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" I'm a survivor. I'm a messenger. "
Mona Eltahawy
Messenger
Survivor
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
Step
Opinions
Religion
" As an Egyptian, I was glad to see the film 'Black Panther' embrace my country with its inclusion of the Ancient Egyptian goddess Bast as the deity of Wakandans. But considering the anti-black racism against the Nubian indigenous community and visitors in my country, I knew Egypt would not return the love. "
Mona Eltahawy
Community
Love
Black
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
God
Less
You
" I wore the hijab - a form of dress that comprises a head scarf and usually also clothing that covers the whole body except for the face and hands - for nine years. Put more honestly, I wore the hijab for nine years and spent eight of them trying to take it off. "
Mona Eltahawy
Dress
Trying
Head
" Authenticity has never been Barbie's strong suit. "
Mona Eltahawy
Strong
Authenticity
Barbie
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
Anniversary
Revolution
Long
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
Violence
Research
Think
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
Army
Suits
Group
" I grew up looking at my parents as equals. "
Mona Eltahawy
Up
Equals
Grew
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
Thought
Price
Him
" We left Egypt when I was seven, and we didn't return until I was 21. My teen years were divided between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia. Up until we left the U.K., it was like your regular teenage years. The one thing I remember is that I couldn't date. That was one thing my parents made very clear. "
Mona Eltahawy
Parents
Divided
Teen
" For years, despite my inner doubts, I represented to others my choice to veil as a feminist one. "
Mona Eltahawy
Choice
Others
Years
" I avoid continuously writing or tweeting about ISIS, as it centres them in the narrative and we end up reacting to them and reacting to the agenda they set. "
Mona Eltahawy
Up
Avoid
End
" As a U.S. citizen, I cherish the First Amendment. "
Mona Eltahawy
First Amendment
First
Citizen
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
Inside
Us
You
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
You
Deep
Depression
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
Police
Freedom
Country
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
Women
Community
Culture
" As Muslim women, we're not waiting for the president of the United States to open doors for us or to fight our fights. "
Mona Eltahawy
Waiting
Open
Us
" President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, like his most recent predecessors Mohamed Morsi and Hosni Mubarak, rarely mention the Sinai Peninsula other than to celebrate its liberation from Israeli occupation in 1982. "
Mona Eltahawy
Other
President
Like
" 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?' "
Mona Eltahawy
Enjoy
Hate
Want
" The Right is incredibly deft at getting earnest about all the wrong things. "
Mona Eltahawy
Earnest
Wrong
Things
" I have chosen not to have children. "
Mona Eltahawy
Chosen
Children
" There was always something sickening about tourists taking pictures of themselves posing in front of that big gaping hole called Ground Zero. "
Mona Eltahawy
Pictures
Big
Always
" Nothing protects women from the patriarchy of military regimes. "
Mona Eltahawy
Military
Nothing
Patriarchy
" Feminism, as I see it, is not about counting women in key jobs. "
Mona Eltahawy
Feminism
Women
See
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
Middle
Used
Support
" I'm no fan of Sarkozy, but I support a ban on face veils because they erase women from society and are promoted by an ultra-conservative ideology that equates piety with the disappearance of women. "
Mona Eltahawy
Face
Erase
Society
" That morning of 11 September 2001, as we watched the twin towers crumble on live television, America and I would develop a bond that has proven deeper and more enduring - for better or worse, through sickness and health - than the one I had with my now ex-husband. "
Mona Eltahawy
Live
Health
Sickness
" 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. "
Mona Eltahawy
High
Short
Violence