Courtesy of Wonderful Bag

There have been several very interesting discussion around gender in the US print-media that I would like to share with my readers. Tough most of them particularly focus on American and European society, many of the discussions resonate throughout the world. In ‘The End of Men,‘ Hanna Rosin proclaims that the modern post-industrial economy might be better suited for women. And that the times of patriarchy and male-domination are over.

In ‘Women on Top?’ Katha Pollit takes issue with this outlook and points to the various ways women are still discriminated against in American society, and the need to reinvent feminisms. Katrin Benhold of the NYTimes lends some advice of how this could be done, when she proclaims in her article ‘Feminism of the Future Relies on Men’: “The last frontier of women’s liberation may well be men’s liberation.” 

Finally Camille Paglia plots in her article ‘No Sex please, We’re Middle Class’, how the bourgeois construction of values around sexuality in America, leaves us in a frigid dead-end that allows neither men nor women to live their sexuality freely. I hope we can keep so much public discussion of gender, and sexuality up. Enjoy reading!

Pondering over Lebanon’s football frenzy has become my personal highlight of the World Cup.  And although I am positive that when  Charles Glass wrote his travelogue of Lebanon, Tribes with Flags he wasn’t thinking of this event, the book’s title keeps resounding in my head since ever the Lebanese  have started preparations for SA 2010.

Flags, flags, flags and more flags as far as the eye can see. German flags decorate the sides of buildings and balconies, Brazilian and Argentinean flags painted on cars and scooters, Spanish flags in the hands of children and adults (more evidence @ crosseyedrevolutions)

Flag Day-Courtesy of Loryne Atoui

As noted by Giulianotti, football in Lebanon has a very particualar role in society and has emerged under specific historical constellations. Curiously, here it shares the first rank with Basketball as national sport. 

The Lebanese national football team was founded under the French mandate in the late 1930’s together with the Federation Libanaise de Football Association. The team played its first international game on April 27, 1940 against British Mandated Palestine.

The colonial backdrop of this first engagement might not have been a coincidence. Norbert Elias, a historian of sports, noted that recreational activities were a key mechanism in the civilizing missions of European colonial powers. A multifaceted machinery of control characterized colonization and its derivatives. The creation of social organizations that would reduce open violent conflict among groups and promote the exercise of individual discipline and self-control, was one aspect of that. From this point of view football was seen as a mitigating mechanism.

Related to this view,  many European intellectuals have called football, the ‘opium for the masses’, particularly the critical tradition of social theory associated with Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu saw football as a ‘false consciousness’ inducing burgeois mechanism, that indoctrinates the youth with values of sexism, nationalism, fanaticism, irrational violence, the cult of competition and the uncritical acceptance of values central to capitalism. Later ethnographic research however suggest that Bourdieu underestimated the agency of audiences to shape the meaning they associate with The Game. 

  It is interesting that both Elias and Bordieu associated football with violence yet one saw it as a mitigating mechanism the other as promoting it. Having emerged as mechanism of control and power it is no wonder that  physical violence is present in various forms during and after football games all over the world.  In Lebanon however, football has frequently been described as being part of the sectarianian divisions. Or as James Montague of the Guardian wrote:

“Tensions between teams can spill on to the streets in any country in the world. But in Lebanon, with its sometime poisonous mix of sectarian hatreds, nothing is ever quite as simple as a toe-to-toe fight for footballing bragging rights. Religion, politics and mistrust had combined to produce a potent, flammable mix”.

The Lebanese premiere league’s two most famous teams are Nejme and Al-Ansar. In recent years the teams were asssociated with the March 14/ March 8 political divide in the country. Semi-politically motivated clashes between the two camps during matches lead to the banning of all spectators  from domestic games since 2005. 

Once again this mixing of politics and football is not unusual.  A good friend of mine  wrote her MA disserattion at University on the tribalism inherent in European football. Her basic argument goes as follows. Since Europe has become ‘peaceful’ within it’s borders, Europeans need to channel the ancient conflicts that they’ve been fighting amongst each other in a more productive manner i.e. through the European sport of choice, ‘football’. Or as Mafesolli put is football associations involve ‘neo-tribalism‘.

From a functionalist perspective, tribalism and thus football tribalism fullfill two very important social functions.  It produces a sense of belonging to one side, and two, the othering of the other. 

Thus football tribalism is essentially partisan. And partisanship for me is a key word in the Lebanese world cup experience.  Pick a team, wear it’s colours and support it ferociously.  Pearson writes: “Fandom produces forms of consciousnesss that are neitherrational nor impartial in their modes of thought. Partisans do not sit on the fence, seek the approval of other men. The match was and still is a liminal zone …Emotions can run riot and so do the fans sometimes”.

Sounds familiar? As cynical as it might sound, to me this seems a relatively accurate descriptions Lebanese social organization and politics. In a sense the World Cup is in experience very similar to last year’s elections. Politicians faces have been transformed into countries flags but otherwise.  Choose a team, wear its colours, fly it’s flag, cheer when it is winning and cry or threaten violence when it is loosing. However despite the general integration of football and politics, there might be particular reasons why the world cup is so partisan here, despite the absence of a Lebanese team in the World Cup. 

Klapp has noted that the ritualistic aspects of football, like religion, people seek a sense of community, endeavour and shared discovery and self-determination to fight against feelings of powerlessness and bewilderment. One way is through football communities that bound through oppositions to those dmacrated as ‘others’. An interesting point here might be that the zealousy and partisanship might actually be related to absence of common identity markers and are situated in human insecurities, which are plentiful in Lebanon. Or  as an article on YaLibnan put it:“Forget just being casual fans … football is a nationality in Lebanon!” Similarly Dag Tuastad has noted in his ethnography on a Palestinian football club in Jordan that, football becomes the expression of nationalsim among a stateless people.

Despite the similarity between political rallies an the world cup, there seems to be one major difference. Who supports whom in the World Cup is only minimally mitigated by secterianism. Altough sadly comparative figures are obviously nonexistent. It seems that there is no hegemony of one particular flag in one particular area, or at least so is my perception. 

While during the elections there is relatively little choice for whom the Lebanese root. Most likely it’s to do with family and secterian association. So what makes the Lebanese root in such a die-hard manner for a football team that’s not even theirs? While in Europe international football is an essentially nationalistic endeavor, where people are most likely to root for their country’s team, or the next best thing to it, the Lebanese actually don’t have a team in the WC.

This is were the the cosmopolitanism derived from the diasporic aspirations of the Lebanese seems to come in. It’s not unusual for a service driver in Beirut to tell you that he’s actually Swedish, German, British, Brazilian or whatever else, rather than Lebanese. Thus it seems quite easy for the people to claim alliance to one or more of the countries that actually compete in the WC. Morever there seem to be particulary strong alliances to Brazil and Germany, as judged by the number of these two countries flags one can see around the country. This might actually have very tangible reasons.

The majority of foreign players within the Lebanese domestic football league are actually Brazilian. Two of Lebanon’s most popular football players Youssef Mohammed and Roda Antar played for years in Germany’s SC Freiburg. And further two of the coaches of the Lebanese national team were actually Germans.


The World Cup in Lebanon seems to present a complex and at times contradictory space for the display of identities. What is particulary interesting in the analyses of football as public ritual, is that it approximates it to politics and religion. Thus the obvious mixing of these spheres in Lebanon and elsewhere is quite understandible. 

What on the surface seems partisan and zealous might actually be good for the country, and may foster greater acceptance of the plurality it inherently embodies. Functionalist anthropolist Janet Lever has  argued that football fosters greater social integration, particularily throug the ritualization of conflict. Footbal confrontations sustain traditional pluralisms, counter cultural homogeinity, while acccenturating the wholeness of the social system.

Courtesy of the Telegraph.co.uk

The worldwide outcry and protest against the Israeli attack on the flotilla makes me proud and is only measured by my anger about the relative silence of Western governments.

The local blogger community has produced several good reflections in face of the attack. Sean over at the human province wrote a response in terms of history and sovereignty, which made think. 

It is no news that the death of a Westerner will provoke greater response by media, and in extension global activism than that of a Palestinian. Yet ordinarily, Western governments, extend the protection of their sovereignty to the very bodies of their citizens. Yet in this case seem to revoke this mechanism.

Following Carl Schmitt, according to Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the  state of exception  ie  the sphere of power where questions of citizenship and individual rights can be diminished, superseded and rejected onto death,  is the ultimate expressions of sovereignty.  The state of Israel signifies the normality of this practice on everyday bases in relation to the Palestinians.  As this expression of power is inscribed onto the bodies of citizens from other governments without retribution, the Israeli state de facto invades the  sovereign territory of those countries whose citizens it murders or punishes. Invasion without defense…at least so far.

Here some of the findings:

Courtesy of WikiCommons

by Sanja Kelly

“The country reports presented in this edition detail how women through – out the Middle East continue to face systematic discrimination in both laws and social customs. Deeply entrenched societal norms, combined with conservative interpretations of Shari‘a (Islamic law), continue to relegate women to a subordinate status. Women in the region are signifi cantly underrepresented in senior positions in politics and the private sector, and in some countries they are completely absent from the judiciary. Perhaps most visibly, women face gender-based discrimination in personal-status laws, which regulate marriage, divorce, child guardianship, inheritance, and other aspects of family life. Laws in most of the region declare that the husband is the head of the family, give the husband power over his wife’s right to work, and in some instances specifi cally require the wife to obey her husband. Genderbased violence also remains a signifi cant problem.”

“In nearly all of the countries examined, however, progress is stymied by the lack of democratic institutions, an independent judiciary, and freedoms of association and assembly. Excessively restrictive rules on the formation of civil society organizations make it more diffi cult for women’s advocates to effectively organize and lobby the government for expanded rights. The scarcity of research and data on women’s status further impedes the advocacy efforts of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and activists. And ultimately, the passage of new laws that guarantee equal rights for women means little if those guarantees are not fully enforced by state authorities.”

“Among other important findings and developments are the following:

Arab Business Women. Courtesy of Forbes magazine

- As measured by this study, Tunisian women enjoy the greatest degree of freedom in the MENA region, followed by women in Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, the UAE, Iraq, Qatar, Oman, and Iran. Yemen and Saudi Arabia lag signifi cantly behind.”

“The greatest gains were achieved in the areas of employment, education, and political representation. More women today hold jobs, are literate, and enroll in areas of study previously deemed inappropriate for them than five years ago. Women’s rights organizations are becoming more vocal and better organized, and women are increasing their representation in elected government bodies, albeit with the help of quota systems.

-Gender-based violence remains one of the most serious obstacles in women’s lives. Laws that would protect women from spousal abuse are absent in most countries, spousal rape is not criminalized, and honor killings still occur and are on the rise in Iraq and Palestine.

- Women’s access to justice remains poor due to their low degree of legal literacy, cultural requirements that women fi rst seek mediation through the family before turning to courts, the patriarchal leanings of many male judges, and the fact that in most countries a woman’s testimony is worth only half that of a man in certain areas of the law.”

Download the full report here

By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writer – Tue Dec 15, 8:43 am ET

CAIRO – The sexual harassment of women in the streets, schools and work places of the Arab world is driving them to cover up and confine themselves to their homes, said activists at the first-ever regional conference addressing the once taboo topic.

Activists from 17 countries across the region met in Cairo for a two-day conference ending Monday and concluded that harassment was unchecked across the region because laws don’t punish it, women don’t report it and the authorities ignore it.

The harassment, including groping and verbal abuse, is a daily experience women in the region face and makes them wary of going into public spaces, whether it’s the streets or jobs, the participants said. It happens regardless of what women are wearing.

With more and more women in schools, the workplace and politics, roles have changed but often traditional attitudes have not. Experts said in some places, like Egypt, harassment appears sometimes to be out of vengeance, from men blaming women for denied work opportunities.

Amal Madbouli, who wears the conservative face veil or niqab, told The Associated Press that despite her dress, she is harassed and described how a man came after her in the streets of her neighborhood.

“He hissed at me and kept asking me if I wanted to go with him to a quieter area, and to give him my phone number,” said Madbouli, a mother of two. “This is a national security issue. I am a mother, and I want to be reassured when my daughters go out on the streets.”

Statistics on harassment in the region have until recently been nonexistent, but a series of studies presented at the conference hinted at the widespread nature of the problem.

As many as 90 percent of Yemeni women say they have been harassed, while in Egypt, out of a sample of 1,000, 83 percent reported being verbally or physically abused.

A study in Lebanon reported that more than 30 percent of women said they had been harassed there.

“We are facing a phenomena that is limiting women’s right to move … and is threatening women’s participation in all walks of life,” said Nehad Abul Komsan, an Egyptian activist who organized the event with funding from the U.N. and the Swedish development agency.

Harassment has long been a problem in Mideast nations. But it was little discussed until three years ago, when blogs gave posted amateur videos showing a crowd of men assaulting women in downtown Cairo during a major Muslim holiday in one of the most shocking harassment incidents in the region.

The public outcry sparked an unprecedented public acknowledgment of the problem in Egypt and elsewhere in the region, and drove the Egyptian government to consider two draft bills addressing sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment, including verbal and physical assault, has been specifically criminalized in only half a dozen Arab countries over the past five years. Most of the 22 Arab states outlaw overtly violent acts like rape or lewd acts in public areas, according to a study by Abul Komsan.

Participants at the conference said men are threatened by an increasingly active female labor force, with conservatives laying the blame for harassment on women’s dress and behavior.

In Syria, men from traditional homes go shopping in the market place instead of female family members to spare them harassment, said Sherifa Zuhur, a Lebanese-American academic at the conference.

Abul Komsan described how one of the victims of harassment she interviewed told her she had taken on the full-face veil to stave off the hassle.

“She told me ‘I have put on the niqab. By God, what more can I do so they leave me alone,’” she said, quoting the woman. Some even said they were reconsidering going to work or school because of the constant harassment in the streets and on public transpiration.

Where segregation between the sexes is the norm and women are sheltered by religious or tribal customs, cases of sexual harassment are still common at homes and in the times when women must venture out, whether to markets, hospitals or government offices.

In Yemen, where nearly all women are covered from head to toe, activist Amal Basha said 90 percent of women in a published study reported harassment, specifically pinching.

“The religious leaders are always blaming the women, making them live in a constant state of fear because out there, someone is following them,” she said.

If a harassment case is reported in Yemen, Basha added, traditional leaders interfere to cover it up, remove the evidence or terrorize the victim.

In Saudi Arabia, another country where women cover themselves completely and are nearly totally segregated from men in public life, women report harassment as well, according to Saudi activist Majid al-Eissa.

His organization, the National Family Safety Program, has been helping draft a law criminalizing violence against women in the conservative kingdom, where flirting can often cross the line into outright assault. Discussion of the law begins Tuesday.

“It will take time especially in this part of the world to absorb the gender mixture and the role each gender can play in society,” he said. “We are coping with changes (of modern life), except in our minds.”

Courtesy of Aieman Khimji

After having spent the past ten days in the Forests of Estonia, I am currently crossing the Baltic Sea in Ibn Fadlanian manner. Believe it or not, but this part of the world has internet access in both places. Despite this, I’ve  been relatively idle when it comes to looking after the Long Slumber.

On return to my digital duties I have found that a lot of new sites have linked to the Slumber, many of whom have more than questionable content and raisons d’etre. I thus wonder:

” Is it unavoidable that, if I publicly criticize my culture and religion- as little as I have of it -that a bunch of Arab and Islam-hating loons jump on the band wagon? “

  The question, seems to open considerations of ethics, ownership, identity and globalization that are intrinsically connected to the emergence of the World Wide Web and particularly Web 2.0 technology. On the other hand they are at least as old as human writing.

The sacred books surely are the supreme example of the uses and abuses of the written word. Was Mohammed guilty, when he invoked the Jihad al saghir  (military or martial strive)- guided by God’s hand or not? Was Darwin responsible for the social darwinism of the colonial project?

 Answers to this dilemma are not easily found, but they surely point to the ethical obligation of the writer.

Immanuel Kant warned, at the turn of the 19th century, of the use of mercenaries. He proclaimed that: “the practice of hiring man to kill or be killed…” (makes them) “… mere machines in the hand of another”. Kant morally rejected the idea of mercanaries on grounds of their skewed motivations.

The history of Blackwater, the worlds largest security company (new-age term for mercenary army), reads like John Grisham’s nightmares. Blackwater founder Eric Prince, is now being accused of murder, illicit arms dealing, and a bad attitude when it comes to religious coexistence.  Jeremy Scahill, journalist for the Nation and author of ‘Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army’ has long documented the companies doings. Here the most recent episode:

“A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into the country on Prince’s private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.”…(Here the full article)

Some background materials:

• Author of ‘Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army’, Jeremy Scahill  Testifies in Landmark House Hearing on Defense Contracting (May 2007)
• Here the website of blackwaterwatch. 

Having asked a bit around I couldn’t find one women that didn’t have a story of sexual harassment to tell. Narratives ranged from guys in the car driving by mumbling something about vaginae or asses, to service drivers that reach over to ‘curtiously’ close the door properly while ‘unwantingly’ brushing the breast of a female passenger, to the obligatory adjusted rear-view mirror to peek under a women’s skirt, to outright groping in the street and straight forward sexual advances by superiors at work. 

James Gruber  noted that there are cultural roots to sexual harassment. Practices and settings seem to vary from country to country. While here in Beirut harassment seems to be mostly verbal in nature, in Egypt physical assault seems quite common.

                                                                                                                                By Banksy 

Sexual harassment is widespread and I personally know of stories from Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. A recent study by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights found that 83% of all Egyptian women experience sexual harassment, and 98% of foreigners in the country, while 62% of man admitted to harassing. 

Sexual harassment is the all present, all ignored elephant that nobody wants to talk about. Mohammed Ali Atassi of al Jadid noted on sexual harassment in Egypt, that it is a: “social problem that politicians and the media have tended to treat as an instance of individual, abnormal behavior. Because they treat it as an isolated aberration from proper social norms – falling outside the path, principles and traditions of  a sanctioned way of life – Egyptian society as a whole does not need to confront it.”

This silence is also reflected in the academy. Literature on sexual harassment is vast and is made up of such diverse fields as anthropology, criminology, managerial studies, gender studies and sociology. However writing on this, our part of the world seems as good as inexistent. 

Definitions of sexual harassment themselves are flimsy and cause much confusion. The UN Office of the Special Adviser Gender Issues and Advancement of Women defines sexual harassment as: ” any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favour, verbal or physical conduct or gesture of a sexual nature, or any other behaviour of a sexual nature that might reasonably be expected or be perceived to cause offence or humiliation to another”. Although sexual harassment can be directed by women and within one sex, hardly any man I asked had a story of their harassment to tell. But let’s come back to that later.

The Arabic term al taharush al jinsi (sexual harassment) has only been in use since  the mid 90′s. Conceptualizations here also range widely and are influenced by class and levels of education. The Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures discusses that some women frame sexual harassment in accordance with Islam. In doing so they condemn sexual harassment as illicit behavior outside the sanctioned bonds of marriage. 

A particularly disturbing instance of sexual harassment occurred in Egypt in 2006.  Mohammed Ali Attasi described: ”During the downtown celebrations of the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, a crowd of hundreds of sexually frenzied young men participated in violent attacks on dozens of women, surrounding them in the streets, groping and even trying to undress them. As police stood by and watched the scene ambivalently, no one, not mothers nor veiled women, were safe from the mob”.

Reasons for this outbreak have been widely discussed by activists and across TV shows.

Some have pointed to the fact that Eid al Fitr, situated at the end of Ramadan, where man and women at least during the day have to abstain from sex, might have to do with that. Others have noted that overall economic pressures delay the age of marriage and thus of ‘legitimate’ sexual relations. Interestingly  a statistic  on Brian Whitaker’s  al-bab suggested that Egyptians interest in sex is increased during Ramadan.

Outsiders have pointed to the suppressed nature of sexuality in an Islamic contexts in general, and the associated sexual frustration. Although there might be some truth to any of the arguments,  in that in the West sexual harassment is very prevalent also. Particularly at the workplace. In the US for example 40% of all work related lawsuits are about sexual harassment. 

Although it is good to look at societal pressures to explain a phenomena, sexual harassment is not new, not only prevalent in the Arab region. It’s seems universal and not completely about sex.

As a man there was always a question that bugged me about sexual harassment. I wonder if guys that call ” Shou, ya ashta!” ( Hey sweet one) or  ”Shou hal ties” (what an ass) actually expect to get anywhere in terms of actually having sex with a women. I never heard of a girl that turned around and said: “yalla taffadalu” (be my guest). Actually most women here ignore it. They’ve normally been told by their mothers not to react in order not to provoke physical advances, and have therefore build up a thick skin against it over the years.  

So sexual harassment at least in this instance doesn’t  actually seem to be about sex. Also the fact that men here, tough I am sure that they have been approached in such a way that would fit the above definition either by older women, the so-called ikht rijal or by other man , would not qualify such behavior as sexual harassment easily.

Actually very recently a friend of mine, playfully touched my balls in the pool during a pool party. I told him that  I am not into it, but wasn’t really appalled. If the same thing would happen to a women I probably would be. After contemplating on reasons for that, i realized it was related to our power relationship. Firtsly I felt superior  in physical strength to him and could have waned him off by force. But also in terms of social status, he as an homosexual man is more vulnerable in the Middle Eastern context. I am sure I would have felt different if I would have been powerless or in the weaker position.  It was our power relationship that didn’t make  me qualify it as sexual harassment. The  very same friend, however is himself being sexually harassed all the time, due to his effeminate looks, and the fact that as a homosexual he ranks lower on societies packing order. 

Also the other above scenarios seem to point in long slumberian manner into the direction of power, which is backed up by much of the literature.  Much of feminist analyses proclaims that  sexual harassment is not really about sex at all, or at least not about sexual branks, misunderstandings, or miscues, but about power.  Namely, the power of men within a male-dominated social and economic institutions to violate and victimize women. 

Such scholars using widely differentiating methods, from a myryiad of disciplines seem to agree on three basic prepositions in relation to sexual harassment 1.) men sexually harass women because they are culturally privileged 2.) social mores and practices sanction their right to do so and 3.) organization i.e.society does not adequately protect victims or appropriately punish perpetrators. Although this vantage point has been criticised by another feminist camp that proclaims that such analyses: “betrays feminism to be largely populated by a group of victim-obsessed, animale sexual puritans who see a sexual predator in every man and who would thus excise heterosexuality from contemporary life”  the three points seem to hold in an Arab context and allow us to explain the great prevalence of sexual harassment.

Courtesy of (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3221/2709837533_58e3888dd2.jpg)

 One, man in Arab society are still privileged, there is no two ways about it, despite Kandyiotis patriachal bargain. Two, cultural practices do sanction that behavior. Nihad Abu Al Qumsan, an Egyptian women’s right activist notes that: “Many perpetrators believe that they are acting according to an ‘old Eastern custom’”.The Muslim women discussed in the Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Societies article were described to tend to see physical harassment as a problem while excessive staring and verbal behavior were interpreted as ‘natural’ or in ‘order’ with the biological nature of men. Interestingly I have found similar conception among some friends here in Beirut, that didn’t seem to see verbal harassment in the streets as unusual or even classified it as harassment.

Yet further, the public discourse on sexual harassment is normally linked to proper or improper behavior of women. It confirms the societal ambivalent status of women in the public sphere. There seems to be much agreement that sexual harassment doesn’t happen to ‘proper women’ and women themselves are normally blamed for sexual advances. Which is untrue as the above mentioned study found that women of all social strata are affected and that it is not related to dress ie. women that wear the niqab (face cover) are as likely to be harassed as women that wear mini-skirts.

Sadly, despite the fact that all evidence suggest that dress-code is unrelated to the advances, more and more women wear the veil only to protect themselves from such advances as the Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures proclaims.

The Eid al Fitr instance for example was deliberately exploited by religious conservatives to re-moralize the public sphere. Atassi talks about a poster campaign that followed the instance. He writes: “The second poster continues the theme of objectifying woman, likening her to a piece of candy ready to be eaten, by portraying her as a lollipop that cannot be protected from flies (which means men in the language of these campaigns), save with the wrapper, which translates to the veil. Under the images of two lollipops, one wrapped and the second naked with flies hovering over it, a religious statement professes that an unveiled woman will not be able to protect herself –  for God, the creator, knows what is in her best interest, and thus ordered the veil.”

And finally three, there are no legal or societal penalties on that kind of behavior. As mentioned women are discouraged to answer back to the harassment. The 2005 Arab Human Development Report proclaimed that  despite most Arab penal codes guaranteeing the safety of women at the work place no code contains a concrete definition of the crime of sexual harassment. Yet societal values are not only reflected in codes but the practice of the executive. Zahra Hankir recounts in her article ‘The Reality of Harassment’  the story of Rima: ” a 26-year-old woman, … that when she went to the police station to report that she had been assaulted by a male colleague, the police officers on duty laughed at her and made lewd remarks. That experience sheds some light on why so many women who have been exposed to sexual harassment are often too scared to come forward, fearing that the incident will be interpreted as their fault.”

Following these insights, when a group of young man proclaim “yislam kissik” (praise your vagina) to a women in the street and especially if the women doesn’t reply, they re-enact the social order, re-claim the public space as an intrinsically male domain in which women are only  tolerated on the whims of men. The same is true for advances at the workplace, a formerly exclusively male-dominated space. What further emphasizes this interpretation is the fact that women are hardly ever molested if accompanied by man. A free roaming women, uncontrolled by fathers, brothers or husbands,  has to be put into her place as Gedah pointed out in relationship to sexual harassment.  

The fact that sexual harassment is particularly prevalent in the Arab World is not to do with our ‘unhealthy’ relationship to sexuality. It is rather to do with the system of patriarchy and the above discussed  consequences. Surely this in itself is related to our relationship to sexuality.

However what can be done? Pragmatically speaking the problem has to solved at a legal level, with the introduction of a legal concept of sexual harassment in the Arab  codes and the training and sensitization of police forces.

In Egypt a man has recently been sentenced to three years imprisonment for groping a women publically. But this was only possible because the women came forward and established a precedent . More and more women have to come forward in order for the states to realize the problem and take action. And more and more man have to stand up in face of harassment.

Courtesy of (http://observers.france24.com/files/images/anti-harcellement-3-nov-2006.jpg)

A European friend of mine that is fluent in Arabic recently challenged three guys that harassed her in a car. She walked up to the driver, told him to look into rear-view mirror and asked him to tell her what he sees. She said:”I see an ugly, stupid and silly guy. Please remind me why I should be talking to you. Because really I forgot”. His friends exploded in laughter while the guy stuttered “sorry, I am really sorry!” and she walked away feeling incredibly empowered.

I am not insinuating that this is the best way to deal with harassment in any setting. But for women to answer back in one way or another is an important point, both for the men to realize that there is some form of social penalty, and definitely for women to speak up. What the most appropriate behavior in each context is is unclear. The sexual harassment support group for example mentions that naming of the behavior is important. In an Arab context the invoking of the harassers mother or sister might help also. 

On a societal level however sexual harassment is yet again another expression of the deep inequalities that lie at the fundaments of our societies and to change these will take more than only speaking up and changing the law. However it is start!

I for example really liked the conclusions of the  2002, report which in foucauldian manner described  that the lack of knowledge production systems as the greatest hinderance for development in the region. The reports are  further an indicator for on what, both local (Khaliji) and Western, governments will spent their money on in the next years. After the 2002 report for example the Makhtoum foundation was founded, particularly set up to promote Arab knowledge production, also countless Universities (mostly in the Khalij) and research institutes followed. 

The prism of this years report, ‘human security‘ is also cutting-edge. The paradigm developed in contrast to national security, as history showed that the latter is frequently abused to suppress opposition groups resulting in the ‘insecurity’ of much of  a nations citizens.. Therefore the switch from the state to the individual, which in itself is a liberal vantage point. 

The report is cut up into seven sections. Many of which carry comical headings. They keep on referring to us, the Arabs as insecure, whileI thought we come across as cool and nonchalant.  Here some gems of the report, interpreted by my authoritative voice:

Section 1: People and Their Insecure Environment

• Time for celebration! 395 million people (Arabs) by 2015 (p.2). Bring it on Israel!
• Air pollution among the lowest in the world. On the other hand they mention  60% urban population by 2002 (p.3). Hell0! Have you recently been to Cairo, Damascus or Beirut? I am still mourning the amount of brain cells the afternoon traffic in Damascus has cost me. I always thought air pollution in this part of the world was a building pillar of the regimes control mechanisms. The exhasut fumes make you strangely numb and compliant.  And I don’t know why they worry about urban growth. You can get the Arab out of the desert, but not the desert out of the Arab, as Dubai proves.

• “Water pollution in the Arab countries has grown into a serious challenge” (p.3). I don’t need UNDP to tell me that. Last time I swam on Beirut’s Corniche, I smelled like a turd for 23 days.

Section 2: The State and its Insecure People

• “States are artificial creations” (p.4). What has that to do with our development. Put it in fucking Sykes and Picots Human Development Report, wherever the wankers were from.
• “Across the Arab region, six countries continue to prohibit the formation of political parties” (p.5). The other seven-teen odd states have them, but does it make any difference?
• In 2002 we had the lowest police-recorded homicide and assault rate in the world (p.6). This might speak for our inherently docile nature, which for so long has been misinterpreted (as I have discussed elsewhere) of the inherent lack of accountability. 
• “The path to (state) reform in the region has been laid out most clearly by its increasingly active and vocal civil society. The latter’s demands focus on: • Respect for the right to self-determination of all people. • Adherence to the principles of human rights, and rejection of all prevarication based on cultural particularism and the manipulation of national sentiment. • Public tolerance of different religions and schools of thought. • Sound parliamentary systems. • The incorporation in Arab constitutions of guarantees of political, intellectual, and party political pluralism, with political parties based on the principle of citizenship”(p.7). The fact that this reads like Voltaire’s christmas wish list, shows you how depoliticized civil society really is.

Section 3. The Vulnerability of those Lost from Sight

• The Arab region is characterized by a: “male culture of denial” (p. 8). Denial? Never! We would never deny anything!
• “So-called ‘honour crimes’ are the most notorious form of violence against women in several Arab societies”(p.8). Honor crimes? When was the last time UNDP included a statistic of how many women are killed by their partners in the US Human Development Report?
• Human trafficking of children leads to: “employment as beggars, itinerant vendors or camel jockey’s” (p.8). That is pure racist! Isn’t there a less offensive term for somebody riding a camel?

Section 4: Volatile Growth, High Unemployment and Persisting Poverty

• “Overall the Arab countries were less industrialized in 2007 than in 1970, almost four decades previously” (p.10). That’s only because of our progressive green politics as my friend Qifa Nabki has suggested. 
• “Arab countries will need about 51 million new Jobs by 2020″ (p.10) and “now suffer the highest unemployment rates in the world” (p.12). Pah, infidels! what do they know of the employment power of international terrorism.
• “Inequality in wealth has worsened siginficantly more tahn the deterioration  of income” (p.12). Zakat  (islamic practice of alms-giving) will handle that next Ramadan! I guess the strategically published before it to make us look bad.

Section 5: Hunger, Malnutrition and Food Insecurity

• “In a seeming paradox, while malnutrition is on the rise in both absolute and relative terms in some Arab countries, obesity is also an increasing health risk in the region” (p.12). That’s only due to the cultural practice of having to drink tea and eat before every political, social or business encounter. Breaking a slim-fast bar, just doesn’t sound as good as bread and salt.
• “food security needs to be pursued, not in terms of absolute sovereignty in food production, a goal impractical in light of regional water scarcities, but rather in terms of sufficiency for all members of society in essential commodities” (p.13). Don’t they know who they’re talking to? We peruse everything in terms of absolute sovereignty!

Section 6: Health Security Challenges

• “ In the last 40 years, Arab countries have made striking progress in forestalling death and extending life” (p.13). I guess they’re still mocking us for 67.

Section 7: Occupation and Military Intervention

• “Many of the threats to human security discussed in the Report coalesce in situations of occupation, conflict and military intervention. In Iraq, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Somalia, people’s basic rights to self-determination and peace have been forcibly annulled” (p.14). Here it is we always said it! Why doesn’t UNDP listen? It’s the fault of the two great shaitans, Israel and Americe.

For a solution to all the above, here an executive summary and the full report. And for even more in-depth analyses and serious comment on the report check Al-Bab.

Thank you UNDP! Thank you glorious West!

Here some excerpts and the link to the full article:

“How can you ask the Arab woman to celebrate her body? Will an Arab sexual revolution ever occur? Can the current pantheon of Arab feminists address the sexual curiosities of present and forthcoming generations of Arab adolescents? Or shall the prurient continue to seek sexual education in the pages of foreign magazines that adorn their local newsstands, boldly advisory on matters of sensual pleasures that neither haboba nor imam can answer? Isn’t Cosmopolitan more resourceful to the sexually speculative Arab girl than Sayidati? Is Arabo-medical feminism explicit enough regarding women’s sexual health issues? These are but some of the modern conundrums that occupy relative space in every-day Arab feminist rhetoric, but are hardly ever effectively answered nor given significant attention…. (full article)“