Egyptian - Journalist | August 1, 1967 -
My family moved to Saudi Arabia from Glasgow when I was 15. Being a 15-year-old girl anywhere is difficult - all those hormones and everything - but being a 15-year-old girl in Saudi Arabia... it was like someone had turned the light off in my head. I could not get a grasp on why women were treated like this.
Mona Eltahawy
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In the U.K., my mother had been the breadwinner. I'd seen my parents side by side. In Saudi Arabia, my mother was basically rendered disabled. She was unable to drive, dependent on my dad for everything. The religious zealotry was so suffocating.
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As a woman in Saudi Arabia, you have one of two options. You either lose your mind - which at first happened to me because I fell into a deep depression - or you become a feminist.
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All religions, if you shrink them down, are all about controlling women's sexuality.
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The religious fundamentalists of the Republican party are a mirror image of the religious fundamentalists of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
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I like to call the Republicans the Christian Brotherhood of the U.S. so that my fellow Americans recognise the line that connects their mix of religion and politics with their Muslim equivalent in Egypt.
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Nothing protects women from the patriarchy of military regimes.
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It was precisely my love of the First Amendment that made me join sidewalk activists in 2010 to support an Islamic community center's right to open in Lower Manhattan.
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Banning hate speech doesn't end racism or antisemitism. Social pressure does that. It becomes socially unacceptable.
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Too many on the Left are earnest about nothing at all, sadly. They've been rendered spineless by snarkiness - not least on Twitter.
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The Right is incredibly deft at getting earnest about all the wrong things.
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As a U.S. citizen, I cherish the First Amendment.
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