Shortly after the results of the first stage of the Egyptian parliament elections, everyone started to freak out.  After the majority win of Islamist parties Al-Nahda party in Tunisia and the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Egypt, memories from Sudan in 1989, Gaza in 2006, and, most importantly, Iran in 1979 came to mind. […]

On December 6th, a headline hit Facebook and Twitter feeds that an unnamed Islamic cleric – a Salafi cleric at that – residing in an unnamed European country declared that women were forbidden from touching and eating fruits and vegetables that were phallic shaped unless accompanied by (“preferably”) a male relative who would then have […]

Women in the Egyptian revolution have been a great source of international attention and appreciation. It is when women participate that you truly can call it a “people’s” revolution. When the news started to come out about the elections for the Revolutionary Parliament, everyone looked closely for women’s participation; women candidates, women voters, women section […]

Ahdaf Soueif’s novel The Map of Love, published in 1999, tells the history of Egypt through two parallel plots, set at the beginning and at the end of the 20th century. During a conversation with Egyptian intellectuals, one of the characters argues, familiarly, that: we live by slogans. We take comfort in them: the great […]

Google executive Wael Ghonim became one of the faces of the Egyptian revolution through the Facebook page “We are all Khalid Said,” which was a vital spark to the revolution. But another important spark was a video posted by 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz from the April 6 Youth Movement, where she declared that she was going […]

Egypt, like the rest of the Middle East, has been suffering for a long time from street harassment. Naturally, different Egyptian intellects have been trying to emphasize the problem and highlight what can be the start of solving it. Mohamed Diab, a young Egyptian writer, wrote and directed the movie “678,” which focuses on this […]

One of the most anticipated Ramadan series this year was 3ayza Atgawez, (“I Want to Get Married”), based on a blog-turned-bestselling-book by Ghada Abdel Aal. The series stars Hend Sabry as Ola, an Egyptian pharmacist under pressure to marry having reached the age of thirty and facing the social stigma of spinsterhood. Each episode focuses […]

I was thrilled when I heard that Oprah Winfrey interviewed Egyptian women about marriage for an episode of her show about marriage around the globe. Oprah has always been such an inspiration for a lot of women, me included. I was so excited for her to highlight my world and how women like me get […]

Allow me to choose four, five or even nine men, just as my wildest imagination shall chose. I’ll pick them with different shapes and sizes, one of them will be dark and the other will be blonde. Tall or maybe short, they are to be Chosen from different denominations, religions, races and nations. And I […]

Egyptian society has been fighting over abortion for over 10 years. Abortion is still illegal in the country, but there have been many moves to legalize abortion pregnancies that are the result of rape. So after all this fighting, why is there still no result? In a 1998 action that was described as “revolutionary appeal” […]