Sexual harassment in Egypt "second only to Afghanistan"

While catching up on the latest on facebook, I found that somebody posted this:

مصر تحتل المركز الأول عالمياً في التحرش الجنسي : MidNews (translation: Egypt occupies first spot worldwide in sexual harassment)

His comment was "Egypt ranked the first!!! Adeeeeeema :) :s" (translation: 'old news')

I wasn't quite sure what this "midnews" site was, and whether it was trust worthy, so I decided to do a little digging on the site it quotes, and found this article:

In Egypt, Some Women Say That Veils Increase Harassment

The article says Egypt takes the 2nd spot, after Afghanistan. No idea why midnews decided to ignore that part :-).

Now personally, I feel that the title of the Washington Post article is quite misleading. That isn't really the conclusion I'd come to from reading that article. If 80% of the women are veiled, and 72% of the women harassed are veiled.. then... come again? Now, whether it causes harassment to increase in the society as a whole is debatable, and while I acknowledge the plausibility of the reasoning behind that argument, I don't think we can just quote some anecdotal evidence of some possibly-biased woman's thoughts, and random statistics to prove it.

I was personally one of those people, who was harassed on a regular basis any time I dared venture into society to get something done, buy something, or even just cross the street. Mostly when I lived in Cairo, I preferred to stick to areas that I knew were "safe", such as the cafe owned by my friends in an upscale area in Maadi. If I wanted to go elsewhere, I'd usually enjoy the companionship of my male friends which would normally shield me from the verbal and physical forms of harassment, but not from the violating stares.

Last time I was in Cairo, I was walking down Abbas El Akkad street with my best friend, and there was a microbus, which was unloading and loading people. For some mysterious reason, he walked to the left and I walked to the right of the microbus. During that 15 second window till we met up again, I'd gotten one verbal harassment, and countless glares (which continue regardless of his presence). Seriously, TEN STEPS. Heh, it's so sad that it's funny.

Anyway, so back to my point: Is the prevalence of the Hijab really the problem? I can only philosophize about it, so don't expect me to concretely prove anything right here. Personally, I think it's a cultural influence rather than religious opression. I believe that wearing the hijab for the wrong reasons (societal pressure, or to avert sexual harassment) is a terrible and oppressive thing, which I wouldn't wish upon anybody, but I'm not about to blame the hijab for all faults of mankind! The problem really goes deeper, in my opinion.

When I argue that the Hijab isn't the reason for the harassment, I'm not talking about my personal experience of being less subject to the harassment as a result of wearing the hijab, I'm looking at it from the more holistic argument that women covering themselves up causes men to be more depraved, and thus harass women more. While that argument could hold some value if we were talking about an increase in consumption of pornography, I don't buy that if Egyptian women stopped wearing the hijab, the harassment would cease or even be lessened. But perhaps that's because the damage is done, rather than a backwards looking thing to women 50 years ago in Egypt who dressed a lot more liberally and were harassed way less.

To get to my point on why I think it goes deeper, I'll use Australia as an example. I used to frequently visit Australia which is a fairly liberal country, at least in relative terms. Its 3rd largest Church accepts priests who are openly gay, 19% of the population cited "No Religion" in the 2006 census, its liberal party is one of its 2 strongest, and in June 2010 they elected their first female Prime Minister. There is no enforced 'hijab' dress code, Muslims are only 1.7% of the population so the prevalence of the Hijab can't possibly be that high, yet from what I've observed in Sydney and heard from residents and on the radio there are numerous complaints against some of the Lebanese residents in Sydney. Actually this happened while I was there one year: there were protest against the Lebanese (quite violent protests and unfair blanket statements), complaining about their lewd behavior, gang wars, and generally thug-ish ways. The complaints also included that these individuals are also often involved in sexually harassing women on the streets! In SYDNEY! One of the most diverse and open cities I've seen or heard of.

So what do we blame their behavior on? Hijab? Or the lack of it? Because it looks like neither one is satisfying Arab men, and they still feel the need to harass women! I honestly don't mean that in a stereotypical sort of way, I have plenty of decent Arab male friends and acquaintances, and there are good examples to be found, but I feel like people are just using statistical evidence to push their point of view, be it for religion ("hijab protects you") or against it ("hijab causes men to wonder what you're hiding"). Seriously, stop blaming all of society's sickness on religion or lack thereof. Take responsibility for your own crap, for once.

There need to be consequences for harassment. Real, measurable, consequences. Going to a police officer shouldn't yield even MORE harassment! We need to get out of this "7ameeha 7arameeha" (loosely translated into 'its protector is its thief') model. But what hope is there for this particular issue when the model applies to every other corrupt aspect of life in Egypt?

We need to stop putting the blame on the woman for absolutely everything, and realize that people are in control of their own actions and should be held accountable for them. I refuse to believe that men are so un-evolved that they are slaves to their desires and incapable of controlling their actions.

Much respect to the women who took a stand, and took their harassers to court. I can only imagine the amount of courage and determination they mustered to achieve this feat. That happened a couple of years ago, and though the verdict was favorable for the case against sexual harassment in Egypt, I have since then not heard any more of it. It doesn't seem to have started the wave of revolt many of us were hoping for. Would you take a stand? Would I? I may find out soon enough.