Sexual harassment in Egypt : how the case is so different

[WinterHold]

Hello guys.

As I spent 4 years in Egypt, I always suffered from a deep feeling of weirdness when it comes to women..something is very wrong.
From attitudes to reactions, both genders display that behavior.

It was the first thing I noticed, is the dominating culture of "she deserves it ; she was wearing this or that", men would commit all types of harassments but they would throw it & blame it on the woman eventually.

Women would usually cover up the harassment no matter what the aftermath is ; to Egyptian society women are always wrong -it is real ; I saw it-, believe it or not even if you defend the girl, she will probably put blame on you too.

As a foreigner male, I suffered from abuse (being the outsider who came here to rob egypt out of its women ; the same racist culture that spread in nationalist states), but it doesn't compare to the native women, or any woman coming here. Western women are amongst the easy targets since most don't understand arabic. In Egypt (and all of the Arab world) white skin = beauty. A racist & self hating culture that spread in the Middle East after the British/French/Turkish occupations. The whiter a woman, the more easy for her to get harassed and probably raped.

I always thought this is not Islamic or due to Islam ; these are the native cultures of the region, displaying their true color after the economical situation turning to shit. Egyptians are as far away from Islam as anybody else, the following documentary literally shows you how the society is.





Sexual harassment is only ONE problem..the Middle East covers disasters that nobody know anything about. Arab culture -especially Egyptian culture- have a hypocritical feature of hiding the truth no matter what, if it ever carries a negative thing. Most Egyptians in the west would tell you that Egypt is god's heaven on earth, and that these harassments are minimal. Arab culture dictates for its followers to hide the truth, it's even a famous motto engraved in our cultures ; usually the old folks taught us :

داري على شمعتك تقيد.
Translated to : cover your candle, it shall ignite more.

Though wouldn't be an exception, that the candle started to burn me ???

[Minimalist]

See what happens when too many people believe those angry desert god religions?

[CapnAwesome]

Yeah, Egypt I believe is rated the very worst country for a woman to travel alone in. But much of the rest of the middle east is the same. I don't know how you can claim that it doesn't have anything to do with Islam though, when the countries that treat women the worst are almost all Islamic countries. I guess you could claim that it's a coincidence that the cultures that treat women the worst happen to be Islamic, but even under this very most rosy of glass lenses you can only say that Islam certainly isn't making things better.

[WinterHold]

See what happens when too many people believe those angry desert god religions?

I couldn't see a direct link to islam. Instead it was mainly an "honor" thing.

CapnAwesome

The Muslim world is still stuck & drenched in an ancient cage, because simply the Ottoman Empire lost the last wars, along with its colonies siding with the west, to go through the humiliating cake-slicing of Sykes & Picot agreement.

What I'm saying is, Egypt in the 50s & the 60s was something else ; it wasn't like this. Turkey, another Muslim country, doesn't share this same culture. Malaysia is the same case.

Once you screw a region economically, the true colors of the culture would show up, along with any hideous cultural background. And again, you'll find countries like Tunisia, which escaped the fate of Egypt & other Arab countries.

I say, the more a country had a history of warfare that ended up with "defeats" & economical collapses, the more that country would evolve into something nasty.

South america has similar examples -even more brutal at some cases-.

[Cato]

I couldn't see a direct link to islam. Instead it was mainly an "honor" thing.

Arguments like this are always tedious, claiming Islam has nothing to do with a certain behavior because it isn't specifically prescribed in the Quran. I say Quran because it is also typical with this argument to erroneously claim that the hadiths and Sharia are somehow not Islamic. This is done because there is no denying the misogynistic nature of the hadiths and Sharia.

Islam is so intertwined in all facets of life in most predominantly Muslim nations that the distinction between religion and culture is hardly discernable. The fact that Islam is incapable of deterring this type of behavior is enough to indict Islam for complicity.

People trying to save Islam from it's wretched treatment of women always invoke Turkey as an argument and fail to consider that Turkey is as close as one gets to a separation of church and state in the Muslim world. Pointing to a society that intentionally keeps Islam at arm's length could hardly be a vote of confidence for Islam.

[Zenith]

I couldn't see a direct link to islam. Instead it was mainly an "honor" thing.

CapnAwesome

The Muslim world is still stuck & drenched in an ancient cage, because simply the Ottoman Empire lost the last wars, along with its colonies siding with the west, to go through the humiliating cake-slicing of Sykes & Picot agreement.

What I'm saying is, Egypt in the 50s & the 60s was something else ; it wasn't like this. Turkey, another Muslim country, doesn't share this same culture. Malaysia is the same case.

Once you screw a region economically, the true colors of the culture would show up, along with any hideous cultural background. And again, you'll find countries like Tunisia, which escaped the fate of Egypt & other Arab countries.

I say, the more a country had a history of warfare that ended up with "defeats" & economical collapses, the more that country would evolve into something nasty.

South america has similar examples -even more brutal at some cases-.

AtlasS2, let me tell you what I believe is utterly wrong with Islam and how Islam is as evil as Egypt is: Whenever there is something evil being done, neither me nor, I think, anybody else, sees representatives of Islam, neither within Egypt, nor throughout the world ACCUSING the bad culture in Egypt. Everywhere the imams and whatever high officials, make themselves accomplices to the atrocities committed by others (here, by egyptians) by NOT TAKING ANY ACT against them. Instead, they ally themselves with all those wicked people, because they share the same religion and share the same objectives (increase the number of muslims; increase confidence in Islam and its representatives) - so all this evil that is being done in Egypt and many other countries simply becomes low priority to them. If they had shown to the whole wide world what bad things other muslims do, it would have stained the names of the muslims, but it would have been a righteous deed.

I do not believe countries like Iraq, Iran, Syria and others stand so poorly because of economic failure after the 1st world war. Come on, look how much European countries had been DEVASTATED by the 2nd world war. The problem is the mentality and education. All countries in the world that used to be colonies have turned into anarchy & civil wars after they obtained their freedom (from the colonists). I believe quite in all cases it was so bad that it would have been better for them if the Western countries had never left them free. The problem was that people were not ready to govern themselves; they lacked institutions (or, good institutions) that any civilized country has; instead of education they knew only to obey the rulers (some kind of dictatorship), so they can't live by democracy. And no, the teachings of Islam did not help them.

And Islam here proves that it is NOT a religion given by a God: If it were, it would have pushed a country with big problems into civilization, instead of making muslims justify that the religion they all follow has nothing to do with it. The same happened (and still happens) with Christianity: It was not Christianity what pushed the countries into better civilizations; instead, it was the secular ideologies what modernized Christianity.

[Faith No More]

Just because the Quran does not specifically dictate something does not mean that Islam isn't resposonsible for creating the social mindset that led to this kind of treatment. You can only preach so much that women are second class citizens before people take that to an extreme.

[You_remember]

See what happens when too many people believe those angry desert god religions?

lmaoooo ur funny man