the ugliness & brutality of a few.. :( very sadly indeed
Does anybody know what can be done with them though?
It makes me so angry and ashamed that Egyptians can act like this, publically and without any consequences..
People who deny it tend to be 1) men (& therefore cannot really speak from experience) 2) in denial and also denying women’s experiences, thus giving these people who behave in such a manner justification for behaving this way
I’m almost thinking about arming myself with CS gas when I’m there for self protection
men, these are not men, they are animals. What a disgrace for a Muslim country. Think twice about coming here. The people here are bad examples of Muslims, and I feel bad for anyone who comes here thinking they are going to be “living with the Muslims” or those who look at these people and judge islam based on their lives and actions. They are dirty, perverted, disgusting and lacking education and manners. Allah knows best but had I come here before I converted i doubt I would have converted. And I doubt any ex-pats living here would even think about it unless they are in a relationship with an Egyptian. they give such a bad name to islam and Muslims…