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She worked as a journalist in Egypt before and during the Revolution of 2011, when she got an arm and hand broken by the riot police, who also sexually assaulted her, she recalls. Her lawyer believes it was censorship-motivated. Today the author of Headscarves and Hymens lives and works in New York City and Cairo, being a contributor to media like The New York Times or The Guardian.

Eltahawy defines herself as a feminist of Muslim descent born in Egypt. She spoke to Salam Plan in Madrid’s Casa Árabe, during her Spanish tour this week to present her new book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls (Beacon Press), which is coming out next Septembre. It is her manifesto against what she calls “universal patriarchy”.

What does Donald Trump mean to you?

Donald Trump for me is a fascist fuck. Donald Trump is a white supremacist, who has been clear all along about his misogyny, his racism, his islamophobia, his homophobia… he’s a whole host of discrimination and bigotry. He was elected by a mostly racist body of American voters and he represents today the growing rise of global authoritarianism that has -at his core- patriarchy, a patriarchy which uses all these forms of oppression.

So, Donald Trump for me is a very dangerous man, but he’s one of many. He’s probably the most powerful of the many, but you have his equivalent with Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, Orbán in Hungary and so on and so forth. And then you have Sisi in Egypt and Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, when we talk about authoritarianism.

“Donald Trump is a very dangerous man, but he’s one of many. You have his equivalent with Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, Orbán in Hungary, Sisi in Egypt, Mohamed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia…”

Do you think everyone who voted for Trump agrees with his rhetoric and all these ideas?

Well, 60 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. What is especially shocking to me is that the majority of white women voters voted for Donald Trump, knowing that he had been accused by at least twelve women of sexual assault, and knowing his rhetoric, that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, islamophobic and all of it. So, if you voted for Donald Trump, you are a racist.

Many Americans get very upset when you say that and they say: “No, I’m not a racist” and they give you a whole bunch of excuses. But you understood very well that you voted for a racist, and if you voted for a racist, you are a racist.

What lessons could the other politicians draw from his success?

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party in the United States for too long has been moving towards the right, because they believe that the best way to win more votes is to bring people over from the Republican party. This is a disaster, it’s a mistake. Some politicians are learning sadly, and you see this in Europe too, that they should co-opt the rhetoric that has won the election for the Republican party.

But I’m seeing now more and more younger politicians and politicians of colour, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , Ilhan Olmar, Rashida Tlaib… especially the women of colour, who have been elected to the US Congress, I’m seeing that they represent a wonderful and refreshing and much needed antidote to the hate of the Republican Party and to the mistakes of the Democratic Party.

“The women of colour, who have been elected to the US Congress, represent a wonderful and refreshing and much needed antidote to the hate of the Republican Party and to the mistakes of the Democratic Party”

The Republican Party has been openly racist for decades. Donald Trump did not invent racism. He’s not the first American politician to run on these platforms. Donald Trump is the fruition of many years of white supremacy, islamophobia, capitalism… many, many other forms of bigotry and discrimination. He’s just especially avert about them.

At the same time, the Democratic Party has been dominated by white politicians and has not fought islamophobia in any effective way. In fact, when we talk specifically about islamophobia, I believe that one of the biggest mistakes of the Democratic Party is that the only time up until now, when they speak about Muslims, is when they talk about American Muslims in the military and in the police.

Also about Obama not being a Muslim.

Exactly, yes. The Democratic Party wants to play the good Muslim card, by saying ‘Muslims are us as well: they also fought for us in Afghanistan and Irak. This is not the kind of opposition to islamophobia that I support. I don’t want to be called a good Muslim or a bad Muslim, I want to be called an American citizen who has every right to be in this country, regardless of whether I’m in your military or not.

American politics has a massive problem with white supremacy, especially, and discrimination of all kinds. (…) Muslims in America were punished for 9/11, and we had no role in 9/11. But the Bush Administration launched two wars against Muslim majority countries and, inside the United States, launched the Patriot Act, which targeted specifically Muslims. And so you saw the rise of islamophobia.

“I don’t want to be called a good or a bad Muslim, I want to be called an American citizen who has every right to be in this country”

Where is the limit between freedom of expression or criticism and islamophobia?

I believe in the right to offend, but I believe in the right to protest offence. When we talk about the First Amendment in the United States, it protects you from the Government controlling your speech, but cooperations can and do. And the media does have its own kind of self-control in a way.

Speech has incited hate and violence in Boznia, Rwanda, in New Zealand… I’m against censorship, but I recognize the power of speech, and I think it’s imperative on us to protest hate speech with all the methods that we have at our disposal because people are being killed (…).

I was a journalist in the Middle East for ten years. I’m against censorship, because where I come from [Egypt], it is used to silence us, because once you give the state the power to censor, at first you think it is for a good reason, to protect us, but then the line gets bigger and bigger, and that is what happened in the United States with the Patriot Act.

>>>You may also read: Expert warns about more terror attacks against Muslims if politicians don’t tackle islamophobia<<<

The week after the New Zealand attacks, Islamophobia cases in the UK rose by almost 600%, according to the Tell Mama organization, which holds the records for it. How would you tackle hate speech? Media are always pointed at, but what about politicians and institutions?

I think politicians must stop using lazy stereotypes of people in a hateful rhetoric for votes. [They] must stop monopolizing any kind of fearmongering that they have used for a long time to portray people as ‘under attack’ or to say ‘these people are coming to take your jobs, to rape your women’.

I think that the media must start portraying a more complicated image of people who are not white. I think that the media is too lazy to portray people. They give you all these very, very reductive images of people. So, you’re not allowed to be a full human being.

Media news rooms are very white. The media must start hiring people of different backgrounds, because they will understand reporting on all of those communities in a much more complicated and rich way.

I think the aim of hate speech is to dehumanize, because if you dehumanize you make it easier to attack. And complication is the best way to humanize someone. Allow people to be complicated.

“The aim of hate speech is to dehumanize, because if you dehumanize you make it easier to attack. And complication is the best way to humanize someone. Allow people to be complicated”

What do you think about New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s reaction to the recent attacks?

I think she’s done some very good things and I think she’s done some very lazy stereotypical things. I think the fact that she refuses to say the name of the man who committed the massacre is very good. I think that the fact that she and the government worked very quickly to change the legislation on semi-automatic rifles and guns generally is very good and necessary, and a lesson to the United States.

I think the compassion that she showed to the Muslim community when she went [to support them]… she looked genuine. But I reject anyone who is not Muslim using the hijab as a form of solidarity, for many reasons. Number one: the hijab is not a gimmick or a toy that you put on one day and you take off the next day (..). It’s an empty gesture. It is much more meaningful to show solidarity by fighting white supremacy every day.

Number two: as a Muslim woman who fought for eight years to take off my hijab [in Egypt], and as a Muslim woman who is in a family where my mother wears hijab for piety, my sister wears it for identity -she wants to say ‘fuck you’ to the racists- and I reject hijab and all forms of modesty… So, when I see white non-Muslim women putting on the hijab, I see that they have chosen a sight that is not mine (…).  I would prefer instead of wearing a headscarf, when they’re out in public, that they support Muslim visible women. If you see a Muslim visible woman being attacked verbally or physically, intervene and help that woman.

“I’m a Muslim woman who is in a family where my mother wears hijab for piety, my sister wears it for identity -she wants to say ‘fuck you’ to the racists- and I reject hijab and all forms of modesty”

People are sometimes surprised or do not believe that Muslim women can be feminists.

I keep my feminism and Islam separate, because for me anything that hurts women and girls, I will fight, regardless of where it comes from. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, secular politics… I will fight patriarchy everywhere.

I believe the Abrahamic religions -Judaism, Christianity and Islam- are very patriarchal and we have to fight the patriarchy inside those religions. But I also believe there is patriarchy outside those religions.

I think that Islamic feminism in this sense is useful, and I am not an Islamic feminist. I have used their work to give to Muslim women a weapon who write to me and say ‘I want something that will help me fight x, y and z’. (…) If a woman says to me, “my religion is helping me to be more feminist”, I want to have all the weapons at her disposal to fight patriarchy, because I want to fight patriarchy wherever it exists.

You just said you are not an Islamic feminist. How would you define yourself?

I’m a feminist, I was born in Egypt and I’m of Muslim descent. This is how I usually present myself, and I think that makes it complicated enough and that’s all you need know [she giggles].

Feminist Mona Eltahawy thinks patriarchy needs to be tackled universally. © Salam Plan

Why do you say ‘Arab countries need a sexual revolution’ in your book Headscarves and Hymens?

When the revolutions began in Tunisia in 2010 and then spread to many other countries, including my country of birth, the revolutions were men and women together fighting the state. I wanted to ask in my book: when we go home, after we all have risked our lives together… Are the men that we stood shoulder to shoulder with against the state, are they revolutionaries at home, in the street? And we found in many cases the revolutionaries have a patriarch inside them.

Without the social revolution against the dictator in the public space and the sexual revolution against the dictator in the bedroom, the political revolution against the dictator in the palace will fail.

[In] Egypt right now, the political revolution is stuck, because it is one group of men fighting another group of men for a small piece of power: the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. I’m not interested in this, I’m interested in this revolution in the street and the revolution in the bedroom [which] -together- will make possible a much more comprehensive form of liberation on the state level as well.

What is the main lesson you have learned throughout your years of journalism and activism?

To stay angry and to recognize that the revolution lives inside you. So that way, wherever you go around the world, that internal revolution finds the various forms of oppression that patriarchy co-opts and utilizes. I often say that my goal is to destroy patriarchy all over the world (…). The tattoos which I have on my arm [, one of them says]: ‘we are the ones we have been waiting for’.

Don’t you get tired of staying angry?

[She giggles and then gets serious again]. No, not really, because it really does fuel me and I can use it everywhere I go. And for my next book I use anger as what I call one of the necessary sins. Because women are discouraged of being angry. It’s one attribution we’re not allowed to be by patriarchy.

What other six “necessary sins” do you talk about in your new book?

These are attributes that patriarchy does not want women and girls to want to do or to be: anger, attention seeking, profanity, ambition, power, violence and lust. Each of the chapters is about one of these sins and I write about why those sins are important in the fight against patriarchy.

I call this fight “feminism in 3D”: defying, disobeying and disrupting patriarchy. And it’s not about the Middle East or North Africa, it’s about the world. It’s about how patriarchy is universal. And I use stories and examples from feminism fights from around the world: Uganda, South Africa, South Korea, Argentina, India, Ireland… as a way of showing the feminist international revolution that targets patriarchy around the world. So, it’s like my feminist manifesto [she giggles].

I believe Judaism, Christianity and Islam are very patriarchal and we have to fight the patriarchy inside those religions. But I also believe there is patriarchy outside those religions. It’s universal

And how do you imagine Egypt and the US, the places you know better, in ten years’ time?

One of the things that gave me hope in the United States lately is what I was mentioning earlier about the election of these women of colour. I think they have come to American politics and really turned it upside down (…).

I believe the revolution, everywhere in the world, comes from the margins. It doesn’t come from the majority; the majority is too comfortable and wants to hold to the status quo.

In the Middle East and North Africa, Egypt now, including Saudi Arabia too, I really believe that feminism and talking and sexual ownership of our bodies -be it of feminist discourse or LGBTQ discourse-, so queer groups, who are increasingly visible -in Tunisia, in Lebanon they have been for a while now, and in Egypt we have something called the Alliance of Queer Egyptians now-…

So, in the Middle East and North Africa, [I imagine] an increasingly feminist-queer identified struggle; in the United States, an increasingly feminist of colour struggle will be the places of the margins that will influence society at large. They give me optimism, because I’m a tendentious optimist.

>>> Follow Salam Plan- ‘journalism against hate’ on Twitter and Facebook<<<

La entrada Mona Eltahawy: “If you voted for Donald Trump, you are a racist” se publicó primero en Salam Plan.

Abdellah Boussouf is a Moroccan historian and since 2007 he leads the Council placed by king Mohammed VI of Morocco in Rabat. His latest work (published in Arab, French and Spanish for now) offers a compilation of essays in which he reviews historical episodes, Quranic quotes and texts of the Muslim prophet Mohammed to demonstrate that Islam is a religion of peace and respect for the ones who are different. He talked with Salam Plan at Casa Árabe (Arab House) in Madrid about this call for dialogue and a good coexistence.

In your book you write about historical moments in which different religions and cultures lived in peace. What has changed so much that it makes this so difficult in some cases nowadays?

Today we live a very difficult situation of Islam in the world. We have two extremes: the extreme of Islamophobia, racism (and) we have the other extreme: fundamentalism, radicalization and even terrorism. This book is a reminder for those who try to manipulate Islam, who try to instrumentalize it from both sides. It is meant to tell them that it is not Islam what they use, but lies about Islam. Islam has nothing to do with terrorism or fear. So Islam is not here to invade Europe or to be an element of clash with Westerners.

Islam is a religion like any other, a religion of peace, tolerance and coexistence. The historical description of fourteen centuries shows that Islam has never known terrorist movements against each other. It has never been in a situation of conflict related to a religious or philosophical conviction.

And why is there now so much Islamophobia and Islamist radicalism?

As far as Islamophobia is concerned, there is an unjustified fear. This fear is due to a total ignorance of Islam, today in our societies we know Islam very, very little. And we are afraid of the unknown. It was a great intellectual of Palestinian origin named Edward Said who spoke of the “shock of ignorances”. We are living that moment now.

As for the Muslims, in the case of those who claim to use Islam to perpetrate fear and terrorism, they have nothing to do with Islam. For us -I come from Morocco-, the King delivered a speech aimed at the Moroccan nation and the whole world in which he said that “the authors of a terrorist act are not Muslims”. Therefore, there is a manipulation of one side and the other: either for Islam to scare or to justify horrible acts of terrorism.

You claim that Islam is a peaceful religion, but Islamophobes and radical Islamists believe it is synonymous with war. What would you answer?

Islam has never been a religion of war. In this book, I start with Quranic texts that clearly say: “Whoever kills a soul, it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one soul, it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.” Islam takes life and not death, contrary to what we are told today by these factions, which -fortunately- are not the majority and who preach hatred to others. The extremes meet, they feed each other.

“Terrorism has no nationality or religion”

In the recent attacks in Catalonia, the terrorists were of Moroccan origin (although all raised in Spain) and analysts tried to find in that origin the source of their motivations to kill. Do you think that is part of the explanation?

First: terrorism has no nationality or religion. They were of Moroccan origin but lived in Spain and were, mostly, Spanish citizens. And also the other perpetrators of the attacks in Belgium and France, European citizens.

I think that this is the mistake, that of trying to attach the responsibility to a country, an ethnic origin or a religion. I advocate a shared responsibility, we are all responsible today for this phenomenon that threatens us all. Moroccans have also paid a high price; and in (all) Africa, and in other places.

In another book, “L’origine” (The Origin), I try to explain why. It is a set of elements. I don’t think there is a magic recipe to say “this is the one responsible”, nor is there a single solution. There is a manipulation of religion, but there are also social reasons that must be addressed, because we must not allow social problems to absorb young people and become easy prey for the death recruiters.

“Islam and the universal common” is the title of the book you are presenting now. What three things would you highlight that Muslims, Jews and Christians have in common?

They are the three monotheistic religions, we worship the same God. A great Jesuit, Pierre de Chardin, said: “Everything that rises, converges”. So we converge on the same God.

Islam is a religion like any other. I think there are many things that unite us and very few things that separate us. We adore the same God, we have acts of adoration that are present in the three religions.
As believers we have to face the great challenges of our century. Humanity today is threatened by climate change, wars, family… In the past, Christians, Muslims and Jews contributed to the development of civilization, especially in Spain.

Andalusia is spoken of as the “paradise on earth”, where the three religions coexisted perfectly and in a very positive way. Jews, Muslims and Christians, who handed over Toledo, Cordoba, Seville and Sicily in Italy, but also Fez and Marrakech… history has many examples of living together.

The thirteenth century saw the defeat of Navas de Tolosa (Spain) in 1212. There were 1,100 peace and trade treaties between the two shores of the Mediterranean at a time when there were no communication media like today. There was much exchange and fluidity between the two shores of the Mediterranean. Despite current technologies, today we have not reached this level.

“Media only speak when there are terrorist attacks, so we leave the field free for the xenophobes”

You worked for intercultural dialogue in France and Belgium, two countries with good electoral results for anti-Muslim political parties. How -do you think- that Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, leaders of the extreme right in the respective countries, are successful?

There are several factors. They are trying to cultivate fear of Islam, but there are other reasons: economic, social problems. Marine Le Pen has no plans for the French society, it has no solution for the crisis in that country. So scaring voters is the best way to attract a certain number of them, who sometimes lose confidence in the political apparatus.

I also think that media play a very important role: they only talk about trains that arrive late, they only speak when there are attacks, when there is an imam who makes a small statement … but when there are things that unite all the believers, all cultures, they don’t publish it. I created many initiatives in France of interculturality, interreligiousness, but nobody talks about that. Thus we leave the field free for the xenophobes, for the fascists.

Do you think these are the same problems for which France and Belgium have seen the followers of Daesh grow?

Yes, in some neighborhoods there are many problems: young people who don’t go to school, who are jobless, whith ignorance of religion, identity crisis … We have not done much to solve this, both the host countries and those of origin. We have not done what is necessary to accompany them, to allow these young people to access their identity and find a certain balance. We leave them alone. And, obviously, the fundamentalists, the terrorists recruit in these environments, where they (the youngsters) live in situations of fragility.

And when you talk to the authorities about doing something in favour of dialogue, what do they say?

Many people in Europe speak of ‘deradicalization’ as a system to deal with this phenomenon of Daesh and other groups, to which I do not give much credit. It takes a lot of work, mentalities and all the actors must work in the same direction. From the family, society, school, political parties, the media and the academic world … we should all pull together in the same direction. We face human beings and we must address them in their entirety: (taking into account the) material, psychic and intellectual (aspects).

What would you say to an extremist, be it Islamophobic or fundamentalist Islamist, if you had one in front of you?

I would tell him: “I’m like you. I’m a human being like you, you should not hate me or kill me, because killing me is like killing yourself, and by hating me, you hate yourself. We need each other, we won’t be able to continue living on this planet if we try to reject each other, the only alternative we have is to respect each other and work together”.

La entrada Abdellah Boussouf: “To the extremists: ‘Do not hate me, because it would mean hating yourself” se publicó primero en Salam Plan.