Mona Eltahawy

Mona Eltahawy (born 1 August 1967) is an Egyptian-American freelance journalist and social commentator based in New York City who has written essays and op-eds worldwide on Egypt and the Islamic world, including women's rights, patriarchy, and Muslim political and social affairs. ¹ Her first book, Headscarves and Hymens, was published in May 2015, and she is among the people who spearheaded the Mosque Me Too movement using the hashtag #MosqueMeToo. ¹

Eltahawy was born in Port Said, Egypt, on 1 August 1967. ^{1 2} Her family moved to the United Kingdom when she was seven and then to Saudi Arabia when she was fifteen. ¹ She graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1990 with a bachelor's degree and earned a master's degree in mass communication, with a concentration in journalism, in 1992. ¹

She was a news reporter throughout the 1990s and a correspondent for the Reuters News Agency in Cairo and Jerusalem, and has written for The Guardian, the International Herald-Tribune, The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and The New York Times. ¹ She moved to the United States in 2000 and gained American citizenship in 2011. ¹ From 2003 to 2004 she was managing editor of the Arabic-language version of Women's eNews, and she wrote a weekly column for Asharq Al-Awsat from 2004 to 2006 before her articles were discontinued for being, she said, "too critical" of the Egyptian regime. ¹ In September 2020 she started her newsletter, Feminist Giant. ¹

On 24 November 2011 she was among journalists arrested while covering renewed protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square; she was held for twelve hours, interrogated, and physically and sexually assaulted, and her left arm and right hand were fractured. ¹ On 25 September 2012 she was arrested for spray-painting over an American Freedom Defense Initiative advertisement in a New York City subway station, and defended her act as freedom of expression and civil disobedience. ¹

Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution was published in the United States on 21 April 2015, based on her 2012 Foreign Policy piece "Why Do They Hate Us?" about misogyny in Arab society. ¹ Her second book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, followed in September 2019. ¹ She has written that she underwent two abortions, one illegal procedure in Egypt at twenty-nine and a legal one in Seattle four years later. ¹

Eltahawy was a board member of the Progressive Muslim Union of North America during its existence from 2004 to 2006. ¹ She has criticised both the regime of Hosni Mubarak and the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, calling them "old, out-of-touch men". ¹ She speaks out on women's rights in the Arab world, including against female genital mutilation, and described herself in a 2011 interview as "a secular, radical feminist Muslim"; the Arabic article records the same generic self-presentation, as a liberal secular Egyptian Muslim, and gives her religion in its infobox simply as Muslim. ^{1 2} That generic identity names no school, and her data record therefore leaves her faith unknown. ^{1 2} She is a supporter of LGBTQ rights worldwide and describes herself also as an anarchist feminist. ¹

Her honours include Muslim Leader of Tomorrow (2005, American Society for Muslim Advancement), the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press (2009), the Anna Lindh Foundation's Special Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (2010), and placement in The Africa Report's "100 Most Influential Africans" in 2019. ¹

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