On uprising

Since December 2010, the Arab world has been in uprising. Beginning in Tunisia, one man’s act of self-immolation became the catalyst for a wave of political protests that spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa over the following months.

On January 25, 2011, the population of Egypt took to the streets, protesting police brutality and abuse of power, demanding the resignation of the Ministry of Interior and accountability from President Hosni Mubarak’s government. After 18 days of protests throughout the country, during which the Mubarak regime declared curfews, deployed the military and shut down internet access in attempts to cripple the escalating unrest, Mubarak himself finally resigned.

During the 18-day uprising, a journalist by the name of Mona Eltahawy started appearing on radio and television broadcasts across the United States, giving her perspective on the events unfolding in Cairo. A New York-based commentator, Eltahawy was born and raised in Egypt and moved to the United States in 2000. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Toronto Star, Israel’s The Jerusalem Report and Denmark’s Politiken among others, and she is a frequent guest on television and radio. Eltahawy speaks and writes frequently on Islam and feminism, and has attracted criticism for some of her politics, particularly her support for the Libyan intervention and the recent burqa ban in France. Her high profile during the Egyptian uprising led to feminist website Jezebel dubbing her ‘the woman explaining Egypt to the West’. Determined and uncompromising, Eltahawy is a compelling figure in the line-up of female political voices staking out their territory at the 2011 Melbourne Writers Festival.

Mona Eltahawy will be speaking at the MWF as part of the Big Ideas programme. She will be speaking on The Roots of the Egyptian Revolution: From Tahrir Square to Liberation from Dictatorship on September 2, and discussing the Arab Spring with Joseph Braude, Amin Saikal and Louise Adler on September 3.