Mona Eltahawy Quotes

The niqab, for some, has become an antiestablishment symbol around which one can rally and relish in the opportunities for confrontation that it provides.

A headscarf cannot be a political symbol…. If all political parties allowed women to wear a headscarf if they wanted, there would be no political symbol …. A woman who covers her head does so because of her beliefs not because of politics.

[Turkish women] had lived free of the veil for 5,000 years, and had been covered only in the last 600 years.

There’s no more despised figure on earth than a woman who seeks power.

I chose to wear the hijab at age 16, soon after my family moved from Britain to Saudi Arabia.

I wore the hijab - a form of dress that comprises a head scarf and usually also clothing that covers the whole body except for the face and hands - for nine years. Put more honestly, I wore the hijab for nine years and spent eight of them trying to take it off.

I can write about my culture and religion because I am a product of both. Even when I'm accused of giving ammunition to the Islamophobic right, in the struggle between 'community' and 'women,' I always choose the women.

Muslim women deplore misogyny just as western women do, and they know that Islamic societies also oppress them; why wouldn't they? But liberation, for them does not encompass destroying their identity, religion, or culture, and many of them want to retain the veil.

I think often the West does not understand the history and the privilege of wearing a hijab. They always think of oppression.

Not wearing hijab has seriously, seriously hurt my career. Mass media wants to see a woman in a veil. But I think it helps me because it makes it easier for my audience to relate to me. I'm not the scary 'other' they keep seeing on 'Fox News.'

In some countries, women aren't allowed to wear a swimsuit.

Most Muslim women know it is fear and curiosity that cause people to stare. They know it is ignorance and stereotypes that cause people to suppose that a piece of material covering the hair strips a woman of the ability to speak English, pursue a career, work a remote control.

Female athletes are supposed to be toned down. You're always supposed to talk about the team and never stand out.

We are women. We are a subject people who have inherited an alien culture.

For many, the hijab represents modesty, piety and devotion to God, and I truly respect that. But the hijab should not be used as a means of applying social pressure on people.

It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.

When you write about a Muslim woman, like I did with my previous novels - 'Minaret', for example, which is about a woman who starts to wear the hijab - it sets all the alarm bells ringing.

I grew up in a very westernised environment and went to a private American school. But my personality was shy and quiet, and I wanted to wear the hijab but didn't have the courage, as I knew my friends would talk me out of it.

Because the traditional mode of dress for Muslim women is so distinct - the headcovering, which is not there for guys - women carry a greater burden of representation than Muslim men do in non-Muslim societies.

Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.

Now let us see if any of you, blind Priests, can speak after this manner, and see if it be not a better Sermon than any of you can make, who are against Women's Speaking.

The dream of an Egypt without beards and veils is illusory.

To me, saying you're not a feminist should be like saying you're a racist. It should be that politically unacceptable.

I have worn a tuxedo, but I have never covered up for respectability politics or to shame other women.

I was 15 when my family moved to Jidda from Britain in 1982. Living in Saudi Arabia was such a shock to my system that I like to say I was traumatized into feminism.