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" For most of my life, the U.S. was never anything more than vacation memories. "

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" I was 15 when my family moved to Jidda from Britain in 1982. Living in Saudi Arabia was such a shock to my system that I like to say I was traumatized into feminism. "

" We have been under military rule since 1952, when a group of army officers overthrew Egypt's monarchy and ended Britain's occupation of the country. But that only replaced an external occupation with an internal one, in which favored sons of the armed forces replaced their uniforms with suits, a move meant to create a semblance of civilian rule. "

" To say that there is patriarchy in Arab culture is not denying women agency. "

" In 1993, I joined Reuters as a correspondent in its Cairo bureau. "

" In Saudi Arabia - recognized as one of the worst violators of women's rights - women outnumber men on university campuses and yet are treated like minors who need a male guardian's permission to do the most basic things. "

" Across the globe, fundamentalists of all religions are on one side, and their attitudes towards women and towards female sexuality are almost identical. "

" I chose to wear the hijab at age 16, soon after my family moved from Britain to Saudi Arabia. "

" The first time I wore a head scarf, I was 16. I looked and felt like a nun. I missed the wind in my hair. For me, it was not a comfortable thing to wear. "

" I started off at a local newspaper called 'The Middle East Times,' which is no longer in existence. I remember one of the earliest stories that I wrote for them was a study about domestic violence in Egypt from a government-run research institute think tank. "

" 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. "

" Good riddance, Bin Laden - an unwelcome squatter in the house of my religion who tore down all the walls and was prepared to throw them on a fire to keep himself warm. "

" Feminism, as I see it, is not about counting women in key jobs. "

" All religions, if you shrink them down, are all about controlling women's sexuality. "

" 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. "

" When Tunisians overthrew Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 29 days and Egyptians Hosni Mubarak in 18 days, it was an appropriate rebuke to dictators and Bin Laden. "

" 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. "

" I can write about my culture and religion because I am a product of both. Even when I'm accused of giving ammunition to the Islamophobic right, in the struggle between 'community' and 'women,' I always choose the women. "

" 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. "

" I left my husband a year after 9/11. Not because he was an American and I an Egyptian, nothing to do with culture or religion, nothing to do with 9/11. We brought out the worst in each other. But before we separated, we visited N.Y.C. one more time together for a friend's engagement, and we went to pay our respects at the site of the attacks. "

" When we complain to Egypt's Western allies about whichever autocrat is in power, we are asked, 'But who is the alternative?' It is a question designed to frustrate. "

" As a Muslim woman, I'm all too familiar with the media shorthand for 'Muslim' and 'woman' equaling Covered in Black Muslim Woman. She's seen, never heard. Visible only in her invisibility under that black burka, niqab, chador, etc. "

" What is satire if not a marriage of civil disobedience to a laugh track, a potent brew of derision and lack of respect that acts as a nettle sting on the thin skin of the humourless? "

" I am horrified by the moral amnesia that develops when a dictator dies. "

" The Tunisian revolution left every Arab dictator in fear; Egypt's toppling of Mubarak left them terrified - even one of the U.S.' best allies in the region could fall. "

" I have chosen not to have children. "

" The Bush administration and its 'we'll liberate you by invading your countries' doctrine is thankfully behind us. It is up to us to fight for our rights inside our communities. "

" When Mubarak does die, he will be remembered as the most bland of those military men turned dictators: compare him with Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar Sadat. The legacies most associated with him are a network of bridges and highways and 'stability.' "

" Selling out Saudi women is an old-established tradition. "

" As an Egyptian-American, I want both sides of that hyphen to enjoy the forms of freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, as I want both sides of that hyphen to move beyond the deceptive simplicity of the question, 'Why do they hate us?' "

" To this day I have no idea what dissident professor or librarian placed feminist texts on the bookshelves at the university library in Jeddah, but I found them there. They filled me with terror. I understood they were pulling at a thread that would unravel everything. "