From Dust and Dreams blog by “Wild at Heart” Four different situations before the beginning of the “feast of sexual harassment” First situation: Al-Youm al-Saba'a published a story about a man who harassed a woman while she was praying inside the mosque, can you imagine that? This goes out for the ones who claim that only women who wear revealing clothes get harassed by guys, and those who tend to be modestly dressed would never ever get harassed or stared at! Oh my god, the only place where we can feel safe was defiled by this molester! Second situation: The blogger Asoor Yasser, created a group on Facebook called “I am not wearing the veil … and you will behave.” This is not new, the new thing is that the group was closed and Yasser received messages full of curses and threats and these messages were very abusive, calling her bad names, etc… Here is the question, how can a person promote hijab and at the same time insult people like this???! Isn't religion just one system? We take it all, or leave it! Doesn’t religion prohibit being abusive and insulting others? So how can a man be this contradictory to defend Hijab and at the same time be so offensive? They say that unveiled women left a part of the religion? What about them? How could you expect an unveiled woman who gets a hard time and gets insulted, to love Hijab and wear it in return? Third Situation: Al Ahram published a story that secret police is deployed to prevent sexual harassment: If this report is true, then some police officers would follow the instructions and some wouldn’t , but the positive thing is that media paid attention to the issue and finally ,the Ministry of the Interior is starting to take the situation seriously! Now everyone talks about combating sexual harassment and this in itself is a victory! Fourth situation: Sheikh Safwat Hegazi, along with Sheikh Mohammed Gubril, said that if a girl walks out in the streets wearing revealing clothes and says that it's her freedom of choice , then the one who harasses her has his own freedom of choice too!!!! How can a Sheikh say something like that?? Lets agree upon one point, I have never seen anyone wearing “semi-naked” clothes except on private beaches. Is this an appropriate way to encourage women to wear veil? By saying: “wear the veil, otherwise you will be sexually molested by everyone”? This is what I call intellectual terror and paves the way for the real terrorism. If girls listened to the sheikh , they wouldn’t ever get convinced by the idea of wearing the Islamic veil, and they would just wear it because they are afraid of not wearing it. But then, don’t ask, don’t tell about their behavior afterwards! Is this your speech at Friday prayers, and most importantly on TV? You always blame it all on women, as if God didn’t ask males not to stare or look and to control their instincts. How could you think that some girl who wears shirts and pants, works or studies or participates in a demonstration is equal to an idle bully who violates the body of another woman?? How could you call him “free” to harass whoever?? Didn’t God ask us to protect the body? God created women for many reasons other than wearing veil… whenever we want to discuss the reasons why sexual harassment spreads, we find out that you and sheikhs like you are the reason behind it!!!!! **translated by Mohamed Abdel Salam BM
