By Mona Eltahawy

NEW YORK — Madonna, this is a bit late because I was caught up writing a piece protesting the absence of Saudi women from the Olympics. I thought you’d understand.

I actually first “met” you in Saudi Arabia. It was 1984 in Jeddah, on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. Your first single “Holiday” came on a school bus radio as my high school friends and I were heading to a shopping mall to pick out clothes for our graduation. Our private school for the children of Muslim and Arab expatriates in Jeddah ended at 10th grade.

It was an impossibly cheery song for desperately miserable me. My family, originally from Egypt, moved to Saudi Arabia in 1982 after almost eight years in the UK. Can you imagine being a 15-year old girl moving from the UK to Saudi Arabia?

But up you popped tantalizing me with a combination of provocation and fun at a sad and lonely time.

In those early years, it seemed the only thing we had in common was your determination to strip and my determination to hide under layers of clothing. I started wearing hijab, or a headscarf, at 16 — shortly before my “Holiday” moment on the bus. I stopped wearing hijab nine years later, but at 16, I wasn’t one of the millions of girls perfecting your stringed-tank-top-and-mini-skirt look complete with the plastic bangles in the colors of the rainbow, circa “Lucky Star.”

You’d be surprised at how “modest” your album covers looked once the censor got his ink working to black out your bare mid-riff, arms and legs — just as he did with pictures of women in the foreign magazines and newspapers that made it into the Kingdom.

I became a feminist in Saudi Arabia, Mads, and our exceedingly at odds wardrobes united us in that feminism because I learned that you and I — back then at least — were two sides of one coin. You chose to reveal what you wanted in the name of feminism and I concealed what I wanted in that same name. And who would dare to say one was more feminist than the other?

I had some doubts about just how empowering your increasingly sexualized look was but it made me understand how difficult my wardrobe — which back then covered all my body except for my face and hands — could be for those from a western background to understand as something I felt empowered me.

We might’ve been two sides of one coin but we parted ways on “Like a Virgin”, my least favorite of your songs. When you sang that a relationship was so good it felt like being “touched for the very first time,” it was subversive for where you came from because you most certainly weren’t a virgin.

But I wasn’t “like a virgin” back then. I was a virgin as was expected of and taught to all girls my age. And so the song just reinforced, not toppled, mainstream ideology. And I’d much rather associate you challenging not reinforcing that mainstream.

I appreciated you even more, Madonna, when I became a journalist soon after I returned to my country of birth, Egypt, at the age of 21. Journalism is still a male-dominated field and watching you torpedo your way through the testosterone-heavy worlds of music and business was and remains inspiring — especially since I switched from the objectivity of news (and the relative safety of reporting the views of others) to opinion writing and expressing my own views.

Most would probably think of “Express Yourself” as the anthem to opinion writing but it’s “Human Nature” that best encapsulates the dangers of expressing your opinion, especially as a woman.

You might’ve written it about sexual fantasies but these lines resonate nonetheless:

You wouldn’t let me say the words I longed to say/
You didn’t want to see life through my eyes/
You tried to shove me back inside your narrow room/
And silence me with bitterness and lies.

I’m not the only Muslim Girl sending you birthday wishes by the way. My Saudi friend Muna, 35, a beautiful television presenter and icon in her own right, wanted to say a few words too when she heard I was getting ready to write to you.

“Madonna represented so many things. A woman who seemed to take control of her life, to get what she wanted, to play the game like a guy, to enjoy every part — except perhaps for her marriage to Sean Penn — who I hold in high esteem,” she told me in an email.

How apropos that you turned 50 on the day that 41-year old U.S. swimmer Dara Torres won a silver medal in the 50m freestyle in Beijing. I’m Dara’s age and when I look around at today’s one-named starlets — the Rihannas and the Fergies — I know how she must’ve felt in that pool: a 25-year old on my right and a 16-year old to my left. Go Dara! Your silver is golden to me.

I told Muna that your fabulous body inspires me at the gym, Madonna, but that your arms scare me just a bit.

“To have that butt at that age, you gotta have those arms,” Muna sagely explained. “Just the way it works.”

Talking of scary body parts — have you seen Dara’s abs?

Happy Birthday, Madonna!

Copyright ©2008 Mona Eltahawy – distributed by Agence Global

Rights & Permissions Contact:
Agence Global, rights@agenceglobal.com 1.336.686.9002, or 1.212.731.0757

Wednesday’s The Washington Post has an editorial on Saudi women and the Olympics that quotes from my oped last week. Here’s hoping it brings about some good - at least embarass the Saudi authorities and the IOC.

Olympic Embarrassment
Saudi Arabia’s Olympic team has no women.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A14

“THE PRACTICE of sport is a human right.” So proudly affirms the International Olympic Committee in Principle 4 of the “Fundamental Principles of Olympism.” “Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit.” And Principle 5 makes explicit that discrimination based on gender “is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.” So what is an all-male Saudi team doing in Beijing?

” It’s not as if there are no women from majority-Muslim countries competing in the Beijing Games. As Mona Eltahawy pointed out in an opinion piece last week, Algeria, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have women on their teams. In fact, Bahrain and the UAE even allowed women to carry their national flags. So the problem is not Islam but clerics and weak-willed potentates who would twist the Koran to stunt the skills and abilities of women who would love to compete against the world’s best athletes. Brunei is the other Muslim country that does not allow women to play sports.

The IOC talks a good game about wanting women to participate in sports and compete in the Olympics. Its Web site has multiple tabs championing women in sports. But Ms. Eltahawy was right about how the IOC could show that it means what it says. “If Saudi Arabia won’t put women on the team,” she wrote, “then tell them not to bother showing up at the London Olympics in 2012.” We agree. If the IOC develops a backbone and puts some power behind its lofty words, it will do just that.

By Mona Eltahawy

NEW YORK — As an Egyptian whose country’s military dictators are either taken by God or an assassin’s bullet, I envy the Pakistani people their ability to now use the term “former president.”

As former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf contemplates how his friends in the U.S. administration dropped him quicker than you can say “hot freedom fries,” for those of us from the Muslim world — awash in military dictators who have friends in high places in Washington — his exit from Pakistan’s frenetic political stage is miraculous.

The naysayers will remind us of all the “ifs” and “buts” that remain for Pakistan. For starters, Musharraf’s two main rivals, who engineered the threatened impeachment elbowing him towards resignation — Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari — are nowhere near perfect leaders, especially since the only factor uniting them is now contemplating the real estate of exile sites in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Sharif — the former prime minister swept aside by Musharraf’s bloodless 1999 coup — was himself in exile until last year when he returned home vowing political revenge. He wants to try Musharraf for treason. Meanwhile, Zardari, the widow of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has taken a more conciliatory line.

They might disagree on Musharraf’s future, but what they do have in common is ignominious histories of corruption — a reminder that dictators like Musharraf are experts at stifling the life out of their country’s politics, and leaving poor alternatives to their rules by coup d’état.

We will be reminded that the Taliban and al-Qaeda and all those other scary figures Musharraf dutifully fought as part of his card-carrying membership in the ‘war on terror’ are now celebrating in every cave that straddles Pakistan’s troubled border with Afghanistan.

Last year, militant friends of the newly insurgent Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies slaughtered hundreds of Pakistanis in waves of suicide bombings across the country. But much like his fellow Muslim dictators befriended by Washington, Musharraf just perfected his technique of using them as Islamist boogeymen.

My country’s President Hosni Mubarak points to the Muslim Brotherhood. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas points to Hamas. But neither can beat having Osama bin Laden allegedly hiding somewhere in his country!

Although he presented himself as a secular leader, Musharraf gave free rein to those same Islamists that he was warning the West about, because they were a foil to Pakistan’s vibrant liberal community.

It’s unclear who will become Pakistan’s next president but there’s no doubt that the ruling coalition’s challenges are many, now that Musharraf is out of the picture: fighting inflation, reducing the gap between rich and poor, and continuing to fight militancy in the nuclear-armed country. For Pakistan, politics has been a rollercoaster ride since its birth in 1947, as a partition from India.

But let’s stop for a moment and appreciate what has just happened in Pakistan: The Constitution and the justice system of a Muslim country were about to impeach a sitting president who was once head of the armed forces. Rather than face such accountability, that president resigned.

To further put Pakistan’s achievement in context consider that had he insisted on fighting impeachment, Musharraf faced charges of violating the constitution and gross misconduct. Why?

Because he imposed six weeks of emergency rule and fired dozens of judges last November, when the Supreme Court met to decide his eligibility to stand for re-election for a third term as president while still army chief.

Egypt has lived under emergency rule for each and every one of Mubarak’s four terms in power straddling 26 years. In 2006, his regime showed a similar allergy to an independent judiciary. Mubarak’s regime disciplined two senior judges and arrested and beat dozens of their supporters when the judges had the temerity to press for an inquiry into electoral fraud during the 2005 parliamentary elections which Mubarak’s party swept. The elections were marred by violence, several deaths, and plenty of intimidation.

Just like Musharraf, Mubarak recognized the dangers of an independent judiciary — which in many Muslim countries constitutes the most potent secular opposition. But don’t hold your breath for Mubarak’s impeachment any time soon.

“Let’s hope we can learn from this in Egypt,” my dad told me as we discussed Musharraf’s resignation. “It will tell our dictators ‘you are not more powerful than the people’.”

It will also signal to our various dictators that no matter how tight you are with Washington, no matter how well you have managed to persuade your American friends that you’re the only thing that stands between them and Islamist lunatics, they will look away when your people have had it with you.

For years Pakistan has been home to much that ails the Muslim world — coups, dictatorship, militancy, and corruption. Let’s recognize it now as home to judges and lawyers who won their stare-down with the dictator.

And let’s remind Sharif, Zardari and whoever becomes Pakistan’s next president:

“Hey, those same judges and lawyers against whom Musharraf foolishly picked a fight and lost are there keeping an eye on you, too.”

To the people of Pakistan — I salute you!

Copyright ©2008 Mona Eltahawy – distributed by Agence Global

Rights & Permissions Contact:
Agence Global, rights@agenceglobal.com 1.336.686.9002, or 1.212.731.0757

On today’s “Meet the Press”, David Gregory asked U.S. Sec. of State Condoleezza about Saudi women and the Olympics. Here’s the exchange from the transcript provided on the show’s website:

MR. GREGORY: Secretary Rice, before I let you go, all of us here in America and around the world are watching the Olympic Games.

SEC’Y RICE: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: Here’s a picture of Saudi Arabia’s flag bearer as it parades in front of the delegation for these games and you’ll notice no women and that’s because Saudi Arabia does not allow women to compete in their Olympic Games. As an element of the freedom agenda of this administration here in 2008, how do you react to that?

SEC’Y RICE: Well, look, I think Saudi women ought to be able to participate. I’ve said Saudi women ought to be able to vote and I think that when, when woman can vote and they’re empowered, you’re going to see them in the games, but I would also note that if women wish to participate in Afghanistan’s team, they can. If women wish to participate in Iraq’s team, they can. That in most of the Middle East now, women athletes are participating. Those are positive developments. But certainly, I look forward to the day that there’s a Saudi woman athlete in that parade.

I was interviewed by The Washington Post for a story about veils and harassment in Egypt. I told the paper’s Cairo correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer what I told Al Masry Al Youm - the more women veil, the less men learn to behave responsibly and decently.

She spoke to Egyptian women and men and interviewed Nehad Abu Komsan of the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights. The centre released a survey recently on sexual harassment in Egypt that showed a clear majority of Egyptian and foreign women are harassed and that it had nothing to do with the way a woman dresses, despite what most Egyptian men and women said.

This was heartbreaking:

“Anecdotes told by the women who were surveyed portrayed women choosing to give up jobs and education because of harassment, Komsan said. She presented Egyptian news media with the case of a 14-year-old girl who stopped going to school because of the harassment she suffered on a public bus during the daily trips to school and back. The girl’s father had come to the women’s rights center, seeking help in getting his daughter back to class.”

When will Egypt finally pass legislation against sexual harassment?