San Bernadino killings she was articulate and angry with a breathtaking skill for crafting a clever soundbite. She was ‘traumatised into feminism’ she says when describing her political development as a young woman in Saudi Arabia.
Although hijabless now, she spoke movingly about how difficult it was to stop wearing it: it took her eight years to give it up even though she knew it was not for her within one year of adopting it at age 16 in Saudi Arabia in reaction to being groped while on hajj (pilgrimage) in Mecca. Interestingly, she was dressed from head to toe in white pilgrimage clothes like a nun when she was touched up, and yet believed that wearing a hijab permanently would protect her from the unwanted attentions of men. When she returned to Egypt in 1988, very few women were wearing the hijab. Talk about swimming against the current: Mona gave it up just as it became ubiquitous. Her growing doubts about the hijab were resolved temporarily by convincing herself that she had ‘chosen’ to wear it and that the very act of exercising her choice was a sign of her independence of mind and her feminism. Her wake- up call came when an Egyptian feminist asked, ‘Can’t you see you’re destroying everything we’ve worked so hard for?’
