Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
By Mona Eltahawy
Toronto Star
NEW YORK—As if further proof were needed of the intellectual as well as physical cave Al Qaeda inhabits, their new online magazine “Al Shamikha” (Majestic Woman) is the latest reminder.
As women and men, passionate for freedom and dignity, fuel uprisings and revolutions that are sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa, one wonders who wants to read that a “Majestic Woman” does not “go out except when necessary” and that she always wears a face-covering niqab for protection from the sun. Call it SPF:Niqab.
What a laughable idea when you see a photograph of a woman in niqab hugging a Coptic priest in Cairo during the Egyptian revolution that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. Try telling her or any of the other women in headscarves and those women not wearing any kinds of veil that they shouldn’t “go out except when necessary”. They would laugh at you and remind you that they marched and chanted alongside men in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemeni and most recently Gaza, the West Bank and Syria.
With such a breathtaking display of women and men power, surely Al Qaeda realizes the market — albeit the literally radical fashion niche one — is shrinking by the minute.
Al Qaeda espouses an ultra-orthodox interpretation of Islam which extols “out of sight and voiceless” as its ethos for women because it considers a woman’s face and voice objects of desire to be covered and silenced. Otherwise, the group steadfastly ignored women until it became convenient to recruit them to blow themselves and others to pieces in Iraq and elsewhere where the head-to-toe covering could get them into places men fitted with a suicide belt could not.
How on earth, one wonders, could its magazine marry such an ideology with the flipped-on-its head brew of women’s magazines: fashion, sex and starvation?
Getting a man is still the goal. The right man for a “Majestic Woman” is of course a “mujahid” (warrior in the name of Islam). In one interview, a woman extols her glorious marriage to a jihad fighter who was killed and how she broke the happy news to her children.
Flipping through its online pages, I couldn’t help but think one has to have been living under a rock inside that cave to think Al Shamikha’s market is anything but a quickly shrinking one. Al Qaeda and its message that only violence can bring about change is irrelevant. The role models for millions of young women and men — not just Muslims but all across the world — are those revolutionaries in Egypt who showed how non-violence could end decades of a dictator’s rule in just 18 days.
Look no further than Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world where Al Qaeda does have a presence. The truly “Majestic Woman” is Tawakul Karaman. Dubbed one of Time magazine’s “16 of History’s Most Rebellious Women,” she was the first Yemeni female journalist to remove her face veil on the job. As chair of Women Journalists without Chains, she defends human rights and freedom of expression and has been protesting outside of Sanaa University every Tuesday since 2007.
Her goal — and the uprising that she helped to start on Feb. 10 after a boost of inspiration from Tunisia and Egypt — is to end the rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power since 1978. Karaman has been jailed several times, including just days before the start of the uprising.
Who do you think young Muslim women are most drawn to? Al Qaeda’s out-of-sight “Majestic Woman: or a woman whose fierce majesty (Yemeni friends love to share videos of Karaman leading protests with her chants) poses one of the most serious challenges to a dictator in 33 years?
Comments (10)
Jan Doggen said:
It is very unlikely that these ‘glorious women’ have access to the internet.
It makes me wonder if they are the target audience. Then who are the readers they aim at?
March 17th, 2011, 3:27 am
Jumana Husseini said:
Just a side note. I want to urge you to use ‘Palestine’ instead of ‘West Bank’. WB is a technical term, lacking national character and history. Its bad enough that we have accepted that it now only refers to 23% of the original country. Yet a big part of the current struggle is to uphold the natural and historic identity of what is left.
March 17th, 2011, 3:34 pm
Ashraf Ezzat said:
Ms Eltahawy ,
I follow and admire your writings about the Arab world and the Arab uprisings, but i wished you didn’t buy into the CIA/Mossad created myth of al Qaeda, my dear al Qaeda simply doesn’t exist, we in the arab world do not have and certainly not familiar with any such terrorist group.
We might have some extreme Islamists in Egypt and in the Arab world but certainly not al Qaeda-style.
Still your article is exquisitely insightful.
.. at your leisure, take a look at my article about Arab uprisings & al Qaeda myth
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/03/13/arab-uprisings-time-for-all-to-quit-playing-al-qaeda-card/
March 18th, 2011, 8:16 am
Mona Eltahawy Blog » Archives » Revolutionary Woman vs Burqa Woman « Yahyasheikho786's Blog said:
[...] Mona Eltahawy Blog » Archives » Revolutionary Woman vs Burqa Woman. [...]
March 19th, 2011, 9:36 am
Noussa said:
Hello
Love your blog! Keep up the good work!
About the ‘Majestuous Women, I think that although yes I agree with you Karaman is one of a beautiful model, but the thing he is that we are too binar: either a submitted under burqa, either a strong active woman… most of us are average people, and we need to identify to average people: extremely strong minded men and women seem sometimes too “perfect” to us so be able to identify…
March 20th, 2011, 5:56 pm
Chuckterzella said:
Mona- I’ve been following your tweets for awhile now…
You are fast becoming one of my heros. Thanks for all the insights
Into the Middle East. I used to think Twitter was just a useless waste of time, but It’s truly amazing to listen to what the people think, not their governments. The Middle East is still a mystery to me in a lot of ways, but I’ve been reading things from people I’ve never met in a culture I never knew that I’d like to just sit down and spend time talking to. We’re not so different after all. Anyway, thanks again
March 26th, 2011, 8:30 pm
Paul Doolan said:
Well said. I will be using this with my Global Issues class today. Keep up your important and fanstastic work Mona.
April 4th, 2011, 3:00 pm
A Yemeniya’s Response to Mona Eltahawy « A Yemeniya's Corner said:
[...] with Al Qaeda, or before it became as Mona El Tahawy says in her article in the Toronto Star “Revolutionary Woman vs. Burqa Woman” “the poorest country in the Arab world where Al Qaeda does have a presence.” With over a [...]
April 20th, 2011, 10:24 pm
A Yemeniya’s Response to Mona Eltahawy « Lamya's Corner said:
[...] with Al Qaeda, or before it became as Mona El Tahawy says in her article in the Toronto Star “Revolutionary Woman vs. Burqa Woman” “the poorest country in the Arab world where Al Qaeda does have a presence.” With over a [...]
April 21st, 2011, 6:59 am
mostafa abbas said:
it’s 24 hours know I’am trying to dig deep into your mind not just because we are sharing the same birth date but also most of the way of thinking and here is some of our little bit controversies. in that video of hebah ahmed “i understand mona does not like it or does not want to wear it personaly but she keeps talking about her own feelings about it and she want to use the law to support it” you do have to accept here version just like you want here to accept you
so i see that heba is right by the way i am a 21 years old just graduated from a regional abased university not the A.U.C my ideas are still purely liberal and 100% with human rights which is one of them is how to dress.THEN i can’t just make sense of these you said”but i can not sacrifice muslim women’s rights in order to uphold the muslim right wing which i beleave they’re misogynist”that mean you should support such law in saudia arabia not in france ” a women can tell her husband or any male relative who is forcing here to dress like this law says i don’t have to dress like this she confound you and you got to reconsider about it who give you the right to protect here from here own decision? hebah asks not me watch these http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c7_-QE8Lx8&NR=1
and you will be totally Welcomed if you accepted my little bit criticism a haa you stop loging into BARE NAKED ISLAM SITE and you will be just fine BUT THAT I’VE LIKED ALL YOUR OTHER OPINIONS AND THOUGHTS and finally we are humans we do got multiple differences but we share humanity. ACCEPTANCE WE NEED.
October 2nd, 2011, 3:41 pm
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