The Veiled Man

Soraya Hoppe: Magdy, we stumbled across this picture of yours. What was this about?

Magdy Abdelraheem: I guess you mean the photo of me in a veil. One winter evening a couple of years ago I was enjoying a family gathering with my mother and sister. I donned one of my sister’s veils out of curiosity, just to see how I would look in it, and my sister took the picture. I posted it on my Facebook page for fun. Then one of my friends, Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, started the Veiled Men Campaign, which brings us to the subject of your next question.

Recently a group called “Echoing Screams”, against sexism and oppression, has called on men to wear the veil in solidarity with women. You promptly posted a picture of yourself – bearded and veiled. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got involved in this campaign.

Well, I have known Aliaa for a few years now. We first met on Facebook on some gender equality activism page. We had lots of ideas and views in common regarding gender equality and women’s rights in the Middle East. Recently she started the Veiled Men Campaign and reminded me of my veil-photo. She asked me to post it on her page and I gladly did, right away.

What motivated you to act?

Many reasons. I will try to summarize them in the following points:

Sarcasm. It is the secret weapon of Egyptian culture. In Egypt, if you want to attack something, make fun of it. Show the people how silly and meaningless it is. Egyptians are well known for their sense of humor. So far, tons of jokes have appeared about Mubarak and his supporters, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the Muslim Brotherhood, politicians and even religious figures. Egyptians simply cannot stop laughing.

Belief. I strongly believe in total equality between men and women in every single aspect of life. While the Egyptian society pretends to believe in it as well, the opposite is the bitter truth. Everyone says it is a matter of personal freedom for a girl to decide whether or not to cover her head. On the other hand girls are being pressured to wear the veil in so many ways, be it through the parents, the brother or the boyfriend, through the media, through religious scholars making up stories about the horrible things that happen to non-veiled women in the afterlife.

When a girl thinks she really is free to decide what to wear and what to cover, once she decides to take off the veil, the doors of hell are thrown open on her. Often, she will be beaten by her father or other male family members. Her family may boycott her and our society will regard her as a “slut”. Only in very rare cases will the family leave this matter entirely to the girl and respect her freedom of choice. I don’t believe in the term “slut” by the way, which is used to defame women, specifically. A sexually active woman is no different from a sexually active man, and either both or neither deserve the term.

Stupidity. I hate it when women are objectified as sexual objects. The idea that women are a piece of candy that should be kept wrapped, waiting to be unwrapped by its “legal” owner, is a Stone Age myth, and it really makes me angry. What angers me more are women who defend this stupid idea and believe that God really wants them to live their entire life as second class humans.

Lack of local male support. I wanted to give Aliaa's campaign extra weight with my photo as an Egyptian male, because it is very hard to find one who will agree to cover his head like a woman. Egyptian mentality considers it shameful.

How did people react?

People were shocked to see an Egyptian man unashamed to take and share such pictures. Many laughed outright, and I received many “likes”, friend requests and subscribers on Facebook (mainly from western people). Quite a few western men posted veil-portraits of themselves in solidarity with women. And a European radio and a magazine conducted a similar interview to this one with me.

It seems as though since the beginning of the “Arab Spring” civil movements and campaigns great and small have been rising everywhere, ranging from religious, political, civil, socio-cultural even to environmental campaigns. What are your thoughts on this?

The major barrier which the Arab Spring has broken is the barrier of fear. People are no longer afraid to think out loud and freely express themselves in terms of social interests. I personally think that all of those movements form a healthy change in the Arab and Middle Eastern mentalities. The only thing to fear are that the Islamists might disregard what has been achieved for civilian rights so far. Iran’s example clearly shows, it was a youth rebellion against the corruption of their regime, but when they succeeded in taking down the regime, the Islamists took over – everybody can now see the state of Iran for themselves. I urge our people to use their minds and avoid the mistakes others have made, which may turn our country into a religiously deformed state.

Would you say that campaigns such as “Echoing Screams” are a direct reaction to the current political situation in Egypt, the Middle East and North Africa?

Not at all. In my opinion, Echoing Screams has nothing to do with politics or political changes in Egypt. It is a direct response to the social hypocrisy, oppression, and discrimination against women in Egyptian society. As I know Aliaa, she would have started this campaign regardless of the political situation in Egypt or the region.

The main aim of her campaign is to show the world that half of our society lives with tremendous social injustice simply because they are women. When a pervert harasses a woman on the street, she is accused of not wearing decent clothing – even if she is completely covered. When a girl is raped, they blame her for seducing the pervert. A couple of weeks ago, the military police savagely beat a female protestor in Downtown Cairo, ripping off her clothes on the street in front of many cameras. Guess how the majority of people reacted? They blamed her for not having worn ‘decent’ underwear. Can you imagine?

This is not Egypt. Egypt has never before been at this level of moral recession. In the first half of the 20th century it was a place of culture, elegance and tolerance. People were liberal. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Bahai and atheists lived together and treated each other with mutual respect. As we hear from older people and as the films of the time show us, young women wore bikinis to the swimming pools and beaches, and no one dared harass them. Now things are different. It began in the early 1970s and 1980s, when waves of poor and often uneducated Egyptians went to Saudi Arabia to work. They returned with their savings and the Wahhabi ideology.

Over the decades, Wahhabi scholars have managed to convince thousands of Egyptians that they have been living in sin all this time, and that to be on God’s path they must follow Wahhabi teachings. The majority of Egyptian women are now veiled, but the number of rape incidents and occurrences of sexual harassment are higher than ever. People pretend to be conservative Muslims, and yet they lie, harass, rape, cheat on their wives, steal and accept bribes. Egypt has become a socio-beast, and we have to fight this beast to restore our identity and to be able to raise our children in a safe, just, and wholesome society.

Do these campaigns have a greater chance to be heard now?

Of course they do. Or, let’s just hope so. What Egypt really needs now is a moral revolution, before a political one. This doesn‘t mean that I don’t support the Tahrir protestors. I do support them and I stand against the corruption of Mubarak, the SCAF and their regime. But you don’t chant for freedom while you’re on the streets and then deny that freedom to your female family members at home. You cannot be a “partial” believer. Either you believe in, and fight for, freedom, or you don’t. It’s as simple as that.

Was this a one-off or will we be seeing more activism in support of women from you?

Look, I have a sister. Soon I will have a girlfriend, who will eventually become my wife. If we are going to have kids, there will probably be girls too, who will grow up and have to deal with this society. I have to ensure that these females enjoy their full rights as human beings, and that they will not be discriminated against because of their gender.

As long as young brides are killed in their wedding nights for not being virgins, as long as those shameful myths of nuptial deflowering circulate the neighborhood, as long as young girls are pressured to wear the veil, as long as women are oppressed and called names because they smoke or laugh loudly or because of what they choose to wear, where they chose to go, or when they chose to come home, and as long as a mother’s genitalia remain the most popular curse phrase, I will continue to promote the values of gender equality and to support women’s rights in every possible way. I will not stop until Egyptian women have their full civil, social and sexual rights, equally as men.

At the end of the day I am only an individual male supporter. The women of Egypt will not win back their rights unless they stand up and fight for them. Never will the day come when our society will say: “O Women, we are sorry for all those years of sexism, oppression, and gender-based discrimination. Here are your rights. Please enjoy them.” No, this will never happen.

The only way is for women to recognize that their rights were stolen and fight for them. Thank God we have wonderful female freedom fighters in Egypt, some of whom I had the honour to meet in person, like Aliaa Elmahdy, and Maryam Kamal El-din. And some great minds and mentors that I hope to meet one day, like Dr. Nawal Saadawy. I pray that we may see more people like them in the near future, until the Arab Spring turns into a winter for gender-based discrimination.

Magdy Abdelraheem was born in Dubai in 1984, to a Lebanese father and an Egyptian mother, and holds both Lebanese and Egyptian citizenship. He has a B.A. in Business Administration and currently lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. Magdy says: “I consider myself a Class-A rebel. I took part in the Cedar Revolution of Lebanon in 2005 (technically, the beginning of the Arab Spring) and the Lotus Revolution of Egypt in 2011. I am Muslim by choice, secular by nature, and I absolutely believe in the total freedom of every individual to live the life they choose for themselves, as long as it does no physical harm to anybody else.”