Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" My brother, a cardiologist, was among thousands of Muslims visited by the FBI in November 2001 and forced to submit to special registration fingerprinting, his photo and information forever in Homeland Security's files. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Mona Eltahawy

Revolution

Outcome

Envy

" Too often, when Muslim women speak out, some in our 'community' accuse us of 'making our men look bad' and of giving ammunition to right-wing Islamophobes. "

" 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. "

" I was never one for dolls. "

Mona Eltahawy

Dolls

Never

" 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. "

" It is the harassers and assaulters who make us 'look bad,' not the women who have every right to expose crimes against them. "

" 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

You

" I defend a woman's right to cover her hair if she chooses, but the face is central to human interaction, and so the ideologues who promote its covering are simply misogynists. "

" I know Obama knows better than George W. Bush. "

" 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

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

" The military belongs in its barracks, not our ballot boxes. "

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

Mona Eltahawy

Dies

I Am

" 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 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. "

" The fight against racism must be seen as a revolutionary one. "

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

" Authenticity has never been Barbie's strong suit. "

" As a feminist of Egyptian and Muslim descent, my life's work has been informed by the belief that religion and culture must never be used to justify the subjugation of women. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I will never ally with Islamophobes and racists. But in the choice between 'community' and Muslim women, I will always choose my sisters. "