While the revolution gently weeps: An interview with Mona Eltahawy

In the wee hours of Saturday, Mona Eltahawy's name surfaced in email correspondence between Hillary Clinton and Anne-Marie Slaughter, president of the New America Foundation. Dated May 1, 2012, it was one of Clinton's 30,000 mails released by the US State Department after a federal court ruled that 55,000 pages from her private server be made public.

'Long but worth it – Mona Eltahawy on "the war on women" in the Middle East', read Slaughter's subject line. Appended in the email was Eltahawy's now-fabled Foreign Policy article, Why Do They Hate Us?

"Just read it and WOW--what kind of response is she getting?" Clinton replied to Slaughter.

"I can't believe I surfaced in Hilary Clinton's inbox," laughs Egypt-born Eltahawy, in Mumbai for a pitstop in what's to be a whirlwind book tour.

Her first book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, is an expansion of Why Do They Hate Us?, an eye-opening, personal examination of misogyny in west Asia and North Africa. The 'they' and 'us' here refer to Muslim men and women, respectively.

Eltahawy covered the 2011 Egyptian revolution that triggered the downfall of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. But she experienced, firsthand, the brutality of the state when she was sexually and physically assaulted by the riot police. Post a Tata Literature Live! session titled 'Will Women Always Be The Second Sex', the award-winning journalist took time out to talk about the revolutions few write about. Edited excerpts:

You've spoken about how your family's move to Saudi Arabia from Glasgow – and the years after – 'traumatised you into feminism'. Did your parents experience a similar claustrophobia?
We'd lived in the UK for eight years. For seven of those years, both my parents were providers. In the last one, my mother was the breadwinner. The move was particularly hard for her. She'd often say that she felt disabled. Here was this woman who was equal to my father in every respect. Yet, in Saudi Arabia, he had to take us everywhere. My mother was stifled by the inability to be as independent as she wanted to be.
What got them through was their jobs teaching in medical school. Their work fulfilled them.

In Why Do They Hate Us?, you wrote about Arab feminists like Salwa el-Husseini and Manal al-Sharif. Since you'd worked with Reuters and covered the Arab Spring, do you think the media ignores women undertaking their own revolutions?
Yes, there's a tendency to focus only on political revolution. Reports from Egypt are all about the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. They barely look at social and sexual revolutions. But such revolutions are necessary for change. The media must start covering these too and stop the obsession with just political upheavals.

You also indicated that all religions impose on women in some way. Wouldn't it make sense for one to consider abandoning religion?
All religions obsess over women's sexuality. But if I were to tell people that atheism would liberate them, who'll listen? That's not the way to help women escape discrimination.

And of course, there are misogynist atheists too.
Totally. Misogyny isn't specific to religion. This what we have to remind each other: it cuts across religion, secularism and atheism. Society acts in such a way that women are given crumbs, and we end up fighting each other for crumbs. Well, I want the whole cake. I don't want crumbs.

My feminism is secular because I'm tired of doing 'my verse vs. your verse'. But I recognise that there are women fighting the feminist fight within religion, and I mention several of them in my book. Whether they're Jewish, Catholic, or Hindu feminists, their work is important, because they strive to change a tradition that has no space for them. They're demanding the right to reinterpret their religion.

So I talk about women like Amina Wadud, the African-American scholar of Islam who, in New York, led people in Friday prayer as an imam. That's unheard of.

We need to be strategic and use our different fights to come together as feminists.

...we can't remain in our little ivory towers or citadels.
Yeah, but when it comes to a woman's 'choice' – and I use the quote marks for a reason – to cover up, whether it's an orthodox Jewish, Muslim, Catholic or any other woman, I'm not obliged to agree just because you're a woman and I'm a woman. I reject the concept of modesty, because it's imposed only on girls and women. So when one says it's her 'choice', I say fine, but I do not believe it's a feminist choice. And here's my question to them: if you say you've chosen to dress this way, can you take off your veil for a few days, then wear it again?

If so, then it's a choice, If not, then you haven't chosen.

I hear you're facing issues releasing Headscarves and Hymens in Arab markets.
My publisher in New York has been trying to release it in Arabic, through partners in the Middle East and Africa, but to no avail. The English edition is available in Egypt, Lebanon, Bahrain, Oman and Jerusalem, but I'd very much like to see Headscarves and Hymens in Arabic. It's necessary for people to read it in Arabic.
My book will be available in Turkish, which I'm very excited about since Turkey has similar cultural and religious problems to the ones I discuss.

In the trifecta of misogyny – in the state, the street and the home – bringing the revolution home is most challenging, isn't it?
Absolutely. Revolution at home, against the Mubarak in the bedroom, is the hardest. Because the Mubaraks of the streets and the Mubaraks of the presidential palaces all head home. Since men act like they own public spaces, women are pushed into the house, believing they'll be safe there. But we're not safe at home. We're not safe anywhere.

When I'm asked what advice I have for young women in abusive families, my advice is: get an education, get a job, get independent. So that if you're unsafe, you have the means to leave. It becomes necessary to do so if there's no shelter, because there can be very little sympathy either from the family or police.

After moving back to Cairo in 2013, I started a support group for women. One of those who inspired me to do so was a 19-year-old who'd come to a feminist discussion I was leading. She asked me if she should run away from home, and I said: 'I can't answer that question for you, but I think you came here knowing the answer'.

The reason she wanted to run away was that she wanted to get rid of her headscarf, but her mother wouldn't let her. And her father was physically abusive. But you know what? That girl did it – she left home and was away for about 4-5 months. But in Egypt, the age of majority is 21, so her family was able to take her back...

...that wouldn't be a nice situation to be in.
The only thing I imagine helps her is another woman who was there at the feminist discussion, who's a lawyer. She specifically helps women who've been physically or sexually assaulted, and is in touch with this girl.

So we have to find each other, create networks of support. The group I created has lawyers, students... in the absence of a state-enabled framework that protects us, we have to protect ourselves.

You've written about how cosmopolitan Egypt was until 1952, which was when dictatorship took hold. Over the decades, dictators have been overthrown, only to be replaced by more dictators...
Gosh, yes. It's like musical chairs.

...so do you believe the Tahrir Square protests were futile, considering President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has passed something like 147 laws without opposition?
Egyptians are exhausted. Egyptians are traumatised. Egyptians have almost lost faith. That's understandable, because it's been a tough stretch since we began the revolution. But revolutions aren't a Facebook event. They're a long process, and you slowly build on whatever progress you make.

We've had over 60 years of either military rule or dictatorships. It will take more than five years to undo 60 years of damage. I was in Hungary a few weeks ago to promote Headscarves and Hymens, and they understood exactly how painful change can be, because they have a living memory of revolution. They had 50 years of communism, and they're still trying to overcome the remnants of totalitarianism.

But I believe we've started something irreversible. Egyptians still live under fascism, still live in a military dictatorship. It's a military dictatorship that offers us only Islamists (the Muslim Brotherhood) as the opposition.

I reject both. I don't want the fascist with the gun, and neither do I want the religious fascist. I want freedom.

We'll continue to play the music chairs between men and men unless we make progress in the social and sexual revolution. Because unless women are free, nobody will be free.