Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Womens Demonstration In Egypt Women

Juan Cole 06/02/2005

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

Women’s Demonstration in Egypt

Women demonstrated in Cairo on Wednesday as part of a general protest by journalists and other oppositionists. They maintain that they were manhandled by Egyptian security forces during a demonstration last week during a popular referendum. The question in the referendum was whether other parties should be able to field candidates to compete with Hosni Mubarak in presidential elections. (In any case, only parties approved by parliament, controlled by Mubarak’s party, will be allowed to field presidential candidates. They will exclude the Muslim Brotherhood, the major opposition group in the country). The narrowness of the referendum and the likelihood that it will leave the system unchanged provoked the original demosntrations.

The protesters alleged that female journalists and protesters were groped and handled inappropriately, even stripped of clothing, by security forces last week. They are demanding that the Interior Minister resign.

In conservative Egypt, charges of groping women are extremely serious, and the opposition is milking the issue for all it is worth. The protest cleverly combines the symbol of the new middle class (modern female journalists and protesters) and a potent symbol for the Muslim religious groups– the sanctity of Egyptian women.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Siamese Criminals: Trump and Netanyahu
  • Early Farming in Middle East, Sometimes Matriarchal, Spread through Learning, not Conquest
  • Misreading and Misrepresenting Iran
  • 12 Days Of War: Takeaways From The Israel-Iran Conflict
  • Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Judge and Ambassador, travelled further than Marco Polo. The Rihla records his Adventures

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved