Egyptian women and sectarian strife
CAIRO: A pernicious misogynistic streak has been evident in the social attitude and media language that has emerged in relation to the so-called “woman-induced” sectarian violence that has plagued Egypt over the past few months.
As a disclaimer, I must confess that one of the main reasons I decided to tackle the sordid sectarian issue from this angle is that I personally caught myself doing it.
When I first heard that over 12 people we killed and hundreds injured because yet another Christian woman converted to Islam was allegedly held against her will in a Church, my reflex reaction was to unleash my vitriol on the woman. How merciless and cruel that was. And even though I know that this woman will never read my column, I would like to publicly apologize to her.
No matter how unpopular this view is, I believe that Egyptian society as a whole should apologize to her in this classic case of blaming the victim.
The personal tale of Abeer Fakhry was an eye-opener. As the story goes, Abeer, a 25-year-old mother of one from Upper Egypt, was caught in an abusive marriage. It transpired through a video recording of her that was widely circulated online that she was trying to get a divorce, that she was romantically involved with a Muslim man, and that that she had already officially converted to Islam last September and was in hiding. When she was “betrayed” by a man who had initially helped her, who tipped her family off on where she was staying, they “kidnapped” her and handed her over to the church. The church then kept moving her from one convent to another, all the while trying to convince her, without any use of torture, to re-embrace Christianity. Her last “hostage site” was in a building affiliated to a church in Imbaba, where the deadly clashes took place, and from whence she was set free by a nun who was assigned to feed and guard her.
At least that’s one version of the story. Details that emerged within 24 hours of the clashes and Abeer’s own appearance in the video and in a phone-in interview in a show hosted by the popular Mahmoud Saad support the general gist of the story. News reports have confirmed a divorce case in her name in the family court and a copy of her Azhar conversion has also been published.
The point is, all these details are completely irrelevant to the fatal clashes that have falsely been attributed to Abeer. Whether she had converted or not, and whether she, as some reports have maliciously claimed without one shred of evidence, was married to two men at the same time, are not the reason why hundreds of hot-headed men decided to “protect their honor” by killing each other.
If Abeer had filed for divorce from her abusive Christian husband and run off with another Christian, the same could have easily happened. If Abeer was a Muslim trying to get a divorce and it was rumored that she was secretly involved with another Muslim man, the same strict Upper Egyptian mentality and cultural norms could have also ignited terrible clashes between the families and even led to some deaths.
Women in Egypt, despite having made enormous leaps in access to education and jobs and through their activism in the public arena, continue to be exploited by religious extremists from both sides to further their own political agendas. The simple truth is, socially, Egyptian women are often terrorized by their families and their extended social circles into behaving along a certain strict path, often being forced to make very private decisions that would have an immense impact on their social and psychological well-being.
Should they choose to go against the grain, the backlash, as we have often seen, can be fatal. In the case of Abeer (and before her Camilia Shehata and Wafaa Constantin, the alleged converts who were married to Christian pastors) has once again proven that the issue is not simply sectarian; it’s a question of the fundamental human and gender rights of mature women to make decisions that could upset their families.
Abeer (if she really is the woman in the video) has shown extraordinary courage by agreeing to appear in public to set the record straight and perhaps prevent more deaths and injuries. It’s tragic that the success of the entire Egyptian revolution could be undermined because one woman simply wants to get a divorce; and it’s also unjust that this whole burden has been squarely placed on Abeer’s feeble shoulders.
The fact that the Egyptian military prosecutor has ordered her detention and sent her to a women’s prison with her infant without listing any charges against her is cause for serious concern.
According to a report by Reuters quoting the official Middle East News Agency, "The military prosecution ordered the detention of the citizen Abeer Fakhry, the catalyst for the incidents of strife in Imbaba, for 15 days pending investigation."
Even the wording of the report implies that the military has already passed judgment on her; that Abeer is guilty for being the “catalyst” of the sectarian incidents in Imbaba. But the fact that she was “used” as a “catalyst” for violent crime cannot possibly be grounds for legal charges against her. So far, her detention is entirely illegal and must be immediately revoked.
If this incident has proven anything, it is that we need a social revolution to put an end to the exploitation of women in this way. Egyptian society as a whole, and activist religious groups, whether Muslim or Christian, in particular, are in complete denial of how the role of women in society has changed over the decades. Continuing to impose such flagrant social and religious restrictions can be easily abused to the detriment of the future of Egypt and its religious cohesion.
It has also proven that the deep-seated skepticism between Egypt’s Muslims and Christians has nothing to do with conspiracies by the remnants of the previous regime, but is the result of a broader social conservatism that is averse to the basic notion of individual rights and freedoms and respect for the other. The sectarianism long fuelled by the now disbanded state security investigations only found fertile ground to sow these destructive seeds because of the closed nature of our society.
Changes on that front will not happen overnight, but now that we know what the stakes are, in our own small circles, we must act now.
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