You cannot imagine.
Firstly, I'd like to point out what it proves:
1. An Abaya and or veil will not protect you from harassment.
2. Our (yes, our. Women in many Arab countries have had similar experiences) youth is sexually frustrated to the point of insanity.
While reading I imagined a stampede of sex-crazed rabid dogs. It's like they're not even human anymore.
What does that to a person?
Go on.
Tell me the ladies were asking for their shirts to be ripped off. Tell me they probably liked it.
You know I love hearing it.
I feel as though I will never see an improvement in our society in my lifetime.
Hopelessness is not a pretty feeling.
"...If it was the action of one I would still be pretty outraged. Girls should fucking panic. Or shall we tell them oh it’s only a few guys who would possibly rip off your clothes in broad daylight, you know, it’s downtown Cairo, chill out and have a sheesha. It is this lack of outrage and a blasé normalisation of the sickness that has helped it progress unchallenged or treated for so long. "
I couldn't have said any of that better myself.
Sexual Education is the key. So are many many other things, but I'd so love it if we started with that.
There are stories of girls attacking other girls at schools and college, so it's not just a problem with boys.
I cannot imagine what the girls who were there are going through.
Allah y3awi6'hom bildunya wila5rah.
24 comments:
This is really sad. I'm glad you drew our attention to it Ubergirl. I don't really know what I can do to help but maybe just being aware or it does help.
and in the logic of our muftis, mullahs and imams; it is the fault of the women themselves. just look at the wonderful intellect of the great mufti of Australia; an uncovered woman is like uncovered meat that is left out for the cats to eat. (e.g. for the men to devour and rape).
when a woman is raped, she is the one guilty of adultery! doesn't matter that she has a torn vagina, a bleeding rectum and a battered face! she's still the guilty one!
ah, the wonderful logic of imams, muftis and mullahs and their (un)holy interpretation of sharia. they are the ones mocking the Prophet and the Holy Book!
Thats sad
This was an unsubstantiated story, none of the major paper reported it, okay never mind the local papers because they might be biased, none of the foreign wire services reported, none of foreign TV outlet reported, we are left with the words of some Egyptian bloggers who first reported the story. Those bloggers who obviously have an anti government agenda ran with the story, embellish it, and added to it, the photo they put up were fuzzy, and unclear, and doesn’t show much. I had friends who were spending the Eid vacation in Egypt, never heard of the incident. I for one would never believe the sandmonkey even if he tells me the sun rises from the east, and the earth is round.
Even if it was, as you say, embelished, even if it never even happened, it is still very likely to.
I have been to Egypt and Morroco, and I was subjected to more than a few rude comments, and only God knows the hell we are put through here in Saudi.
Although I do believe this story is true, my point is things like this are likely to happen in our streets. I was angered by the story, very much so, but I wasn't really shocked or surprised.
However, what continues to baffle me is this; What kind of mindset did those men have to go to these lengths? Randomly attacking females in the streets.
What was going through their minds? "Ramadhan is over we can finally turn into animals! Horaah!"?
How does this kind of riot START?
Ubergirl, I agree with my male instructor from my IMPACT / Model Mugging / Adrenaline State Training / Padded Assailant Training (it's called all 4 by various people) class this weekend: trying to change the motivations of the men is a noble effort, but not one that he thinks is effective enough for him to dedicate his time to anymore. He's given up. And honestly, I think I have given up on advocating for it on a widespread level, too. Oh, of course if the conversation comes up, I'll advocate fantastic, realistic sexual education. But I'm not going to even take the time to write to school boards over it.
You know what I'm going to take the time to write about? IMPACT-style self-defense training for women. As Mark, my male instructor said, even the men that you can't reeducate the hearts of are interested in not getting hurt. The kinds of men who attack people that they consider "weaker" don't want a real fight where they might get hurt. They want a win--but they want it w/o a fight. Just the winning part.
So what if a critical mass of women start to make themselves dangerous enough that men consider it a danger to themselves to attack them? What if instead of, "Don't touch the woman; she might not want you to," the common sense idea becomes, "Don't touch the woman; you might get hurt?" I mean, we don't tell our kids to keep our hands off peoples' dogs in the parks until we talk to them about it because we're teaching our kids about respect for the dog or the owner. Sad but true--we don't. We teach our kids to do that because they might get hurt. And hey...it works!
So Ubergirl, if you can EVER find full-force self-defense training (where guys in suits so padded up you can't hurt them for real attack you from behind, from "in your sleep," etc. and you have to fight your way out of all of the situations, over and over again, taking each fight to a blow that the teacher decides would be a "knockout" of a real person), do it. And make all your friends do it. If you can't find it, DEMAND IT. Demand it louder than you even demand sexual education!
Being dangerous to the safety of people with no respect is how we're going to change their minds about what they feel like doing. Educating them about respect might change some young minds, but not all. Danger will change them all (if not in advance, it certainly will after their first unsuccessful attack!)
Please believe me.
Ubergirl, it struck me today, our society will never change, hope is gone, seriously.
I just finished my Arabic class, where our instructor was talking about dating and also drinking. You don't want to know what she and the class said, let's just put it this way; 9 West-Ammani students dropped the class.
Of course, our instructor, and the majority of the class, are from rural areas. I think you get the picture.
Pheras Hilal, please don't give up! There is one more thing that hasn't "been tried"--not because it's not being done, but because the numbers of women with their "we can't fight like any other female animal on the planet fights off bigger animals" social conditioning untrained back out of them are still too small for you to have seen a difference yet. Don't give up hope. Get involved in advocating state-of-the-art self defense training for women! (NOT the old karate classes & such. It has to be training that focuses on the way women are ACTUALLY attacked in REAL crimes & predatory violence incidents. That research is where model mugging gets its strength.)
Very disturbing indeed...
Its obvious that a lot of things have to change socially. In this society gender mixing is not acceptable so an alternative has to be offered. Whats the alternative? Expensive weddings! Making it almost impossible to get married! Check out this post and see what this dude had to splash out on his wedding
http://www.al-ordon.com/blog/2006/10/04/how-much-to-become-married/
Everyone do the monkey!
muslims just as bad as the infidels; http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443678,00.html
what the fuck is up with this word? infidel? fucking hilarious is what it is, infidel hahahaa
yeah I saw a program on what happened in Cairo on Dream TV... something similar happened in Jeddah last week when 6 saudi guys chased a car that had a family casing it to make an accident! I have it on my blog... its really so sad...
infidels; that is people like me. oh wait, i'm worse; i'm a heathen; i'm an atheist, a non-believer, worse than an infidel.
"This was an unsubstantiated story, none of the major paper reported it, okay never mind the local papers because they might be biased, none of the foreign wire services reported, none of foreign TV outlet reported, we are left with the words of some Egyptian bloggers who first reported the story."
The BBC News published it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6106500.stm
Ignore that, Ubergirl already linked.
Not being able to date, drinking, that has nothing to do with this. You guys think this stuff doesnt happen here where you can drink on every corner? Where you can get prostitutes or a girlfriend with equal ease?
A similiar thing happened here in New York City a few years ago. A large group of people attacked women left and right, except in this case sveral of the women were gang raped in public.
This really isnt caused because of Islam, religious leaders, because people cannot date or drink.
This is caused because some people are just animals sometimes. I doubt anyone would think a bunch of young guys in New York City are under-sexed. It is just the opposite.
Two things bother me about the incident in Cairo. First that the police seem to have done nothing about it. Second that the media ignored it.
Shame on those who want to use this as an excuse to slam Islam and Muslims. Stop using this as a pre-text to advocate for "free love"(as if there is such a thing) and drinking. Focus on the real issues here.
And THAT, Abu Sinan, is why women in New York City, Cairo, Saudi Arabia, etc. need to learn by practice & experience how extremely capable they are of fighting off male attackers.
Because you're right--the perpetrators are animals, and they don't care about what other humans want.
But they DO obviously care about what they themselves want. That's why they're doing such horrendous things in the first place. And guess what one of the things they want is? To avoid getting hurt!!!!!!!!!!
Attacks on women by immoral animalistic human beings will ONLY stop when they think that attacking a woman is likely to result in serious physical harm.
And believe you me, we women can make that happen. Only a few thousand of us know it right now, because only a few thousand of us have practiced and seen it happen before our very eyes, but it is very true. All we need to do is get the secret out there. All we need to do is help more women feel how fierce and dangerous their own bodies really are to an attacker.
THIS IS THE SOLUTION. THIS is how we fight off immoral animals.
I've given up on anything else working.
Demand funding & training for IMPACT-style women's self defense in your hometown.
I know some people might not want to think so but this stuff does not happen in New York. I have lived in New York for 4 years and have never heard of anything like this. I do not even get whistled when I pass a construction site because it is illegal and those guys don't want to loose their jobs.
Of course violence against women happens in the West but it tends to happen in private not public because the wider society looks down on it and with witnesses those guys will go to prison. Why did the police ignore it?
unfortunately, attacks on women did happen during the Puerto Rican Day Parade in June 2000; http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/06/14/central.park.assault.01/
It happened in the nicer part of Central Park; close to 60th street and 6th Avenue, as opposed north of 90th Street. Not sure what happened in the aftermath of these incidents.
Hi, love your blogg. It's both funny and scary sometimes. What your country is like is totally diffrent from mine, I'm Norwegian you see.
I have a question, it doesn't really have anything to do with your last post, but I'm wondering: is it allowed to have pets like dogs and cats in Saudi? It was written some place (don't really remeber where) that you are not allowed to have pets because it's a European thing. Just seem abit strange to me so I have to ask.
Have a nice day:)
i read a psychology analysis cut out my friend gave me. They reckon it could also be a very extreme form of demonstration, about the condition of youth in the Middle East.
Which kind of make sense when we look at the amount of unemployment we have here in saudi, and all these young men and women walking around without anything productive to do. They cant afford these huge weddings and dowries etc. So there is plenty of frustration, then there is all the sexual issues and sexual frustration.
It is the reason behind it, but it was a stupid choice or method to vent it out. I mean things could have easily gone wrong.
But the key issue is, they do need to speak about it, but in a more positive way. Like the Prophet SAW said, if your boys and girls are of marriage age, and you dont marry them to decent believers, then there will be Fitnah on the earth.
Is this not a Fitnah?
BTW ubergirl87, very nice blog, welldone
Yes, Jenna. We're allowed to have pets.
What a question. Lol.
Thanks everyone :-)
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