Got a few links for you...
Egypt revolution youth form national coalition
From Al-Masry Al-Youm (Egypt Today) - Egyptian Revolution Youth Coalition rejects nomination of Arab League chief
And a link to another blogger's take: Who is organizing Egypt's January 25th groups?
Let's be real about what happened, and is still happening, in Egypt. This was NOT the Twitter Revolution, not the Facebook Revolution, and it is chilling and appalling to me that so many media sources, not just American and European, Al-Jazeera has been doing it too, would credit as such. I even remember reading somewhere that "Mark Zuckerberg started the Egyptian Revolution!" This is the most toxic twisting of truth. The Egyptian Revolution was from start to finish an undertaking of Egyptians, catalyzed by years of work by organized grassroots youth movement groups that used all the social media available to them. It should be remembered that the internet was actually down in Egypt for days during the heat of the Revolution, so how could they have been completely dependent on facebook? Protest locations were spray painted on walls, passed by word of mouth. People came to Tahrir because that's where everyone else was and they knew that, not because Facebook told them to go there. People in Suez and Alexandria organized in their own ways, and in fact the use of facebook and twitter in those cities - where the principal violence actually took place - was even less than in Cairo.
And Sarkozy got what he wanted, and the French parliament passed the law forbidding the wearing of the niqab in public places. There are a lot of words I could say about this law - xenophobic, islamophobic, racist, undemocratic, hypocritical to the very values it professes to guard. It makes me so angry that I can barely find words, to be honest. Democratic governments have no right to regulate the way their citizen dress because of religion. Imagine forbidding a nun to wear her wimple because it makes people uncomfortable, imagine forbidding a Hasid to wear his hat.
Also, the law forbids the wearing of niqab in public places - forcing women to make the choice between breaking the law or giving up their convictions and beliefs, a decidedly undemocratic choice. Even more upsettingly, when the French parliament passed this law they effectively barred devout, niqab-wearing Muslim women from the public sphere of French life! Conservative Islam already had strict gender roles and realms - and let's be real, it's hard to find a modern society or a monotheistic faith that doesn't - and now French Muslim women are bound by religion and by law to stay at home, or flout either their faith or their government. The French government has put Muslim in a despicable bind that is antithetical to everything democratic.
Stigmatized for their dress and religion, marked instantly as other and as criminal, marginalized by definition of their religious identity from what is "French," and now locked at home - and all this by a law that says it is to set them free. I'm disgusted.
I also have to find a copy of the exact wording of the law, because apparently it never explicitly mentions Islam or the niqab, and reporters tend to use the words "burqa" and "niqab" interchangeably in their coverage of the law. The two things are in fact distinct articles of clothing - the burqa is a one piece covering that goes over the head and covers the whole upper half of the body, or goes all the way down to the feet, with a screen or a slit for the eyes.
The niqab is just a small rectangle of fabric that women wear along with hijab or chador/khimar to cover the lower half of their face. Check out this super handy visual guide to Islamic styyyyyyle...
If you're interested in more information on the nuances of difference in modest dress for Muslim women, why they veil at all, what the requirements are for men's dress, the Wikipedia pages on niqab and burqa and all the rest actually have good, unbiased information and really excellent links to even more information.
More humorously, wwo French women made this unusual video a few months ago as a protest against the niqab ban:
The self-titled duo NiqaBitch made waves with this video, so watch and see what you think. Here's an excellent analysis from Guardian writer Nesrine Malik - Niqabitch niqab debate
For all you French readers, here's the link the main article in Le Monde : La loi interdisant le port du voile intégral diversement appliquée. It's interesting to read the way the French are approaching this law themselves.
Meanwhile, in other Middle East that the BBC thinks is worth covering, Justin Beiber is apparently not having a good time in Israel. Apparently all that dumb political stuff is getting in the way of his sightseeing and hairbrushing. Come on, BBC, really?
Egypt revolution youth form national coalition
From Al-Masry Al-Youm (Egypt Today) - Egyptian Revolution Youth Coalition rejects nomination of Arab League chief
And a link to another blogger's take: Who is organizing Egypt's January 25th groups?
Let's be real about what happened, and is still happening, in Egypt. This was NOT the Twitter Revolution, not the Facebook Revolution, and it is chilling and appalling to me that so many media sources, not just American and European, Al-Jazeera has been doing it too, would credit as such. I even remember reading somewhere that "Mark Zuckerberg started the Egyptian Revolution!" This is the most toxic twisting of truth. The Egyptian Revolution was from start to finish an undertaking of Egyptians, catalyzed by years of work by organized grassroots youth movement groups that used all the social media available to them. It should be remembered that the internet was actually down in Egypt for days during the heat of the Revolution, so how could they have been completely dependent on facebook? Protest locations were spray painted on walls, passed by word of mouth. People came to Tahrir because that's where everyone else was and they knew that, not because Facebook told them to go there. People in Suez and Alexandria organized in their own ways, and in fact the use of facebook and twitter in those cities - where the principal violence actually took place - was even less than in Cairo.
The amazing thing about this revolution, and its youthful image, is not that it was a cyber-revolution (so "typical" of our generation) but that it was a revolution without a specific leader, without a man on a white horse leading the charge. It was the network that was so remarkable. The six major youth activist networks behind the revolution have now developed a coalition to stay organized and keep communicating. The revolution, which seemed impossible, has finally happened, but they are well aware that doing the impossible was the easiest part of their job, and now comes the challenge of building the Egypt that they want to live in. They will do that not through using cute American technologies, but through continuing to use their own ingenuity, creativity, intelligence and courage, just as they did in the Revolution.
And this article, Young leaders of Egypt's revolt snub Clinton in Cairo, which talks about the coalition's refusal to meet with Hilary Clinton on her visit to Cairo in March casts a kind of negative light on what I think is a wonderfully empowering and clear-sighted, if politically "naive," move on the part of the coalition. They issued a statement refusing to meet with Clinton because of the ambivalent position the US took during the revolution, and especially because of the American government's 40 years of support for Mubarak in return for his support of Israel, to the serious detriment of the Egyptian people. They quote Clinton saying in 2009, that "I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States." To quote the words of Ussama Makdisi at an AUB lecture I went to last week, the U.S. is "not interested in democracies in the Middle East, so much as stable, pro-Western, petroleum order." We "want reform, but the right reform." The coalition knows they have some power over the US government now - particularly as regards Israel and whatever stance the new government will take on that nation - and they are refusing to bow down and equivocate for money, the way the previous regime did.
And Sarkozy got what he wanted, and the French parliament passed the law forbidding the wearing of the niqab in public places. There are a lot of words I could say about this law - xenophobic, islamophobic, racist, undemocratic, hypocritical to the very values it professes to guard. It makes me so angry that I can barely find words, to be honest. Democratic governments have no right to regulate the way their citizen dress because of religion. Imagine forbidding a nun to wear her wimple because it makes people uncomfortable, imagine forbidding a Hasid to wear his hat.
Also, the law forbids the wearing of niqab in public places - forcing women to make the choice between breaking the law or giving up their convictions and beliefs, a decidedly undemocratic choice. Even more upsettingly, when the French parliament passed this law they effectively barred devout, niqab-wearing Muslim women from the public sphere of French life! Conservative Islam already had strict gender roles and realms - and let's be real, it's hard to find a modern society or a monotheistic faith that doesn't - and now French Muslim women are bound by religion and by law to stay at home, or flout either their faith or their government. The French government has put Muslim in a despicable bind that is antithetical to everything democratic.
Stigmatized for their dress and religion, marked instantly as other and as criminal, marginalized by definition of their religious identity from what is "French," and now locked at home - and all this by a law that says it is to set them free. I'm disgusted.
The niqab is just a small rectangle of fabric that women wear along with hijab or chador/khimar to cover the lower half of their face. Check out this super handy visual guide to Islamic styyyyyyle...
More humorously, wwo French women made this unusual video a few months ago as a protest against the niqab ban:
The self-titled duo NiqaBitch made waves with this video, so watch and see what you think. Here's an excellent analysis from Guardian writer Nesrine Malik - Niqabitch niqab debate
For all you French readers, here's the link the main article in Le Monde : La loi interdisant le port du voile intégral diversement appliquée. It's interesting to read the way the French are approaching this law themselves.
Meanwhile, in other Middle East that the BBC thinks is worth covering, Justin Beiber is apparently not having a good time in Israel. Apparently all that dumb political stuff is getting in the way of his sightseeing and hairbrushing. Come on, BBC, really?
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