CAIRO: Despise Aliya Mahdy or not, she has done what few revolutionaries in Egypt have been able to do: take revolutionary action. Her public display of her naked body in a blog post has seen attacks from the conservative Islamists and the liberals alike. Nudity, especially female nudity, leaves people queasy. Had she been a man, would the reaction have been so virulent against her? Doubtful. The man would likely have been praised for his use of his body as expression. Mahdy, unfortunately, is a woman living in Egypt. Women are objects in many conservatives' views. Things that can be owned and used for a man's pleasure when he desires and when he wants. This is why we have seen the growth of polygamy, the shoving aside of a woman's ability to choose her life's goals, and the unending “debate” over the causes of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Whether we agree that one's body should be a form of protest – which so many of Egypt's liberals disagree with – is irrelevant. The reality is that Mahdy has been able, with her body, debunk all myths of Egyptian liberalism. Her naked image, which has seen over one million hits, has shown that Egypt is not ready for free expression. Liberal activists online lamented that the 20-year-old university student has “ruined” her life, is “young and doesn't know what she has done.” But in an inherently conservative society, Mahdy has created something only the truly revolutionary in today's world can do: showing the hypocrisy of the so-called freedom fighters for expression. In the ultra-male dominated society of Egypt, women are too often told what they should put on their bodies. Wear the veil, wear loose clothes, don't wear this, don't wear that, and so on. Mahdy has shown that nobody has a right to tell her, or other women for that matter, what is appropriate for a woman. Her body is her own and she can do what she likes with it, and that includes putting nothing over top it and publishing it online. It's her right. What Mahdy has shown is that one doesn't have to follow the traditional cultural norms. In Egypt or elsewhere. The antagonism meted out against the young woman for showing her body publicly is part of the conservative nature that is Egypt, where a woman's body is the de facto property of society. Her honor the honor of her family, community and country. But Mahdy, knowing it or not, told Egypt and the world that she has had enough. Time for change. Time for a woman to have the right to their property, their body. Following our publishing of the story earlier this week, I received many angry emails from supposed “free speech advocates” who denounced Bikyamasr.com for writing about the story in a “positive” manner. One email, from a supposed “Egyptian liberal activist” summed up the struggle facing women in this country: “I support women's rights and freedom of speech, but what this girl has done goes beyond anything that could be possibly defended. It is not honorable for a woman to publicly display her body. That is pornography and our Egyptian sensibilities do not support this.” There are plenty of progressive views around, but in reality life is difficult for liberal-minded women in Egypt. Women are too often the scapegoats for the ills of society. Take Amr Derrag, the head of the Freedom and Justice Party in Giza – the offshoot political party of the Muslim Brotherhood – who told me recently that the societal problems facing Egypt in the past three decades are “directly related to women not staying home and building the family.” Not only is this assumption wrong, and scary – the FJP wants to push women back into the home – it shows that the problems facing Egypt socially are being pinpointed and put on women. There are many examples of women being “protected” from men in the Middle East. One would think that the rise of ultra-conservatism, namely the Salafi project emanating from Saudi Arabia, would be more tolerant of Islam's historical support for women's rights and their mobility in public – think of the era of the prophet and the openness of that society. The prophet was adamant that all people were welcome in Medina and that women were to be treated with the utmost respect. At the time, unlike today, there was no sexual apartheid in the mosque, with men and women praying together in a show of unity. Now, what we are witnessing is the rise of a movement that is as vehemently anti-women as it is anti-progress. “Whenever the conservatives enter a society they don't talk politics or economics, they talk of the honour of women”, said Hibaaq Osman, the founder and chair of the women's organisation El Karama. She argues, rightly, that what is important to these conservatives – and she is quick to point out this is not a problem limited to Islam – is that women are the key to society. She added that in all societies, women are the building blocks of forward thinking. She believes that once women have shaken off the need for a male guardian and have entered the workforce, then freedoms and laws against sexual violence can be implemented for the betterment and progress of society. But, she added: “If the woman is being portrayed as the devil in Friday sermons in the mosque, then in public people are looking for confirmation of what they are hearing.” Men are unable to take responsibility for their own actions. Osman says that evidence shows conservative religious folk the world over, including the Middle East, are the most sex-crazed. So when Mahdy removed her clothes, she undressed the liberals and their calls for freedom. Obviously, in their mind, she made a mistake. She was wrong. Nudity has no place in Egypt. But for the millions of women, who on a daily basis face sexual harassment, assault and categorical oppression from all sides, she did what no activist has been able to do. She won. She told the world that her body is owned by nobody other than herself. Disagree with the tactic, fine, but one must, if they truly espouse the idea of freedom of expression, support her in her cause. At the end of the day, one may attempt to cover a woman's body with clothes, force them into the home, but in today's Internet world, women like Mahdy can achieve more naked than they ever can clothed and in the streets. BM
