Mona Eltahawy Quotes

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Mona Eltahawy

Profession : Journalist

Birth : August 1, 1967

What is satire if not a marriage of civil disobedience to a laugh track, a potent brew of derision and lack of respect that acts as a nettle sting on the thin skin of the humourless?

Mona Eltahawy

I left my husband a year after 9/11. Not because he was an American and I an Egyptian, nothing to do with culture or religion, nothing to do with 9/11. We brought out the worst in each other. But before we separated, we visited N.Y.C. one more time together for a friend's engagement, and we went to pay our respects at the site of the attacks.

Mona Eltahawy

As Muslim women, we're not waiting for the president of the United States to open doors for us or to fight our fights.

Mona Eltahawy

I know Obama knows better than George W. Bush.

Mona Eltahawy

The Bush administration and its 'we'll liberate you by invading your countries' doctrine is thankfully behind us. It is up to us to fight for our rights inside our communities.

Mona Eltahawy

A source of embarrassment for Libyans, Gadhafi has never been a joke: disappearances, a police state, zero freedom of expression, and poverty for at least a third of the population of country tremendously wealthy thanks to oil.

Mona Eltahawy

The Tunisian revolution left every Arab dictator in fear; Egypt's toppling of Mubarak left them terrified - even one of the U.S.' best allies in the region could fall.

Mona Eltahawy

The price of toppling Gadhafi will be steep. But Libyans will topple him, and in doing so, they will bring down with him the castles of fear our dictators thought they had fortified.

Mona Eltahawy

Muslim views are not a monolithic blob.

Mona Eltahawy

As a Muslim woman, I'm all too familiar with the media shorthand for 'Muslim' and 'woman' equaling Covered in Black Muslim Woman. She's seen, never heard. Visible only in her invisibility under that black burka, niqab, chador, etc.

Mona Eltahawy

I'm no fan of Sarkozy, but I support a ban on face veils because they erase women from society and are promoted by an ultra-conservative ideology that equates piety with the disappearance of women.

Mona Eltahawy

I was never one for dolls.

Mona Eltahawy

I am appalled to hear the defence of the niqab or burka in Europe. A bizarre political correctness has tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to defend women's rights but who are now instead sacrificing those very rights in the name of fighting an increasingly powerful right wing.

Mona Eltahawy

I detest the niqab and the burka for their erasure of women and for dangerously equating piety with that disappearance - the less of you I can see, the closer you must be to God.

Mona Eltahawy

I defend a woman's right to cover her hair if she chooses, but the face is central to human interaction, and so the ideologues who promote its covering are simply misogynists.

Mona Eltahawy

I abhor the rightwing Muslim ideology behind the veils, but I equally abhor the political rightwing xenophobes of Europe.

Mona Eltahawy

Too often, when Muslim women speak out, some in our 'community' accuse us of 'making our men look bad' and of giving ammunition to right-wing Islamophobes.

Mona Eltahawy

It is the harassers and assaulters who make us 'look bad,' not the women who have every right to expose crimes against them.

Mona Eltahawy

As a feminist of Egyptian and Muslim descent, my life's work has been informed by the belief that religion and culture must never be used to justify the subjugation of women.

Mona Eltahawy

I can write about my culture and religion because I am a product of both. Even when I'm accused of giving ammunition to the Islamophobic right, in the struggle between 'community' and 'women,' I always choose the women.

Mona Eltahawy