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" I was born in Egypt, and my family moved to London when I was seven. I grew up mostly in Clapham, where I also went to school after a brief stint in Whitechapel. "

Mona Eltahawy

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" Too many have rushed in to explain the Arab world to itself. "

" 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. "

" I detest the niqab and the burka for their erasure of women and for dangerously equating piety with that disappearance - the less of you I can see, the closer you must be to God. "

" Mubarak was adept, as were many other U.S.-backed dictators, at playing the sane middle to the 'lunatics with beards' he so often used as bogeymen to guarantee the support of foreign allies. "

" 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. "

" The religious fundamentalists of the Republican party are a mirror image of the religious fundamentalists of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. "

" 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. "

" Morality crusades unite military regimes and religious zealots alike. "

" There was always something sickening about tourists taking pictures of themselves posing in front of that big gaping hole called Ground Zero. "

" 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. "

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

" For years I looked at the Iranians with envy - not at the outcome of their 1979 revolution, but because it was a popular uprising, not a euphemism for a coup. "

" To me, Egypt is a wonderful history, a wonderful people, and it's represented through artists like Om Kalthoum, who is considered the fourth pyramid of Egypt. She's a wonderful diva whose voice, for me, is really Egyptian. "

" 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. "

" Women of color have always been kind of boxed in by the idea that the more you talk about the misogyny of your own community, the more you make that community look bad. "

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

" We are fighting misogynists in every culture. My solution is to listen to the women in each community and amplify their voices. "

" I do not celebrate the appointment of women to high positions in regimes where cruelty is a favored tool of governance by a patriarchy; if they accept, they are nothing short of foot soldiers of that patriarchy and the violence it has instituted. "

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

" Until the Saudi authorities who administer the holy sites take concrete steps to protect female pilgrims, we must protect each other. Men must stop assaulting us, yes. But women the world over, regardless of faith, know that until that happens, we are each other's keepers. "

" A source of embarrassment for Libyans, Gadhafi has never been a joke: disappearances, a police state, zero freedom of expression, and poverty for at least a third of the population of country tremendously wealthy thanks to oil. "

" The price of toppling Gadhafi will be steep. But Libyans will topple him, and in doing so, they will bring down with him the castles of fear our dictators thought they had fortified. "

" Saudi Arabia isn't just a conservative country with different values we shouldn't judge. It is a modern Gilead. "

" To write about the hijab is to step into a minefield. Even among those who share my cultural and faith background, opinions veer from those who despise it as a symbol of backwardness to those for whom religion begins and ends with that piece of cloth. "

" My parents' generation grew up high on the Arab nationalism that Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser brandished in the 1950s. "

" It's one thing to be groped and harassed by passers-by, but when the state gropes you, it gives a green light that you are fair game. "

" I abhor the rightwing Muslim ideology behind the veils, but I equally abhor the political rightwing xenophobes of Europe. "

" Saudi authorities must launch a campaign about the safety of female pilgrims and the determination of the authorities to ensure every woman's safety. "

" I visited Libya in September 1996 for the 27th anniversary of the 'revolution' - a military coup that a 27-year-old Gadhafi led to topple the monarchy and since which he has ruled. Some were optimistic that Gadhafi's 'revolution' could herald a new Libya, but it didn't take long for his brutality to stamp out any such hopes. "