WESTERN FRONT: Surge in Assaults on Women in Egypt
WESTERN FRONT: Surge in Assaults on Women in Egypt

“Egypt’s sexual harassment of women ‘epidemic’. Campaigners in Egypt say the problem of sexual harassment is reaching epidemic proportions, with a rise in such incidents over the past three months,” says the BBC.

What happened three months ago? Oh nothing much. Just a fellow by the name of Morsi, representing the Muslim Brotherhood, won the Egyptian presidency.

Some Egyptian women buy into the Brotherhood’s propaganda and believe that they will be safe if they cover up, but it’s not working out too well.

But dressing conservatively is no longer a protection, according to Dina Farid of the campaign group Egypt’s Girls are a Red Line.

“It does not make a difference at all. Most of Egyptian ladies are veiled [with a headscarf] and most of them have experienced sexual harassment.

“Statistics say that most of the women or girls who have been sexually harassed have been veiled or completely covered up with the niqab.When I asked them about a recent case of mass harassment in which women at a park were groped by a gang of boys, they told me the girls brought it on themselves.

“If the girls were dressed respectably, no-one would touch them,” one of them said. “It’s the way girls dress that makes guys come on to them. The girls came wanting it – even women in niqab.”

So much for Islamic modesty. A woman covered head to toe with only a slight opening for the eyes still deserves to be assaulted. The next step after mock Purdah is full Purdah.

Is the Muslim Brotherhood really to blame? Let’s compare current events in Egypt to current events in Turkey.

In February 2011, Turkey’s justice minister shocked the country when, in response to a parliamentary question, he said that there had been a staggering increase in the murders of women, from 66 in 2002, to 953 in the first seven months of 2009

2002 marked the true rise to power of the AKP. Over that time there was a more than tenfold increase in the murder of women in Turkey.

The situation is the newly Islamist Turkey is bad enough that it might almost be called Gendercide.

The number of women who die due to gender-based violence surpasses the number of women who lose their lives due to cancer, traffic accidents, wars and malaria, revealed a study by the Turkish Ministry of Family and Social Policy.

This is what Turkey is like after over a decade of AKP rule. Imagine what Egypt will be like after a decade of Muslim Brotherhood rule.