Arab Women Lead the Charge

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Feb 11 (IPS) Asmaa Mahfouz, a 26-year-old Egyptian woman who two
weeks ago had only
one name, now boasts at least three. These include "A woman worth 100
men",
"The girl who crushed Mubarak" and "The leader of the
Egyptian revolution".

Mahfouz, who began online political activism in 2008, is now credited for
launching a video call that sparked the revolution against the autocratic
military rule of U.S.-backed President Hosni Mubarak.

Mahfouz is a member of a new lot of Arab women activists who are shedding
their typical conservative image to lead or inspire a wave of
pro-democracy
protests that are reshaping the political future of several countries in
the Arab
world.

Mahfouz created a YouTube.com video in mid-January
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjIgMdsEuk) in which she urged "all
young men and women" to leave their computer screens and converge on
the
streets of Egypt to protest the brutal and corrupt rule of the 82-year old
Mubarak.

"I am a woman and I am going out on Jan. 25 and am not afraid of the
police,"
she said a few days before the unrest broke out. "For the men who
brag of
their toughness, why exactly are you not joining us to go out and
demonstrate?"

Her message reverberated she says, "beyond the wildest of
dreams".

The 4 minute 30 second video was shared widely by Internet activists and
was
posted on many blogs and websites. Young people forwarded it on mobile
phones – a communications tool that some 65 million Egyptians use. Soon
after, the government blocked all mobile phone networks.

"I had hoped Jan. 25 would gather 10,000 people at best, but I later
realised
after the police force withdrew and collapsed, that our day of protests
turned
into a popular revolution," she said on a Facebook.com page created
for her
by her supporters.

"My family was so worried about me and they told me women are not
harsh
enough for that kind of confrontation," Mahfouz said. "They now
tell me they
are so proud of me. I knew that if I get scared and everybody gets scared,
then this country will be lost for good."

Mahfouz’s words resonated not only in Egypt, but across the region.

"Asmaa’s words were sincere and came out of the heart,"
wrote Reem Khalifa,
a columnist for the Bahrain newspaper Alwasat. "Her words turned into
a
tsunami wrecking havoc with despotism, tyranny and injustice."

Asmaa Mahfouz is among millions of women taking the lead during protests
in Egypt and elsewhere in Arab countries.

In Cairo, women with sticks and iron bars in hand were patrolling some of
the
streets with their male relatives during the days of looting and vandalism
that
swept the city after the collapse of the Egyptian police force.

Mothers of several people who died in the initial days of the protests
have
refused to receive condolences or hold funeral ceremonies until the
revolution
achieves its main goal of ousting the regime of Mubarak.

The mother of Khaled Said, an Internet activist who was beaten to death by
police officers in Alexandria last year, joined the protesters in Tahrir
and
repeatedly urged them not to go home before Mubarak leaves office.

Women have visibly been in the forefront in demonstrations at Tahrir
Square
and other places – in a society where women traditionally have taken
a back
seat. Many volunteered to do body searches of other women taking part in
the protests – it had become clear that the regime could sneak in weapons
to
be used against the protesters.

Across the Arab world, women have stepped into the forefront of dangerous
anti-regime protests.

In Tunisia, human rights leader and blogger Lina Ben Mehenni was among the
first to get word out about the Tunisian protests early in December
through
her tweets and blogs – despite police threats.

The poor mother of Mohammed Bouazizi, the young street hawker who set
himself ablaze starting the Tunisian revolution in mid-December, was also
doing her share, calling for change. Her sincere tears and wishes for
justice
galvanised hundreds of thousands of impatient Tunisians to eventually
remove the country’s long time dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. The
video of
her tears went viral in the Arab world.

In Yemen, another country that has seen major anti-government protests,
young woman activist Tawakul Abdel-Salam Karman was leading the charge.

It was 30-year-old Karman’s arrest by President Ali Abdullah
Saleh’s regime
that set off days of major street demonstrations that threatened his hold
on
power. Karman, who is now free, remains one of the country’s most
outspoken critics of the regime.

"The Arab world is in revolt against dictatorships," Magda Adly,
of the El
Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence in Cairo, told
IPS.
"That’s why we see women, Islamist or not Islamist, veiled or
not veiled,
coming together and leading what’s happening on the ground. This is
real
equality and we’ll never go back to square one."