To My Anonymous Ranter:

So I got this about an article I posted. I want to address it, but I have to do it here, rather than directly, since this was an anon:

post/16006113317: “even if one of them is just conservative in appearance” Wait a minute. You’re saying even if I choose to wear certain clothes, it’s being ‘conservative’? I understood ‘liberal’ as having the freedom to decide what I should wear! I’m a prude if I wear a burka, a slut if I wear a bikini? I’m NOT saying Mahdy is wrong or you are, I just want to let you know, it’s possible to dress ‘conservative’ and not be forced into it by ‘Islamists’. Why is this box stopping me from typing

the box will not stop me. What I’m trying to say: why are Muslim women who dress accordingly by their own choice ‘conservative’ and ‘oppressed’ and living under the ‘growing influence of Islamism’? Where did the word ‘Islamist’ even come from?Eh? If by that you mean the corrupt, misogynistic, secretly sex-obsessed, patriarchal, wealthy, homophobic group of men in power, then yes, it’s a bad thing. But if you’re suggesting ‘Islamism’ is Islam, you’re quite wrong.

me again. A true believer would never use the name of religion to test a woman’s virginity, not force her dress how he wanted, nor beat her, nor NOTHING. It pains me to see the name of my beautiful religion used as a terrible thing: “Islamism” “Islamist” “Islamic Terrorism” “Islamic Fundamentalist”. Is not a ‘fundamentalist’ one who adheres to the fundamentals? In that case, he would truly be the best Muslim and women would be on the highest level to him.

First, I would like to say those were not my words.  Maybe the source got lost in the reblogs, but I lifted the article from Mona Eltahawy for the Guardian.  What she asserts is her opinion.  And yes, I did choose this article from others I read on Mahdy, and I did so because I thought it addressed some issues very concisely.  

Women should choose to dress as they want and do what they want - I hold to that.  Whether they want to wear a burqa or niqab, bikini or nothing.  Part of Mahdy’s message (as I’ve interpreted it) was that it is her choice - her body.  She should choose, and no one else.

I do not, and have never suggested that Islamism (under your defined terms) is Islam.

And I cannot defend the word “fundamentalist”, or what it has come to mean.  Maybe one day it will be reappropriated, like the word “terrorist” (a word with positive meaning during the French Revolution).  But for now, it is what it is.  Every religion has a blemish of this.

I agree, a true believer in any higher power should not do as man does, but we (in all our structures) are human and we err.  I do not speak for whoever it is you really want to be heard by, I can’t tell you who has twisted and contorted the vocabulary of Islam, but I can tell you that there people on all sides of this issue who take offense to the deviations.  And inshallah, one day there will be understanding.

When a woman is the sum total of her headscarf and hymen – that is, what’s on her head and what is between her legs – then nakedness and sex become weapons of political resistance.

You can witness how nudity sears through layers of hypocrisy and repression by following Aliaa Mahdy, a 20-year-old Egyptian who lit the fuse of that double-H bomb when she posted a nude photograph of herself on her blog last week.

It was in Egypt, after all, that the ruling military junta stripped women of both headscarves (detained female activists were made to strip) and hymens when it subjected them to “virginity tests” last March, by which a soldier inserted two fingers into their vaginal opening. What are the military’s “virginity tests”, but a cheap tactic to humiliate and silence? When sexual assault parades as a test of the “honour” of virginity, then posing in your parents’ home in nothing but stockings, red shoes and a red hair clip is an attack towards all patriarchs out there.

Supporters and detractors quickly lined up to comment on her blog, where the counter for pageviews outpaces a pendulum many times over. Far from the immature naïf some have tried to paint her as being, Mahdy knows exactly where it hurts – and kicks. She wrote:

“Put on trial the artists’ models who posed nude for art schools until the early 70s, hide the art books and destroy the nude statues of antiquity, then undress and stand before a mirror and burn your bodies that you despise to forever rid yourselves of your sexual hangups before you direct your humiliation and chauvinism and dare to try to deny me my freedom of expression”.

She might have been born 10 years into Hosni Mubarak’s rule, but Mahdy understands the way personal freedoms have steadily shrunk in Egypt. The double whammy of military rule – in place since 1952 – along with the growing influence of Islamism, ensured that. Mubarak would fill jails with Islamists, but would fight their ideas not by giving civil and personal liberties room to express themselves, but through conservative clerics employed by the state. When the only two sides fighting are conservative – even if one of them is just conservative in appearance – then everyone loses. And women don’t just lose; they’re also used as cheap ammunition.

thepoliticalnotebook:

Tahrir, Cairo. Protests erupted again in Tahrir as several thousand demonstrators returned to the now famous square to protest and call for the resignation or removal from power of Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, who is currently the de facto head of state for the country. Demonstrators are ripping up pavement to throw at security forces and tear gas fills the streets as they clash with security forces.

Hossam El-Hamalawy, noted Egyptian blogger and activist who is live-blogging the events from the scene, tweeted last night:

Trans.: “Powerful chant: the people want the fall of the marshal.”

The Guardian’s report quotes one protester as saying: “Mubarak was nothing - this is the revolution.”

As of now, the square remains cloaked in tear gas and activists, angry at actions by the interior ministry and incensed at the use of security forces so reminiscent of Mubarak’s crackdown are using social media to express outrage, call for fellow activists and Egyptians to join them and to ask for medical supplies. 

Photo Credit: Khalil Hamra/AP

Women celebrating Women’s Day in Egypt.

Opposition supporter waves flags after a senior army general addressed the crowd inside Tahrir Square.

A detailed look at the Egyptian Revolution, by Frontline (PBS). →

This documentary includes the use of social networks, media, and the internet as catalysts for the revolution, going back as far as 2008, as well as a study of the Muslim Brotherhood.

9gag:

Uninstalling dictators, please wait…

I am just so happy that now I can go to sleep without my computer streaming this, because I was seriously that scared I’d miss the revolution.

Shut up I’m totally cool.

THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED

Al Jazeera has the best coverage:

They’re are letting the Egyptians speak for themselves.

Al Jazeera officially has the best graphics for the coverage of Egypt.

Gratuitous Pictures of Mubarak.

NOW IS NOT THE APPROPRIATE TIME TO CRASH, SHOCKWAVE FLASH.