The erosion of women's rights in Egypt, illustrated

l would think with ME Democracy you have a weaker government and with islamic clerics on the sidelines they are able to take over control of their people. That would be why you see so many dictators in the islamic ME, since that is what needed to control their islamic cancerous clerics.

'Western influence has been waning, and Sharia is on the rise.'

For the sake of humanity, I fervently hope that this trend reverses itself.........and soon.

It's all the fault of the British, didn't you know?

http://middleeasternhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/conflict_behind_women_wearing_the_veil_in_egypt

Islams breaking out all over...like some kind of petulance...

Rapid over breeding weakens Islam...It causes blood disorders, mental retardation and other conditions...
Rapid breeding overwhelms the food, and other supply's, so that they continually need help...Without kufr, Islam would have starved to death long ago...without kufr help, Islam would fall...Kufr should withdraw 'all' help, and let Islam breed itself into oblivion...

The photo essay shows Moslem activation in action, as if a step-by-step organic process. What happened between the late 50s and the 2004?

A whole lot: Jimmy Carter's overthrow of the Shah and the resultant Islamic Revolution, the rebirth of Jihad war terror with major victories in Munich, the cruise ship with the retired Jews shot to death, l'Hotel Marines Corps in sunny Beirut, the Ibo slaughter in Uganda (thank you, Idi), Iraq Chirac and his EAD, the Israeli air strike in Baghdad, the two Gulf wars, the two Afghan wars, and most important of all, the Internet.

*** 33:59 ***

Even if this pictorial history of human detrioration at the Univ of Cairo (sis, boom, bang, yeah!) were to enter our public discourse, which it will not, it would be presented as a matter of the coeds rallying to their roots, which is in fact, true. But what kinda roots? Don't kid yourself, these chicks are happy to be with the program, to be alongside their men in the struggle for the Cause. Call these young women Happy Hijabs.

*** 4:15 ***

And the same imaginary TV shows discussing the regression at ol' U Cairo (on Olbermann or the Bearded Lady show on the Bill Gates Network, on Anderson Cooper 360, on Meet the Press, on O'Reilly's ill-named No Spin Zone), which only would take place in our imagination, such shows would never, ever make the logic leap to what's happened in Turkey, our stalwart NATO ally.

*** 8:7 ***

That would be offensive, both to the activated Moslems and the ones who won't be activated until near or on the Last Day. And doggone it that would be offensive to most of us Infidels, too.

There was a huge turn-out for the Coptic Christian march in downtown Toronto on Saturday. The signage was fantastic and the chants were very good.

If anyone's interested, I've posted my report, plus lots of photos and video on my blog.

Oil money.

Without it, the western trends would have continued. Islam would have died a slow death. on a more positive note, all this Saudi money merely animates the corpse.

Josphine l was thinking of this protest. wish it could happen in other cities, Toronto is four hours away from me.
my heart goes out for these Coptic Christians, may they wake up sleepy Canadians!

Juxtaposing two photos and making a sweeping generalization pertaining to 'rights' and, possibly, any number of other claims of causation without meaningful thought and scholarship is not exactly a sound way for Jihad Watch to be able to exhibit much of anything.

Let' see. All these scarfless female folks of the 70s lived in an Egypt whose government had fought 4 wars against Israel and had no peace treaty with Israel. So was that a 'jihad', pursued by a society of hijab-less women? Or was it pursued for other reasons? And why? And of course since the hijab has been returning to ascendancy, there has been a peace treaty and no war with Israel. So if I were to engage in the some kind of dubious correlation/causation games that seem to go on here at times, I'd have to conclude that Islamism leads to enduring periods of peace with Zionist Jewish supremacism. Voila!

Then there is Al Azhar's recent move to BAN the niqab at their institution, something that I have not noticed JW give any attention to. Boy, the waters are sure getting muddied on this subject rather quickly, aren't they?

Memo to Mr. Horowitz: flimsy thinking may make for some good sloganeering and demogaguery, but it rarely holds up well to a rigorous full-bodied analytical review of a comprehensive, balanced body of facts.

Those pictures tellingly make the point that Nonie Darwish makes in her own talks, describing the Egypt of her childhood and youth. There is, among some Egyptians of a certain age, now a nostalgia for a past -- see "The Yacoubian Building" -- that, as some dimly recognize, before the coup of Nasser and Naguib, during the days of the ancien regime, that of fat Farouk in all his comical (but by the standards of modern OPEC plutocrats modest) decadence, offered an Egypt, or a Cairo and an Alexandria, more interesting than that today. And what made it interesting were, precisely, those Jews, those Armenians, those Greeks, those Italians, those Copts not cowering, at a time when Islam was not triumphalist and on the march, but appeared to thoughtful Muslims to require either "reform" (Abduh, Afghani) or constraining (Ataturk). There was one man in Egypt, one thinker about Egypt, and Islam, and the West, , Taha Hussein, who was a student at Cairo University in its first class (the university had been set up, in 1908, in order to provide a secular education; that was its raison d’etre) dared to grasp the problem of Islam in holding Egyptians back. Taha Hussein dared to suggest that the way out, for Egypt, was an Egypt-first policy, a policy where Egyptian society would dare to critically examine Islam, would regard the backward "Arabs" of the Gulf with deserved disdain, and would, through an emphasis on Egypt's own pre-Islamic past (those pyramids, that Sphinx were, fortunately, hard to miss)find a way to limit the hold, the tug, the power of Islam. This impulse or doctrine can be described as "Pharaonism."

Unfortunately for Egypt, the good fortune of the Gulf Arab states, those trillions in oil revenues that they did nothing to earn and nothing to deserve -- made it possible to hide the economic backwardness of Muslim countries. These newly-rich Arabs, the "desert Arabs" once despised by the "civilized" Arabs of the north -- Egypt, Syria, Lebanon -- and especially those in Saudi Arabia, had always been the most complete and fervent Muslims. Their oil revenues bought them power and influence in the world, which were mistaken for the kind of power and influence that those who receive revenues from real economies, with all that that implies about their level of development, ordinarily possess.

And Egypt was mesmerized by the charismatic charlatan Nasser, with his pan-Arab dreams, dreams that placed him, and therefore Egypt, at the head of that pan-Arab movement. It didn't matter, many applauded and no one save those affected even noticed, how Nasser seized the assets of those Greeks, Italians, Jews, Armenians whose families had lived in Egypt for generations or even centuries, and who were booted out of Egypt, impoverishing whatever cultural life it had, and the Copts, who did not wish to endanger their own position -- one never secure under Muslims -- lay low and said nothing. And those Greeks, Jews, Italians, Armenians and others will not return, just as the Assyrians and Chaldeans who have left Iraq, and who were so important to the wellbeing of the country, forming a large part of its professional class, and of those signs of intellectual or artistic life -- an orchestra playing classical music here, an art gallery or two -- without which Iraq will look more and more like -- one of the Gulf Arab states. And the Gulf Arab states at least have been able to rent succursales of foreign universities and museums to give themselves the illusion of cultural life, of advanced education.

There are some dim signs, however, that "Pharaonism" - Egypt First -- might be finding adherents among those who resent the large sacrifices that Egypt has made for “the Arab cause” or “the Islamic cause” (in other words, for the Jihad against Israel). The awareness of just how rich, and how decadent, the Gulf Arabs are, spreads not through campaigns of vilification, but through the observation of how those Gulf Arabs behave in Egypt, when they come to disport themselves, as they do when Western capitals are not quite as welcoming as before. Egypt does not have the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Gulf Arabs receive annually, and it lost a great deal in its wars with Israel. And if it were, by Hamas or still worse, by Iranian-backed Hezbollah, involved in another war with Israel, and were it again to lose the Sinai, the Egyptians surely know that this time, even the terminally-trusting Israelis would not give up the Sinai for a third time.
The wall being built between the Sinai and Gaza by the Egyptian government is an outward and visible sign of a diminished commitment by Egypt to the Jihad against Israel, one that repeated defeats, and the expense of war-making, made sense from an Islamic view but not from the point of view of Egypt's national interests. And as the contrast with the fabulously wealthy oil-rich Arabs grew, and Egypt's own losses and expected sacrifices were noted by Egyptians themselves, they began to resent the role that under Nasser, they had allowed themselves to be cast in, but that now, given Egyptian poverty and Egyptian resentment of the rich, but “uncivilized” desert Arabs, held less and less appeal.
Egypt First, can also mean an Egypt that is not only seen as seamlessly Islamic. The Copts in Egypt are not without influence, and they stand to gain from a policy of Pharaonism. They know, inside and outside Egypt, that they are descendants of the pre-Islamic Egyptians, those who continued to resist the islamization, and with it the arabization, that others did not resist (how many of the Muslim Arabs in Egypt could begin to recognize that their ancestors were Copts? More, or less, than the number of Pakistanis who might begin to ask under what conditions their Hindu ancestors were converted, through the desire to escape an unendurable existence, to Islam?).

The pictures above suggest that all the movement is one way, toward more and more Islam. But perhaps there are other movements, under the surface, among the most advanced Egyptians, who might find a way out of this re-islamization of the country through a variant of the "Pharaonism" that was promoted, in his own quiet way, by the most remarkable Egyptian of the last century -- not Saint Sadat, and certainly not the fatal over-reacher Nasser, but Taha Hussein, who in his own lifetime was persecuted by Muslims alarmed at his book “On Pre-Islamic Literature” and the charges he made, including statements about the Qur’an that alarmed the faithful, and forced him, the dignified and superior Taha Hussein, to recant before his intellectual inferiors, with their maddened faith threatened, themselves to him a threat.
Absent an Ataturk, the policy of Egypt-First, akin to the “Pharonism” proposed at a higher level (one not built on resentment of the “desert Arabs” but on pride in Egypt) is one way for Egypt to find a way to diminish the appeal of Islam, when Islam, as Taha Hussein understood (like Ataturk, like the Iran notables who composed the 1906 Constitution), needed, for the sake of its own adherents, to be const4rained and tamed. That diachronic study above, showing the outward and visible signs of the Return of Islam, captures better even than a Cairo street scene (with its mixture of males and females) possibly could. Taha Hussein would not be pleased. But if the Western world shows that it can make the connection between the failures of Islamic states (political, economic, social, intellectual, moral) and Islam itself, and speaks uninhibitedly about this, Egyptians – including those young women in the photographs luxuriating in the complacencies of their hijab – may find the answer to the wretchednesses of their society diagnosed, and a prescription already prescribed, written out by Dr. Taha Hussein.

I wonder if the proportion of those who have undergone FGM has changed to the same extent.

lkeevy1, I know of one TV station that carried a 25-second report on the march but that's all I could find (and that's because someone put it up on YouTube). I didn't see any coverage in the Toronto newspapers. It's shameful.

What is baffling, what needs to be explained, is not why in our time Islam has revived and Muslims are relapsing into their normal baseline of their "doubly totalitarian" sociopsychopathology; rather, what needs to be explained is how Muslims ever got to a point of relaxing the strictures of that sociopsychopathology by the mid 20th century (though we can thank our resident Islam-apologist troll, fairufzan, for reminding us that just because a given Muslim society shows signs of having ostensibly relaxed its sociopsychopathological strictures, it doesn't mean their perennial jihad is anything more than merely temporarily suspended, at best).

One factor in that explanation would of course be the influence of Western colonialism and post-colonial policies still, up to the 1960s, relatively undeformed by PC MC, as they have become since then. While this influence, of course, was varied from region to region (the Dutch influence in Indonesia, the French influence in Algeria, the British influence in India, the Spanish (and later American) influence in the Philippines, the British and American influence in Persia/Iran; etc.), one common ground of that influence throughout the Muslim world was a modest amelioration of the sociopsychopathology of Islamic culture, through a Westernization more or less dictatorially forced upon Muslims (as with the Shah of Iran) through local leaders to the degree that they functioned as proxies of Western colonialism and post-colonialist pressures.

Perennial Jihad, Hesperado? In what way? I don't recall coming across that in Mahmoud Shaltut's treatment of the subject of Jihad.

Do you claim that Farouk, Nasser, the Hashemites, and Syrian and Iraqi Baathists are a bunch of so-called jihadists as well? Will you throw in Catholic Melkite Bishop Elias Chacour as well for his treatment of Zionism in 'Blood Brothers'?

And when was the last time you saw the Blessed Virgin depicted in a painting, icon, or statue without a head covering? Would removing it make the Catholic Church more hip and attuned to 'womens rights'?

All i see in pic # 1 is a group of healthy and living souls.Pic # 2 shows living dead bodies.Zombies.

Also, i forgot to mention that i bet you most of the persons in pic # 1 were copts

What the hell is that nefarious parasite fairuzfan doing in the West? Its time to kick him out and send him to Pakistan where he belongs, amongst his fellow barbaric scum.

INstead of 'zombies' I'd prefer to say 'castrated females" which is sadly true of 95% of Egyptian women

Thank you, Kinneddar. Sadly, I'm not surprised to learn that about the CBC.

I'm with Hesperado on this one; the apex of intellectual and religious freedom in the Muslim world was the bad old days of colonialism. After that, the 50s and 60s could best be described as a post-colonial "hangover"...when the Islamic world was still heavily influenced by such alien concepts as nationalism and Marxism.

The modern re-assertion of the Islamic identity in the Muslim world should be a salient warning to all of us who might be buoyed by momentary movement towards a liberalized Islam in this country or that one. The same historical paradigm keeps repeating itself.

The Mutazilite heresy degenerated into fanaticism and was eventually discarded in a return to a rigid orthodoxy. Akbar's India was a pluralistic paradise compared to his predecessors...but upon his death, his successors re-asserted the Islamic identity with a vengeance. The same is occurring today - more gradually - in Ataturk's Turkey.

Taslima Nasrin once said "[the branch of fundamentalism grows from the tree of religion; prune the branch, and it just grows back]." We need to excavate the tree by the roots.

Re. our Mohammedan-in-a-mask (or, alternatively, dhimmi shill) Fairuzfan, who asked, rhetorically, in a reference that is a favourite among Muslims addressing Christians:

"And when was the last time you saw the Blessed Virgin depicted in a painting, icon, or statue without a head covering?"

Actually, quite a few times.

http://www.artexpertswebsite.com/pages/artists/artists_l-z/schongauer/Schongauer_MadonnaOfTheRoseGarden.jpg

I can definitely see her hair!

And this one, Stephan Lochner's lovely Madonna of the Rose Garden, c. 1440:

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/l/lochner/madonna.html

(different online image of same painting)
http://www.wga.hu/art/l/lochner/madonna.jpg

She's wearing a crown, sure: but no veil. I can see quite a bit of hair.

And here's Raphael's Adoration of the Magi.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Adoration_of_the_Magi_-_Rafael.jpg

If she's wearing any sort of head covering, it's pretty diaphanous.

Okay, in Titian's glorious 'Assumption of the Virgin', she does have a veil of some kind..but it's nothing like a hijab, in fact, it's slipping backwards off her head as she floats upward into the divine embrace, and her hair is clearly visible, framing her face which is upturned in ecstasy:

http://www.titian-tizianovecellio.org/Assumption-of-the-Virgin-(detail-1)-1516-18.html

Looking at the original article, I see photos of classes from 1959, 1978, 1995, and 2004. Where the change to hijabbed coeds can be seen to occur is between 1978 and 1995. So, why might that be? I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the watershed event inspiring this new surge in fundamentalism was the fall of Iran to the Ayatollah Khomeini. Even though that event elevated Shia rather than Sunni, it made the West look weak. So, we can probably thank France's "progressive" government, which sheltered the Ayatollah and then flew him back to Iran; thank the Carter Administration, which pushed a new emphasis on human-rights oriented foreign policy; and perhaps also thank Sen. Frank Church's investigation of the CIA, which half-neutered our covert missions capabilities, for the hijabbing of these women and the rise of Islamic militancy throughout the Islamic world.

My memories of Egypt two decades ago are as follows:

1. Noticing a middle-class appearing man in suit and tie next to me in a cab sporting a cross tatooed onto his wrist, I asked him if he was a Christian. Egyptian Christians are usually tatooed in infancy. The man covered the tatoo with his hand and looked nervously around, then whispered "Yes. Please be quiet."

2. An English-speaking Arab man sitting next to me on a shuttle spoke to me and stated he now lives in Australia. I asked him why and he pointed to a woman in traditional dress who wore the burqa. He said "I live there because of people like THAT here."

3. I noticed that every church had soldiers posted at its entrance.

4. I visited the newer Cairo synagogue. Before entering, a soldier posted at the entrance pretended to stab me with a non-existant dagger, then laughed.

5. I noticed Arab copies of the Protocols of Zion and Mein Kampf in public markets.

6. The officer who handed me my permit to visit a Saharan oasis commented to my Dutch companion (in my absence) that he wished Hitler had killed all the Jews.

7. The English and Anzac women in our small group were "greeted" with obscene gestures and noises when we walked through a market in Luxor.

8. The Muslim cab driver commented that he approved of Egypt's peace agreement with Israel. Several Egyptians told me that they did not hate Israelis but they disliked the Israeli government. Some Egyptians commented how they loathed Jews, hated Hebrew, and cursed Israel.

Some of my experiences were positive, while some were negative.

I left with a feeling of happiness that I was returning to a free land that affords me many more options.

More nonsensical Obama bashing. Robert posed the question:
"Will Obama likewise stand up for the freedom of Muslim women not to cover their hair?"
He lifted a phrase from Obama's Cairo speech that could be interpreted erroneously if the conjunctive phrase of the same sentence is not included. The whole sentence reads:
"I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality."

Obama went on to say:
"And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.

Now let me be clear: issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we have seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.

Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons, and our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity – men and women – to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. That is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams."

In my opinion Obama stakes out a reasonable position. It condemns the lack of choice for women in Islam and promises to aid/partner with countries that support education for girls. The pathological zeal of those who fight against the evil of Islam to demonize Obama is self marginalizing and therefor counter productive.

While we are talking about Eygpt I would like to say that the Coptic Christian march in Toronto on Saturday was a great sucess in that a lot more people showed up than I expected would. A couple of hundred maybe more walked in bitter cold chanting things like Canada Wake Up(a badly needed phrase) and Islamic Terrorists Must Be Stopped. It was to my knowledge the first march againstm Islamic Terrorism in this city. Congratulations to Toronto's Coptic Community!

dumbledoresarmy - Well said, as always.