Picture by crosby_cj / Flickr.com. Some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).25-year-old Sara does not feel secure telling her parents how she feels about myriad things. Having struggled with the concept of religion from a very young age, her proclamation of atheism was not met with much open-mindedness. “They freaked out and insisted I see a family sheikh”, she says. Her father also threatened to cut off funds for her college education. “The whole thing traumatized me which made me—in the end—say that I believe in God,” she adds.
Sara now lies about sexual activity, alcohol consumption, and more. What Sara describes as an 'off and on switch' made apparent the restraints fashioned by a conservative, mostly Muslim society. Based on three indices—the Social Progress Index, the Environmental Performance Index and the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Gender Gap report—Egypt comes at number six amongst the 15 least liberal countries in the world.
The Middle Eastern country was first faced with this wave of Islamism and ardent Wahhabism around Islamic theorist and Islamism figurehead Sayyid Qutb’s time in the 1950s and 1960s. Qutb lead the Muslim Brotherhood group and incited violence. The conservative shift was felt by many in society, except women suffered more than men as a result. And, despite Egypt’s uprising in 2011 against Mubarak’s regime and the injustice it inflicted, Egyptian women still experience malignant treatment and regard. To this day, women remain an afterthought on matters of divorce, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual harassment, and education.
