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" 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. "

Mona Eltahawy

Family

Women

Why

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

Mona Eltahawy

Right

Support

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

" I grew up looking at my parents as equals. "

Mona Eltahawy

Equals

Grew

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm a survivor. I'm a messenger. "

Mona Eltahawy

Messenger

Survivor

" When I first read Margaret Atwood's novel 'The Handmaid's Tale,' it was Saudi Arabia as I knew it that came to mind, not a dystopian future United States as in the new television adaptation. "

" I grew up in the U.K., and my parents are both doctors. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" While the 2011 revolution did not remove the regime, it has shortened the seemingly endless patience that many Egyptians once had for military rule. "

" Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism and militarism are inherently patriarchal and hierarchical. "

" 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. "

" Muslim views are not a monolithic blob. "

Mona Eltahawy

Views

Muslim

" 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. "