… that they have been divorced without their knowledge and that their husband is now married to a woman 40 or 50 years their junior.
…Their children are by now also married and never come to visit. These women come to me with severe depression and many other mental illnesses. —-Nawal El Saadaw
[Photo: In April 2012, a court in Egypt suspended the 100-member constituent assembly on the grounds that it did not reflect the diversity of Egyptian society. A new assembly, which was responsible for amending the constitution that had been suspended in 2012 was appointed in the autumn of 2013. According to Nawal El Saadawi, the new assembly was hardly more representative of Egyptian society than the previous one.]
Look at this fucking Cunt: the US-led dirty war against Syria that began in 2011… HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani was kidnapped by the Israelis as a child, raised by the Mossad, and later sent to Syria to infiltrate it.
Capitalizing on anti-government protests that erupted as part of the Arab Spring, the US partnered with Israel, Gulf monarchies, Turkey, and other NATO states to wage a regime change campaign targeting Assad. The CIA-led operation, codenamed Timber Sycamore, proved to be “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A.,” the New York Times reported in 2017. Leaked NSA documents revealed a budget of nearly $1 billion per year, or around $1 of every $15 in CIA spending. The CIA armed and trained nearly 10,000 insurgents, spending “roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program,” U.S. officials told the Washington Post in 2015. Two years later, one U.S. official estimated that CIA-funded militias “may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies.”
The power of this Egyptian heroine:
She’s so spot on about all religions are scams, patriarchy, rotten to the core since they command us not to be free: Speeches by Nawal El Saadawi of Egypt and Alice Shalvi of Israel, speaking about religion at the First World Summit on Women and the Many Dimensions of Power, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, June 1990. Both speakers recently passed away, but the issues with which they dealt will likely never die.
[Produced by the late WINGS co-founder Katherine Davenport. Includes the original WINGS sound logo WINGS commissioned from composer Maggi Payne.]
“Women are oppressed in all religions. The problem is not Islam, it is the political systems that use Islam and religion.” She wrote a book called God Resigns at the Summit Meeting, in which God is questioned by Jewish, Muslim and Christian prophets and finally quits. It proved to be so controversial that the police under the Mubarak regime ordered the publisher to burn the book. She said it happened since the “regime felt God Resigns was a dangerous book because it could open people’s minds. To be a dictator and control people you must veil their minds. Our role, as writers, is to unveil it.” Her criticism of religion (of all religions) was founded primarily on the basis that it oppresses women, and the biggest threat to women’s liberation today is religious extremism. In a 2014 interview, she said that “the root of the oppression of women lies in the global post-modern capitalist system, which is supported by religious fundamentalism”. El Saadawi fears that the global and religious fundamentalist movement is holding back progress regarding women’s rights and issues such as female genital mutilation, especially in Egypt.
“Women are deceived by the media, by the capitalist, patriarchal, racist media. They are brainwashed, so they have the impression that they are free, but they are not free. They think, ‘If I uncover my breast and wear low jeans, then I am free’, but completely the opposite, it means I am a sex object. And the veiled woman considers herself a stigma, so she covers herself. Feminism is not just one thing, there are many types of feminism: liberal feminists, socialist feminists, Islamic feminists, Jewish feminists, Christian feminists – there are many types. Real feminism is the woman who is liberated from both patriarchy and capitalism. Patriarchal oppression and class oppression and religious oppression are one.”
Nawal El Saadawi: ‘Religion is all politics’
“People, especially women, are afraid of loneliness,” she continues, “but loneliness is an illusion, like death. In Egypt, you find a woman who is educated, a professor maybe, and her husband beats her and oppresses her, but she is afraid to divorce him because she will be alone. In my life, I discovered that loneliness is paradise! I need loneliness, I need silence, to write. When you do not have something to do – in your head – you feel lonely. But if you put me in a room, in a prison even, I have something to do, something to say, something to write, I am occupied, therefore I don’t feel lonely.”
The day before our meeting at her hotel in Waterloo, Nawal was interviewed on Channel 4 News by Krishnan Guru-Murthy and on the BBC’s Hard Talk, “quarrelling” with the presenter Zeinab Badawi who suggested that Nawal might consider toning it down and being “less outspoken” about the issues she has tirelessly campaigned against throughout her life, such as FGM, which she experienced as a child, and (in its many, many guises) patriarchal oppression. Nawal answered firmly: “No. I should be more outspoken, I should be more aggressive, because the world is becoming more aggressive, and we need people to speak loudly against injustices. I speak loudly because I am angry.”
“They don’t want any really courageous people!”
“Everybody is very much interested in the physical veil – the religious Islamic veil. But what we don’t see is the veil of the mind. We are all exposed to the veil of the mind, by education, by religion, by patriarchy, by fear, by marriage, by the moral code. As women, we are always pushed to be hidden, to be veiled, even if we are not aware of that.” As I find out, Nawal is just as against women wearing very heavy makeup and the sort of ‘naked feminism’ that has been popularised by American celebrities like Kim Kardashian, as she is women wearing veils. “In Egypt, you find contradictions, because there is the Islamisation of Egypt, and the Americanisation of Egypt. Nakedness and veiling go hand in hand. Some Egyptian women, like the Americans, show their breasts and wear mini skirts and a lot of makeup, and then other women are very veiled. In the middle you have women who accommodate Islamisation and Americanisation, so they cover their head and their hair, but they uncover their belly with jeans that are very low and the stomach is visible. So in fact women are really oppressed by both Islamisation and Americanisation.”
In a December 7, 2024 appearance on Al-Masirah TV (Houthis-Yemen), Lebanese researcher Dr. Ali Hamie claimed on the eve of the fall of the regime of Bashar Al-Assad that HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani was kidnapped by the Israelis as a child, raised by the Mossad, and later sent to Syria to infiltrate it. Hamie also stated that during the time Al-Jolani was believed to be in an American prison, he was actually receiving training in Iraq. Additionally, Hamie argued that U.S. President Joe Biden is the “biggest supporter of the Luciferian movement,” which he described as seeking to control people through monotheistic religions.
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El Saadawi: I would probably have been imprisoned during the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser too – under all presidents and governments, in fact. I am also censored in the West. The reason can be found in the capitalist, religious and patriarchal system, regardless of whether it has Islamic, Christian, Jewish or Buddhist characteristics. I am against this system at both local and global level. This is also the reason why I am continually attacked – in Egypt as well as in Europe. I am not welcome in the West. I am welcomed by a few forward-thinking people who are likewise opposed to the patriarchy, to capitalism, neoliberalism and militarism. These are also the people who appreciate my literature. The vast majority, however, believe in the capitalist system.
Paul Haeder, Author 