By Mona Eltahawy The Washington Post Do you hear the silence from the Arab world over events in Iran? Let’s start with Arab leaders, who are experts at vote rigging — if they hold elections at all. What could they possibly say about the Iranian election, or the allegations of vote fraud, without sounding hypocritical? [...]

By Mona Eltahawy June 17, 2009 Toronto Globe and Mail If Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was visiting your country and asked to meet 700 women, apparently as part of his mission to “save European women,” what would you do? Instead of telling him to save Libya’s own women first, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – [...]

By Mona Eltahawy Huffington Post NEW YORK — When President Barack Obama said he wanted to address women’s rights during his speech to Muslims last week, I said a prayer to the God of the Torah, the Bible and the Quran: please don’t let him fall into the trap of headscarves and hymens. The conversation [...]

By Mona Eltahawy June 5, 2009 Patheos.com Do you remember the bit in Barack Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention when he said “If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process that threatens my civil liberties.”? Of course you do. Well, that was the start of what [...]

I was on KCRW’s To the Point talking about Obama’s speech and Muslim women’s rights. I start at 21:02 mins. Other guests were: * Alyse Nelson: President and CEO, Vital Voices Global Partnership * Haseeb Humayoon: co-author of a New York Times editorial * Nisha Varia: Deputy Director of the Women’s Rights Division, Human Rights [...]

By Mona Eltahawy Metro George Bush could never have pulled it off. Give a speech that comfortably hopscotched between hot potato subjects, deftly shift from self-criticism to demanding the same of his audience and get at least 30 applause breaks from a mostly Muslim audience in Cairo, Egypt? Not in a million years. How ironic [...]

I am honoured to report that on June 2, 2009, in Beirut, Lebanon, I won the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press for opinion writing for my oped on racism in the Arab world. Lebanese journalist Carole Kerbage won the award for investigative journalism for an article she wrote on prostitution in Lebanon. [...]

By Mona Eltahawy International Herald Tribune NEW YORK — It’s wonderful to see the power of women put the fear of God into countries. At least that’s how I like to explain Saudi Arabia’s decision to delay municipal elections for two years. It’s all Kuwait’s fault. Kuwaiti women, to be precise, four of whom made [...]