Archive for July, 2010


Death of a Hero

By Mona Eltahawy The Jerusalem Report Aug. 16, 2010 The world is a lonelier place when we lose a hero. When I learned of Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid’s passing on July 5, my tears mourned the loss of a man who spent the past 14 years exiled from his beloved Egypt because his courageous work [...]


Burqa Blowout

I was on Russia Today’s “Crosstalk” to discuss bans on face veils with Myriam Francois-Cerrah, of the Oxford Islamic Society, and Sihem Habchi, president of Ni Putes Ni Soumises. Another Muslim woman (who works with the French businessman who has offered to set up a fund to pay fines incurred by women who wear niqab) [...]


The View From Behind the Niqab

I was on Boston’s NPR affiliate WBUR to discuss face veils with Heba Ahmed, an Egyptian-American woman who wears the niqab. We’re on at 5 – 20 mins.


BBC Newsnight: Should the Niqab be Banned?

Tariq Ramadan, Nigel Farrage and I discussed a ban on the niqab on BBC TV’s Newsnight.


From liberals and feminists, unsettling silence on rending the Muslim veil

By Mona Eltahawy Saturday, July 17, 2010; A13 The French parliament’s vote this week to ban full-length veils in public was the right move by the wrong group. Some have tried to present the ban as a matter of Islam vs. the West. It is not. First, Islam is not monolithic. It, like other major [...]


Radio appearances on France/Face Veils

I was on Tuesday’s edition of the Dave Ross Show talking about France and the ban on face veils and on BBC Radio 4′s Moral Maze to discuss the same issue with the panel.


In Defense of a Burqa/Niqab Ban

Broadsheet, the women’s issues blog on Salon, interviewed me about why I support a ban on the face veil.


Egypt Police Brutality Prompts Facebook/Twitter/YouTube Protests

Here’s a video essay I recorded for Time.com on the police beating death of Khaled Said and Generation Mubarak/Generation Facebook.


Nasr Abu Zeid: “We’re stuck between the rock of the state and the hard place of fundamentalists.”

One of my favourite pieces that I wrote for the Guardian in 1999 on how Islamists increasingly took to the courts to silence liberals in the Arab world,, often with the tacit approval of the state. Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid and his wife Ebtihal Younis – who they infamously tried to separate – were two [...]


A Farewell to Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid, RIP

Liberal Muslim scholar Dr. Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid died on July 5, 2010. He was one of my heroes. Till I write a column honouring his work, I am reposting some articles I wrote about him over the past decade and a half. Egypt court rules “apostate” academic must divorce. By Mona Eltahawy 5 August [...]